Any local government that passes federal funds to a subrecipient, who is a state, local government, Indian tribe, institution of higher education, or nonprofit organization, is required to monitor those subrecipients according to the Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards (the “Uniform Guidance”) published by the Office of Management and Budget. But before you can monitor subrecipients, you must first identify them and distinguish them from contractors (who don’t need to be monitored).
 
In a previous post, we provided basic definitions and terms related to subrecipient monitoring procedures.

In this post below, we describe subrecipients vs. contractors and how to distinguish them correctly.

Local government finance departments are frequently asked to evaluate the financial stability of nonprofit organizations. This could be nonprofits that the government is already working with, or to which it is considering making a grant.
​In such cases, the finance department should evaluate the nonprofit organization’s financial condition. It is wise to answer questions, such as ‘is the nonprofit strong enough financially to continuously operate for at least the time specified in the contract?,’ before starting a working relationship or providing funds to the nonprofit.
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The same questions should be answered for companies that a government is working with or considering working with, such as software vendors, franchisees or construction contractors.

Read below on how to effectively evaluate a nonprofit organization’s financial health.

As mentioned in our last blog post, the Office of Management and Budget’s Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards (“Uniform Guidance”) introduced a new requirement for entities that pass federal funds (“pass-through entities”) to non-profit entities or other governments, to monitor those subrecipients.

​We provided a list of terms and definitions related to subrecipient monitoring in part one of our subrecipient monitoring mini blog series.

The Office of Management and Budget’s Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards (“Uniform Guidance”) made it a requirement for any entity that passes federal funds (the “pass-through entity”) to non-profit entities or other governments to monitor those subrecipients.
 
 
In this blog post below, we explain and define major terms regarding subrecipient monitoring and its related procedures.

Many government agencies use purchasing card programs for their employees now.
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Audits of purchasing card programs are conducted to determine the following 3 things:

Read below what the recommended best practice for audits is.

Many California local governments participate in the State of California’s Cal-Card procurement card program. The State contracted with U.S. Bank National Association to provide Visa credit cards to authorized State employees, and has opened the program for any local government in California that wants to participate.

Read on to learn more details about what the Cal-Card program's purpose is. 

A lot has been written about how to select a new audit firm, including lots of examples for requests for proposals (RFP) and example scoring criteria.

​One of the most important elements of the auditor selection process, however, that not much has been written about, is the reference checking for new possible audit firms.
So, below we describe an approach and provide a list of sample questions to ask during reference checking when you’re in the process of selecting a new audit firm.

An important task for any finance department is account reconciliation.
Items recorded as assets and liabilities at some point usually get paid, collected, depreciated or disposed; however, the related accounting entry to remove these items from the balance sheet does not always get made.

For example, an operating department may dispose of a capital asset without notifying the finance department or a cash collection may have been recorded as a revenue instead of an offset to the receivable. Without regular account analyses, these types of errors can accumulate on the balance sheet causing both balance sheet accounts and revenues/expenses to be misstated by a significant amount. 

See the 5 steps to good account reconciliation procedure below.

​Properly managing grants is a complex, and sometimes tedious, process. In recent posts, we have addressed some best practices in managing grants including written procedures, status reports, monitoring sub-grantees, maintaining proper records, planning and close-out meetings, and deciding whether to centralize or to decentralize grants management.
 
In this post, we discuss another best practice to consider in managing grants – the use of a grants management workgroup. Below, we discuss who should participate in the workgroup, what the workgroup’s agenda should be, the recommended frequency of meetings, and the role of the facilitator in the workgroup.

​Since the grants management process is usually decentralized, your agency’s effectiveness and efficiency in managing grants depends heavily on how well employees in Finance communicate with the grants managers in various departments.
 
In this post below, we’ll explain how to achieve the best-possible results for governments grants management by incorporating planning and close-out meetings into your agenda.