FINDINGS?FEDERAL AWARD PROGRAMS AUDITS U.S. Small Business Administration 2022-001 Shuttered Venue Operations Grant ? Assistance Listing No. 59.075 Recommendation: We recommend management implement a process to ensure expenditures applied to the grant are net of all applicable credits (discounts). ...
FINDINGS?FEDERAL AWARD PROGRAMS AUDITS U.S. Small Business Administration 2022-001 Shuttered Venue Operations Grant ? Assistance Listing No. 59.075 Recommendation: We recommend management implement a process to ensure expenditures applied to the grant are net of all applicable credits (discounts). Carolina Ballet management?s opinion is there were no deficiencies in internal control over compliance around oversight of allowable expenditures allocated to the SVOG grant funding. The finding is not a result of intentional inclusion of non-allowable expenditures, or a lack of internal control or oversight of expenditures. Carolina Ballet acknowledges the line-item transaction included in the supporting detail provided to the auditors resulted in the finding stating supporting detail submitted by Carolina Ballet staff did not reflect a discount which was applied at the time of payment for the allowable expenditure. This occurred due to Carolina Ballet?s internal process of recording an anticipated early payment discount/credit for this specific vendor in QuickBooks as a separate transaction, which subsequently did not reflect the net amount of the payment in the system report exported and used for data extraction. Due to the early payment discount credit not being applied in the SVOG line-item calculations, Carolina Ballet?s supporting detail did not include an additional allowable expenditure of the same type to cover the discount credit inadvertently omitted. Carolina Ballet submitted documentation to the auditors supporting the fact additional allocable expenditures (reflecting net amount) were available for inclusion in the detail over the amount of the discount on the transaction. Regarding the Cause in the finding noted above: ?There was an internal control process in place executed by the previous accounting management during the period covered by the grant to monitor expenses and make purchases in accordance with the planned use for the grant funding and to ensure they were allowable. There is internal evidence of this including the fact that the Director of Accounting during the grant period provided oversight for outgoing payments and applicable credits at Carolina Ballet. This same general process continues to exist currently. ?The CEO of Carolina Ballet approved and signed off on all payments for the listed expenditures, including review of credits applied during the grant period. ?There was a calculation error of a line-item amount referred to in the finding due to exclusion of an early payment discount credit for this single expenditure in the detail, such that Carolina Ballet didn?t include an additional eligible and allowable expenditure under the grant funding. This was an error in the detail listing, not a lack of internal control processes over the grant funded expenditures and credits. There were other credits applied to this payment, that were appropriate for consideration as payment that should not have and were not applied to the expenditure amount. Action taken in response to finding: Carolina Ballet, Inc. going forward and retroactively for the current fiscal year will designate expenditures covered by external funding using the QB transaction Class field to ensure inclusion with any future data extraction and as an indication of review and approval for the source of funding. Name(s) of the contact person(s) responsible for corrective action: Aji Touray, Director of HR and Accounting Vanessa Nelson, Controller Planned completion date for corrective action plan: Carolina Ballet, Inc. is currently updating the QuickBooks class for externally funded expenditures for the current fiscal year, and including this process in its internal control documentation. Completion date estimated to be April 10, 2023.