Identifying Number: Finding 2022-004 Finding: During our testing of internal controls associated with the Alzheimer?s Program, the Association was not able to provide evidence for the time allocation associated with an employee whose salary was allocated to the program. In addition, for the Alzhe...
Identifying Number: Finding 2022-004 Finding: During our testing of internal controls associated with the Alzheimer?s Program, the Association was not able to provide evidence for the time allocation associated with an employee whose salary was allocated to the program. In addition, for the Alzheimer?s Program, management provided an excel spreadsheet to support the charges that were made to the program rather than reporting from their financial management system that is compliant with Section 200.302. We acknowledge that the Association did track Alzheimer?s program expenditures within a cost center, however, not all of the charges made to the program were properly captured within the cost center. Corrective Action Taken or Planned: We assert that we exercised significant diligence and oversight over the handling of the federal dollars associated with the Alzheimer?s program funding (ALN #93.470) to ensure that such expenditures were (i) for allowable activities and consisted of allowable costs, (ii) tracked within a cost center in the organization?s general ledger and in an Excel spreadsheet that was compiled from support such as invoices and payroll records; and (iii) were not applied against other sources of funding. This was accomplished through the following: ? All invoices submitted to the Alzheimer?s cost center were required to be submitted with signature for approval by their supervisor and were complete appropriately. All expenditures were appropriately documented with necessary signatures, and were submitted for valid purposes. ? The time allocation of the identified employee was approved y the federal government through the budgeting process, and then through quarterly reports submitted through their portal. The internal Personnel Payroll Action Form was not correctly changed to reflect the appropriate allocation of the employee across programs. The employee was thus charged correctly to the federal government, and the federal government reimbursed the agency appropriately. In the future, program allocation will be reconciled in the personnel system to coincide with grant requirements. While we assert that proper oversight of this program was exercised, we understand that the auditors were not able to view the evidence of such review via sign-offs. We will update our policies and procedures to require evidence of our oversight responsibilities be required by means such as sign-offs, email approvals, etc. Further, we will work to adapt our accounting systems to be able to track activity related to federal grants within its own cost center (or sub cost center) so as to minimize the need for external management systems such as Excel spreadsheets. While expenditures against this funding were tracked within a cost center, there were other costs also included in the cost center (thus the use of the Excel spreadsheet to isolate the costs under this federal program). Going forward, a sub cost center for such funds will be utilized, if possible, to eliminate the need for a separate Excel spreadsheet. Name of contact person and title: William Bode, Controller Anticipated completion date: Immediately