Finding Text
Finding 2021-005
Program: Office for Coastal Management
Federal Financial Assistance Listing: 11.473
Federal Grantor: U.S. Department of Commerce
Passed-through: National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
Award No. and Year: 0318.19.070225 (2020)
Compliance Requirements: Activities Allowed or Unallowed and Allowable Costs/Cost Principles
Type of Finding: Significant Deficiency
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 one payroll sample that was selected, the amount of time charged to the grant was greater than the amount of time work was performed. As such, the program was overcharged.
Questioned Costs:
Questioned costs were identified as a result of our procedures in the amount of $74.
Context/Sampling:
A nonstatistical sample of 17 out of 82 total payroll costs ($25,275 of $35,106) 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. EB expanded the sample to 22 ($26,792) and no further questioned costs were identified.
Repeat Finding from Prior Year:
No
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.
Recommendation:
We recommend that CFSC 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.
Views of Responsible Officials and Planned Corrective Actions:
See Separate Corrective Action Plan.