Management's response: When the federal grant award came out at the end of December 2021 , we did not get an approved budget and signed contract for work with the State until the beginning of July 2022 for work that dated back to October 1, 2021 . Because we did not have a signed contract until so l...
Management's response: When the federal grant award came out at the end of December 2021 , we did not get an approved budget and signed contract for work with the State until the beginning of July 2022 for work that dated back to October 1, 2021 . Because we did not have a signed contract until so late into the grant {even though we knew the grant was coming and had already started the work to support Afghans as they arrived in Tulsa). we did not have full guidance or understanding as to how the funds had to be invoiced/spent. In March, we purchased gift cards for clients for immediate needs, and while we had sufficient documentation about the purchase of the gift cards, we did not have the back-up documentation that showed their distribution to clients. We also were not aware that the late fees could not be charged as they were incurred.Finally, as the work started, we knew that our overall indirect costs were greater than what was budgeted .Because we knew our costs were greater than the 10% budgeted, we simply billed the full amount budgeted towards indirect costs during each month, and failed to adjust based on actual direct costs invoiced to the grant. This was a misunderstanding on our part of how that budgeted item needed to be invoiced, and we have since corrected this. Views of Responsible Officials and Corrective Action : Immediately after receiving feedback from ouraudits about gift cards, we created an additional process where if we purchase or receive gift cards, we have team members check out those gift cards and include which clients the gift cards are going to so we can track those. Overall, we try not to utilize gift cards when possible, and have removed those purchases on federa l grants. We have also made sure to no longer include any late fees on grants moving forward, and have internal reviews from our Grants Accountant and Senior Director of Finance to help track for that. budgeted line item.Finally, in 2023, we fi xed our indirect cost billing to make sure that it matched our direct costs and not the budgeted line item. Name of Contact Person: Name:Julie Davis Title Chief Executive Officer Email: juliedavis@ywcatulsa.org Phone: 918-828-2346 Projected Implementation: The implementation is complete.