Finding Text
Federal Agency: United States Department of Commerce
Federal Program Name: Office for Coastal Management
Assistance Listing Number: 11.473
Federal Award Identification Year: 2020
Pass-Through Agency: National Fish and Wildlife Grant Agreement
Award Period: 9/1/20-08/31/23
Type of Finding: Other Matters - Significant Deficiency in Internal Control
Criteria: 2 CFR 200.403(a) - Except where otherwise authorized by statute, costs must meet the following general criteria in order to be allowable under Federal awards: Be necessary and reasonable for the performance of the Federal award and be allocable thereto under these principles.
Condition: For two payroll samples that were selected, the amount of time charged to the grant was greater than the amount of time work was performed for the grant. As such, the program was overcharged.
Context: A nonstatistical sample of 8 out of 48 payroll entries were selected for testing for the Office for Coastal Management program. The condition noted above was identified during our procedures over the CFSC’s allowable costs provisions.
Effect: CFSC did not identify the error to be able to make the appropriate corrections before receiving reimbursement for incorrect payroll related expenditures.
Cause: CFSC did not consistently ensure that the hours worked by each employee related to the federal program were accurate applying the cost to the grant.
Repeat Finding: The finding is a repeat finding.
Recommendation: We recommend that management strengthen its current policies and procedures to ensure that all payroll amounts applied to the grant were for actual hours worked based on employee timesheets.
Management’s Views: See separate corrective action plan.