Consolidated financial statements
Municipal services of general interest
The city of Jena fulfills a variety of its own and delegated tasks to ensure the provision of services of general interest for its citizens and to promote innovation, urbanity, the economy and quality of life. In addition to basic community services such as registration, regulatory authorities, fire department and disaster control, these include a wide range of tasks in the social sector and in youth welfare, healthcare, education, sport, culture, transport infrastructure, urban land-use planning and land development, housing supply and economic development.
The city is also responsible for securing the supply of energy and water, sewage disposal and cleaning, waste disposal, street cleaning and the provision of local public transport.
Only a small proportion of these tasks are carried out by the municipal authorities themselves; instead, they are largely transferred to municipal enterprises as legally dependent special assets and to subsidiaries organized under private law. This group of structural units forms the Jena municipal association. Numerous tasks are carried out by in-house companies that in other cities are part of the core administration (culture, facility management) or have been privatized (e.g. waste disposal).
Holistic control in the city association
In order to be able to manage municipal activities holistically and strategically and to facilitate comparisons with other cities, economic and financial information about the city administration and the municipal subsidiary organizations as a whole is required, abstracting from the effects of the different organizational forms. For this purpose, the instrument of consolidated financial statements was developed within the framework of double-entry accounting as a "commercial accounting system for municipalities".
Methods of the consolidated financial statements under commercial law, in particular the so-called consolidation, are further developed and applied for municipal information requirements. The core administration, the municipal enterprises and companies and the special-purpose association JenaWasser are viewed financially as a single economic unit. The financial relationships between them are eliminated through the steps of capital, debt, expense and income consolidation, so that what is actually important comes to the fore: the fulfillment of tasks for society, for the citizens and companies of our city and the financial security of these tasks. The result is a holistic picture of the economic situation and development.
In the case of deviations in detail specific to the federal states, the overall financial statements generally consist of the overall balance sheet, the statement of comprehensive income, the notes to the overall financial statements, the overall financial statement, the annexes and the overall management report. The latter offers the opportunity to describe the opportunities and risks of the municipality's economic activities in detail. It can therefore be regarded as part of municipal risk management. The aforementioned information and control functions dominate the consolidated financial statements; they do not fulfill a payment measurement function (taxes, profit distributions) or a determination and liability function (discharge of the mayor, plant managers and managing directors). These functions continue to be fulfilled by the individual financial statements of the participating structural units.
If consolidated financial statements are prepared, it is no longer necessary to prepare an investment report summarizing the individual financial statements (Section 20 (10) ThürKDG).