SHARENon-Profit

Criteria or specific requirement: A non-federal entity may charge only allowable costs incurred during the approved budget period of a federal award?s period of performance and any costs incurred before the federal awarding agency or pass-through entity made the federal award that were authorized by the federal awarding agency or pass-through entity (2 CFR sections 200.308, 200.309, and 200.403(h)). A period of performance may contain one or more budget periods. Condition: We identified two instances in which expenses charged to the grant were outside of the period of performance. Context: We selected 30 items from the entire Continuum of Care expenditure population for the year ended December 31, 2022. Of the 30 items selected for testing, two items were identified in which the underlying charge occurred prior to the period of performance. Effect: Amounts were inappropriately charged to the grant. Questioned costs: Amounts incorrectly charged to the grant totaled $32.27, less than the questioned costs threshold of $25,000. Cause: For one of the transactions that was identified that had been charged outside the period of performance, the employee responsible for entering the expense and determining whether it should be included or excluded from the grant reimbursement request was later placed on a performance improvement plan due to errors in data entry. For both transactions, as of December 31, 2022, the grant award had not been closed out, and therefore had not yet been subject to the Organization?s control to review expenses charged in detail and remove those outside of the period of performance. Repeat finding: No. Recommendation: We recommend more training be provided to employees responsible for reviewing grant expenses as well as over the various compliance requirements to ensure expenses are only charged when within the period of performance. We further recommend management tighten up the review process to ensure expenses that are outside the period of performance are noted at the time of the initial review. Views of responsible officials and planned corrective actions: Contracts charged for expenses outside of the period of performance have been credited for ineligible expenses. Share has provided additional training to accounting staff about the allowability of expenses being based on both contract criteria and the period of performance. Additionally, training was provided on key identifiers that could flag an exception in allowability based on period of performance, and how to catch this in the review of expenses. Additionally, training was provided on general ledgers transactions that require further review for period of performance allowability during monthly review of expenses prior to preparing invoices. Training included this being a specific area of focus for review during periods when a contract terms and a new contract starts. This training will be provided to all new accounting staff and will be incorporated as refresher trainings if upon review contract and grant administrator expense reviews identify this as being a continued issue by staff performing expense data entry.