2018 Research Financial Management Conference

Transcription

1 September 23-25, 2018 Contents Discussion Topics A. Governance B. Risk Management C. Government Outlook D. Business Development E. International Work F. Government Contract Compliance/Contracts Administration G. Pricing Tools, Processes and Responsibilities H. Indirect Cost Recovery I. Project Management Best Practices J. Audits: IRS, DCAA, Public Accounting K. New Accounting Pronouncements L. Tax Issues: Income, Sales and Use, Personal Property M. Budget and Forecasting Tools, Project Planning & Reporting Systems N. Billing/Invoicing O. Accounts Payable P. Purchasing/P-Card Q. Information Technology/Information Security R. Travel and Expense S. Payroll and Timekeeping T. Employee Benefits U. Other Page 1

2 A. Governance How many people are on your board? (SRC) Our Finance and Audit Committee has expressed an interest in getting a better understanding of our internal controls and their effectiveness. Have you had a similar experience with your Audit Committee? If so, how do you present this to the Committee, (i.e. what format/metrics/presentation, etc.) and otherwise help the Committee members feel comfortable with the adequacy system of internal controls. (MRIGlobal) For those organizations that used to be a part of a college/university, how and why did you separate from the university? What are some lessons learned along the way during transition? Would you do it again? (GTRI) Do you charge a management fee to your subsidiaries? If so how is your basis of charging? (GTI) Do you compensate the members of your Board of Directors? If so, can you share the amount and frequency of remuneration? Do you treat this as an allowable or unallowable expense? (MRIGlobal) Do any of the other organizations have to input IR&D projects and expenses into the DTIC database? Even if not, have auditors challenged the recoverability of your IR&D based on simply not understanding the SOW to assess for reasonableness and how did you handle? (GTI) Page 2

3 B. Risk Management How are warranty clauses (i.e. requirement to rework what we produce) handled by your organization? Are they avoided? (GTRI) Page 3

4 C. Government Outlook Does any other organization use average salary/labor rates for proposal purposes? If so, do you submit and does the government audit these annually? Also, are your customers requesting provisional forward pricing agreements before audit and are you able to obtain this from your cognizant? (GTRI) Page 4

5 D. Business Development Does anyone see an issue calling business development Selling to match language of the FAR as it related to a non-profit organization and its mission? (GTRI) Page 5

6 E. International Work Does anyone have a need to wire funds to an employee in a cash economy country to make cash purchases on the ground? Do you use Western Union or any other avenue to get cash to your employees in other countries? (MRIGlobal) Page 6

7 F. Government Contract Compliance/Contract Administration Given that the National Defense Authorization Acts for FY2017, FY2018, and now FY2019 have increased the thresholds for micro-purchases (to $10,000 from $5,000 DOD/$3,500 civilian agencies) and simplified acquisitions (to $250,000 from $150,000) but also that the FAR has not yet reflected the changes, are they going ahead to use the new thresholds or are they waiting until FAR changes make it official? (MRIGlobal) Who has contracts requiring advance approval of travel and/or procurement? How do you administer this? (GTRI) What means are used in monitoring subcontractors? (MRIGlobal) What is your approach to subcontract monitoring? Does anyone use a scoring method? If so, has any subcontractor seen their score and had a negative reaction or view? (GTRI) Has anyone been affected by changing contracting/funding approaches used by the FedGovt? E.g. use of Other Transactions Authority (OTA), funding only one year at a time rather than the full life of the contract, etc. (MRIGlobal) Page 7

8 G. Pricing Tools Do you have established Fee minimums for Commercial and Gov't projects? Are they driven by revenue thresholds? At what approval level can these thresholds be waived? (MRIGlobal) What has been your response to questions relating to the basis of cost estimates included in proposals when comparing to actuals, especially for bill of materials? For example, how do you respond to questions when more or different purchases end up being required than is included on bill of materials? (GTRI) What level of approval is necessary within your organizations for a Rate Buy Down on a Project? How well do your current policies work? Are revenue thresholds a part of the policy? (MRIGlobal) Do you have separate Pricing and Finance Analysts functions? How many projects do each of your Pricing or Finance analysts support? (MRIGlobal) Page 8

9 H. Indirect Cost Recovery How are organizations allocating the following functions: Program Control Analysts, Contracts, IT, Business Development, Human Resources, Finance, and Procurement? (SRC) Do you recover food for business meetings via your indirect rates? If so, have you had any audit or other problems in this area? (GTRI) Has any organization had common control issues relating to the cost recovery of operating leases or anything similar? (GTRI) Page 9

10 I. Project Management Best Practices Does anyone have any tools or metrics that are used to track project manager's ability to meet project deliverables and stay on budget? (MRIGlobal) Does your company have a formal training program for new project managers? (GTI) Page 10

11 J. Audits: IRS, DCAA, Public Accounting How are companies tracking unrelated business income? (SRC) Has DCAA performed a Floor Check Audit recently? If not, when was the last time DCAA conducted this audit. (MRIGlobal) Has any organization seen their audit(s) being staffed with Qualified Private Auditors in lieu of government auditors? (GTRI) Has DCAA ever audited your accounting system? (GTRI) How are companies treating work/services performed between the exempt organization and their for-profit subsidiaries? (SRC) Have any been impacted by recent DCAA reorganization, e.g. assigned to other cognizant auditors? Has this created any difficulties in transition? (MRIGlobal) Has anyone been audited for Unrelated Business Income (UBI) by the IRS? If so, what was looked at and what were some issues, if any? (GTRI) Are companies experiencing increased scrutiny with DCAA auditing employees' salaries (as compared to industry salary surveys)? (MRIGlobal) In the DCAA s pressure to bring Incurred Cost audits up-to-date, what progress has been made? How close to current is everyone in settled years? (MRIGlobal) Page 11

