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As noted earlier, the County uses fund accounting to ensure and demonstrate compliance with finance-related legal requirements.

Governmental funds are intended to provide information on near-term inflows, outflows, and balances of spendable resources. This information is useful in assessing the County's financing needs. In particular, spendable fund balance, both restricted and unrestricted, serves as a useful measure of the County's net resources available for spending at year-end.

The County’s governmental funds include the general fund, special revenue funds, and capital project funds. At the end of 2025, Adams County’s governmental funds reported combined ending fund balances of $68,263,115; an increase of $3,132,548 compared to the prior year. Approximately 66% of the total, or $44,714,016 represented unassigned fund balance available for spending at the County’s discretion. The remainder consisted of $766,603 in nonspendable fund balance, $5,000,000 in assigned fund balance, and $17,782,496 in restricted fund balance. These amounts were unavailable for discretionary future spending because they were either nonspendable, assigned by the County, or is legally restricted to bridge maintenance, farmland preservation, parks and green space, conservation and economic development, criminal investigation, Coroner VSIA, human services, public safety, and row office automation.

The general fund is the operating fund of the County. At the end of 2025, the general fund reported an unassigned fund balance of $44,833,541 and a total fund balance of $50,600,144. As a measure of the general fund's liquidity, it may be useful to compare both unrestricted fund balance and total fund balance to total fund expenditures. Unassigned fund balance represents 79% of total general fund expenditures while total fund balance represents 66% of that same amount. In 2025, the fund balance of Adams County's general fund increased by $5,237,132. Total revenues exceeded total expenditures by $8,783,733. The increase in revenues was primarily due to higher property tax collections. In 2025, the County increased its millage rate by 0.70 mills, from 4.4393 mills to 5.1393 mills. In addition, assessed property values increased by an average of approximately 4%, further contributing to the growth in property tax revenues.

The Opioid Settlement fund had an increase in fund balance of $443,513, bringing the fund balance to $2,270,949. In 2025, the County received $495,420 from the PA Opioid Misuse and Addiction Abatement Trust and an additional $23,601 from the McKinsey Subdivision Settlement. In 2022, the County was a Litigating Subdivision to national class-action lawsuits against certain manufacturers and distributors engaged in the improper manufacture, sale, and promotion of prescription opioid products. Settlement funds are exclusively used for opioid remediation measures.

Adams County's proprietary funds provide the same type of information found in the business-type activities of the government-wide financial statements, but in greater detail.