Finding Text
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“DHHS”) Administration for Children and
Families, Office of Head Start – Early Head Start Grants – ALN 93.600
Criteria: PART 200—UNIFORM ADMINISTRATIVE REQUIREMENTS, COST PRINCIPLES, AND
AUDIT REQUIREMENTS FOR FEDERAL AWARDS, Section 200.430, (i) Standards for
Documentation of Personnel Expenses
(1) Charges to Federal awards for salaries and wages must be based on records that
accurately reflect the work performed. These records must:
(vii) Support the distribution of the employee's salary or wages among specific
activities or cost objectives if the employee works on more than one Federal
award.
Condition
The Organization did not comply with these requirements at the bi‐weekly payroll level.
Effect
At the bi‐weekly payroll level, not all the documentation supporting the salary expense
charged to the federal award for certain employees was maintained.
Questioned Costs
The Organization has documentation to support the assertion that total salary expense
allocated to federal awards for the year ended June 30, 2023 is, in aggregate, commensurate
with the actual activity of employees. Hence there is no questioned cost.
Context
During the year ended June 30, 2023 there were personnel changes in connection with who
was overseeing and performing the accounting at the Organization.
Repeat finding
This is a repeat finding.
Recommendations
The Organization should implement appropriate procedures to create and retain the
documentation noted above supporting salary expense, at the bi‐weekly payroll level, for each
employee allocated to federal programs.
View of responsible officials
Management agrees that we do not always have documentation of allocation on the payroll
level and with the turnover of staff in the accounting department during the year, it
exacerbated the situation. However, we want to emphasize that our records accurately
reflect the work performed for the total year basis. Further, we are currently putting a system
in place to remediate the situation. This system is expected to provide documentation of
allocation on a payroll level.