Finding Text
2022-002 ? Lack of review of underlying expenses supporting federal grant drawdowns/revenue. Finding type ? Significant deficiency in internal control related to the audit of the major federal awards program. Criteria ? Accounting principles generally accepted in the United States require internal controls over recording, processing and summarizing accounting data. Condition ? During our testing of the federal awards drawdowns schedule, which is the supporting client schedule for the schedule of expenditures of federal awards, it was determined that certain expense charges were supporting two different drawdowns or were double counted within the same drawdown for HRSA supplemental grants. In all cases, management was able to identify unassigned eligible expenses (i.e. not already allocated to a grant) that they in turn used to support one of the drawdowns; thereby, curing the double counting of certain expenses. As such, no noncompliance was identified. Cause ? In recent years, the Coalition has operated with a shortage of Accounting staff. They made hires in current and prior year that have cured this shortage; however, there appears to be a training and experience gap that needs to be addressed. Effect ? For the certain expenses that were double counted, management reclassed unassigned eligible expenses to support one of the drawdowns. As a result, no noncompliance was identified. We performed a sensitivity analysis on the untested HRSA supplemental drawdowns to ensure that there were enough available eligible unassigned expenses to cover any further double counting of expenses. As a result, no potential noncompliance was identified. Recommendation ? We recommend that an employee with suitable knowledge and skill review the underlying expenses supporting federal grants drawdowns/revenue to ensure that no expenses are supporting more than one drawdown or being double counted within the same drawdown. This employee should be someone other than the employee who prepared the drawdown. Additionally, we recommend external and on-the-job training of staff to further develop their financial accounting acumen. View of Responsible Officials ? The Coalition agrees with the finding as documented above and our recommendation.