12 K. New Accounting pronouncements Revenue Recognition Where does your organization stand with regard to implementing the new revenue recognition requirements? Have you or do you plan to engage a third-party resource to assist with the implementation? Have you identified any system modifications necessary to implement the new requirements? (MRIGlobal) New Revenue recognition standards. Where do you stand with implementing? Are you using features within Deltek to capture information on the change? Which group is leading the efforts? Are you having to look at each contract and do a write up for each project? (GTI) Can anyone share what they are doing to prepare for the Revenue Recognition standard or Leases standard? (NORC) Page 12

13 L. Tax Issues: Income, Sales and Use, Personal Property How are you handling the new tax laws as the related to employee moving costs/relocations? Are you grossing up? (GTRI) Page 13

14 M. Budget and Forecasting Tools, Project Planning & Reporting Systems Do you use IBM Cognos TM-1? Are you satisfied with the tools ability to forecast when rates change (if some projects have rate ceilings or Fixed Price vs Cost Plus contract types)? Do you do your forecasting outside a tool by using Excel etc? (MRIGlobal) We are currently investigating options for a budgeting/forecasting tool and Anaplan and OneStream are on our short list - does anyone have any experience with either of these tools? (SRC) What systems/tools and strategies are you using for indirect budgeting and planning? (GTRI) If anyone uses Deltek Budgeting & Planning, have you upgraded to the latest version? If so, have any issues been resolved? (GTRI) Are there any companies (other than AIR) using FocusPoint by Semfin? If so, I would like to ask some questions about user acceptance and reporting. If anyone has implemented FocusPoint, have they implemented the executive dashboards feature? (NORC) Page 14

15 N. Billing/Invoicing Regarding Fixed Price/Commercial Milestone driven Invoicing, do you try to direct your clients towards standard boiler plate invoices? Do you allow for complex milestone schedules? Are there revenue thresholds for such arrangements? (MRIGlobal) Has any other organization experienced billing/collection issues relating to pay office changes, modification updates missing from government systems/records, or ACRN billing not matching DFAS? If so, have you found successful methods for getting the government to resolve the issues quickly? (GTRI) Are you seeing an increase in the level of support that your customer is requiring with an invoice? (GTI) Has anyone used the Salary Cap Feature in Costpoint? (NORC) Page 15

16 O. Accounts Payable Any best practices to share for verifying vendor changes regarding ACH information, address changes, etc. to avoid fraudulent changes? We receive s requesting changes, or letters in the mail requesting changes. We validate by calling our contact person to verify the change. (MRIGlobal) Do you pay many vendors on a pay when paid basis? (GTI) Page 16

17 P. Purchasing/P-Card How do you control the use of Click through Agreements when employees are ordering software and other items on line using a P-Card? (DRI) Page 17

18 Q. Information Technology/Information Security How is compliance with NIST and General Data Protection Requirements going? (SRC) Does anyone have a data analytics group? Is it centralized or decentralized? What group do they report into? (SRC) What people are doing to keep up with Costpoint patching? (NORC) How is compliance with NIST and General Data Protection Requirements going? (SRC) Has anyone implemented the Workday cloud based financial accounting and human resources system? If so, what s your experience? (DRI) Page 18

19 R. Travel and Expense We are considering doing away with cell phone reimbursements. Has anyone made changes to cell phone reimbursement policies or procedures? (MRIGlobal) How do other organizations document that the lowest priced airfare available to the contractor has been obtained per FAR (b)? Have you had a lot of audit in this area? (GTRI) What system are you currently using for Expense reports. GTI is currently going through an implementation of Costpoint's expense report and wondering if anyone else is using. (GTI) Are other organizations getting push-back from government sponsors requiring zero fee on travel, including subcontractor travel? If so, have you disputed or do you just reclassify subcontractor travel so it does not get loaded with fee when invoiced? (GTRI) Page 19

20 S. Payroll and Timekeeping How are companies handling flexible schedules/pto when using total time accounting? (SRC) Which organizations do total timekeeping with proration? Have you had any DCAA questions or objections to this method? Has anyone in your organization tried to argue against it on the grounds it violates FAR? (GTRI) We are currently using an outside firm to do payroll and wondering for those that use an outside firm- how satisfied are you with their service? (GTI) How do companies handle labor charging for travel time on weekends or outside regular business hours? (SRC) Have any organizations gotten push-back on compensation reasonableness, including bonus payments? If so, what arguments did you use and were they successful? (GTRI) Do you allow comp time? (GTI) Has anyone upgraded go to Deltek s Time & Expense 10? What was their experience with the upgrade process (positive or negative)? (NORC) Does anyone have experience with using apps to capture time (StreetSmart or TSheets or other) and then interfacing the app with their normal payroll applications? (NORC) A-122 used to require monthly effort certification for non-profits like DRI. The Uniform Guidance has dropped the prescriptive language used in A-122. Has any changed their monthly effort certification due to this change in regulatory language? (DRI) Page 20

21 T. Employee Benefits What do other organizations do for the morale of their employees (i.e. holiday parties, employee picnics, etc.)? How do you fund these expenses? (GTRI) Are you making any major changes to your benefits to attract new employees? (GTI) Are other companies experiencing increase health care premiums? If so, are you exploring passing these costs on to employees or increasing fringe rates? (NORC) Page 21

22 U. Other Review and discuss the schedule of conference hosts. (DRI) Page 22