Finding Text
2022-002 Student Financial Assistance Cluster U.S. Department of Education Federal Direct Student Loans ? 84.268 Criteria or specific requirement ? Management is responsible for the reconciliation of the School Account Statement (SAS) data file to the institution?s financial records. Condition ? One monthly reconciliation was not available to be provided to the auditor to support the reconciliation was completed. Questioned costs ? There were no questioned costs identified on the monthly reconciliation requested. Context ? Of the 24 monthly reconciliations for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2022, one was not available to be provided to the auditor to support the reconciliation was completed. FORVIS selected four monthly reconciliations for testing. Effect ? FORVIS was not able to verify the institution reconciled the SAS data file to their financial records. Cause ? The institution went through a system conversion during the fiscal year ended June 30, 2022. During this conversion, the reconciliation was inadvertently not imported into the new system. Recommendation ? Management should ensure that proper controls are in place to confirm monthly reconciliations of SAS data files and the institution?s financial records are completed and retained. Views of Responsible Officials and Planned Corrective Actions ? The University has updated its procedures and policies to better align with their system conversion and continues to improve internal control over reconciliation and record retention. New procedures ensure through automation that the SAS files are downloaded from the federal aid system and processed on a regular monthly occurrence. The SAS information is stored at the student level and copies of the files are maintained in a secure network folder for future retrieval. The University storage of the SAS files and student records align with the federal recommendations and regulatory requirements, ranging from 3 to 7 years.