Comprehensive annual financial report

A Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) is a set of U.S. government financial statements comprising the financial report of a state, municipal or other governmental entity that complies with the accounting requirements promulgated by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). GASB provides standards for the content of a CAFR in its annually updated publication Codification of Governmental Accounting and Financial Reporting Standards. The U.S. Federal Government adheres to standards determined by the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB).

A CAFR is compiled by a state, municipal or other governmental accounting staff and audited by an external American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) certified accounting firm utilizing GASB requirements. It is composed of three sections: Introductory, Financial and Statistical. It combines the financial information of fund accounting and Enterprise Authorities accounting.

The National Committee on Municipal Accounting (NCMA) was formed in 1934 by the Government Financial Officers Association to create accounting standards. As a result of its work, the 'Principles of Municipal Accounting', the predecessor to the CAFR, was created. The successor to the NCMA, the National Council on Governmental Accounting (NCGA), issued 'Governmental Accounting, Auditing and Financial Reporting', which is the basis of the format for the current standard. This document, known as the "Blue Book", and its successors documented the CAFR accounting structure and provided standardization and example documents. By 1946, the various levels of government—federal, state, local and municipal—each began producing a CAFR to catalog an accurate picture of institutional funds, enterprise or financial holdings, assets and total investment incomes for those government and nongovernmental entities using the report. This measure is above and beyond the budget process and replaced what was regularly an "off-the-books" practice called the "general fixed-asset account group". General Purpose government "budget" reports did not reflect accounting of this financial data, only reporting on the budget or "rainy day" funds or pension fund investments. By the 1970s, the CAFR became the nationwide paradigm for local government accounting.

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