Finding 2023-001
significant deficiencyrepeat findingquestioned costs
- Program
- HEAD START CLUSTER (93.600)
- Compliance requirement
- Activities allowed or unallowed
- Repeat
- Chain of 2 audit years; prior finding 2022-001
- Questioned costs
- $3,882 (known)
- FAC record
- FY2023 audit on fac.gov
Finding text from the filing
Information on the Federal Program: Assistance Listing Number 93.600—Head Start Program, United States Department of Health and Human Services. Pass-Through Entity: the City and County of Denver and Mile High Early Learning. Award Number: MOEAI-202158316, MOEAI-202158627, 08HP000174-03. Compliance Requirements: Allowable Costs Type of Finding: Material Noncompliance and Significant Deficiency.
Criteria: 2 CFR 200.430(i) Compensation – Personal Services, Standards for Documentation of Personnel Services. Charges to Federal awards for salaries and wages must be based on records that accurately reflect the work performed.
Condition: For the year ended June 30, 2023, we reviewed a sample of employees charged to the Head Start grant. In multiple instances the support for the allocation of time charged to the grant was not adequately documented.
Cause: The organization uses a manual allocation process for their time that is cumbersome for both the staff and the reviewing supervisor, as a result allocations weren’t consistently documented or reviewed.
Effect or Potential Effect: The potential effect could be the misallocation of staff time between grants.
Questioned Costs: Known error, $3,882 and likely error, $16,202.
Context: Of the 60 time cards ($270,165 of time and effort charged to the grant) reviewed for testing, 4 time cards ($3,882 of time and effort) did not have adequate support for the portion of their time charged to the grant.
Repeat finding: Repeat finding of 2022-001
Recommendation: We would recommend the Organization pursue an improved time tracking system that both automates the payroll and time tracking process, and allows for better monitoring of employee review and approval of allocation support.
Views of Responsible Official: This was noted in last year's audit but was identified late in the fiscal year. The time required to do the due diligence and implementation was part of our timesheet review system was not fixed until after June 2023. As noted in last year's goal, Sewall administration completed a review of payroll companies and committed on a new system that began in October 2023. Along with that, we have organized a new internal system of tracking staff's time given the complexities of the many blended funding sources. We have also implemented a regular review and supervision of time sheet allocations.