Finding Text
Federal Agency: U.S. Department of Education
Passthrough Entity: Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Assistance Listing Number and Federal Program: 84.425 Education Stabilization Fund – Elementary and
Secondary School Emergency Relief
Compliance Requirement: B. Allowable Costs and L. Reporting
Criteria: In accordance with 2 CFR part 200.302, the District is required to maintain financial management systems to trace funds to expenditures to establish that funds have been used according to Federal statutes, regulations, and the terms and conditions of the Federal award. The financial management system must provide for records that identify adequately the source and application of funds for federally-funded activities, among other conditions. The reporting of the federal expenditures should be supported by these records. Thus, it is critical to have a process in place to regularly reconcile underlying financial records with the grant reports. This will also help ensure correct revenue is being reported and underlying costs in the financial records are supported.
Statement of Condition: During the course of our audit, we noted that the District requested reimbursement for costs that were already previously claimed for reimbursement in the prior year. However, the District was able to correct this error by reclassifying other eligible and allowable costs to the grant.
Statement of Cause: Control procedures were not in place to reconcile the accounting records project codes to the grant payment request for reimbursement for the grant.
Statement of Effect: Without timely reconciliations and monitoring processes, grant expenditures can be omitted or overstated on submitted grant reports or other grant noncompliance can be overlooked. This could result in missed funding or noncompliance with grant agreements which could lead to adverse conditions with the grantors.
Questioned Costs: The District had other allowable costs eligible to claim under the grant, therefore no questioned costs were identified.
Perspective Information: This appears to be an isolated instance because all other grants received by the District appear to be properly accounted for and utilized the correct project code and source code.
Identification of Repeat Findings: Not a repeat finding.
Recommendation: We recommend that the District develop written procedures that require all grant reports to be reconciled to the internal accounting records prior to report submission. This reconciliation should be presented in a clear and concise manner to enable another party to review and approve before ultimately getting submitted to the grantor. This process should be attainable if each grant utilizes the proper project codes and sources codes as required by the grant agreements.
Views of Responsible Officials: I am acknowledging the finding of the Federal Audit team in which an error in my spreadsheet was documented resulting in requesting a recurring expenditure on two different pay requests. The correction was made the day of the audit through coding other expenditures matching the qualifying expenditures. In the future, the District spreadsheets will include reviews by the bookkeeper and superintendent to ensure the fund pay requests are correct and not repeated. By multiple reviews and the addition of PO number and date of pay request, this will easily define a possible "doubling up" of items for a pay request. This was one finding and all other accounts reviewed were correct and accurate. Additional expenditures were corrected and easily matched to the grant funds obtained through reimbursement. The new procedure will begin immediately.