1. Community Aids Reporting System (CARS): Federal Reporting Requirements
The Federal granting agencies that provide funding for DHS-administered programs have presented notifications that DHS reporting of expenses for federal draw-down is occurring after the allowable grant reporting periods.
Rob Hamilton, Section Chief
Expenditure Accounting Section
May 4, 2017
Wisconsin Human Services Financial Management Association 2017

2. Federal Reporting Requirements
The Community Aids Reporting System (CARS) allows for expense run-out periods of either 60 or 90 days from CARS Grant Agreement end-dates. Final expenses are processed and paid approximately 45 days from submission, and then are reported to the Federal granting agencies.
This process results in final expenses being reported approximately days after the grant period closes which is beyond the federally-required 90-day allowable reporting period.
WHSFMA 2017

3. Federal Reporting Requirements
In an effort to ensure DHS meets all Federal requirements and to mitigate any risk of Federal disallowance, DHS needs to:
Develop and communicate revised reporting standards that meet Federal requirements.
Proactively update Grant Agreement template language.
Execute the revised reporting standards within existing Grant Agreements.
Systematically roll out new Grant Agreement language to all stakeholders going forward.
WHSFMA 2017

4. Federal Reporting Requirements
Monthly expenditures must be reported within 30 days of the previous calendar month end day.
All remaining allowable expenditures must be reported within 45 days of the approved Grant Contract Period end-date.
The sub-recipient is requested to note FINAL in the Subject line and on the expense report.
What is being proposed is a tightening of the reporting guidelines that are currently loosely defined in the CY2017 State-County contract.
DHS will require that monthly expenditures be reported by the 30th day following the previous calendar month end.
Additionally, DHS will require that all remaining allowable expenditures be reported by the 45th day following the Grant contract end-date, and that FINAL be included with the Month name in the Subject line name at the time of submission and on the expense report.
Please note – There may be concurrent time periods when your Agency will need to submit two separate expense reports – One for a FINAL report period and one for a new / existing report period. Please be sure to submit one Expense Report per month per .
WHSFMA 2017

5. Federal Reporting Requirements
Implementation will occur over the next 6-8 months, culminating on 1/1/2018.
Communication will be sent out by 7/1/2017.
Agencies with Grant Agreements ending after 1/1/2018 will receive a bi-lateral amendment.
The implementation will be a phased-in approach to ensure all contracts have the revised reporting requirements beginning 1/1/2018.
Communications are being developed to message to all CARS contracting agencies by 7/1/2017, notifying them of the change and how their grant agreement will be amended.
The New Grant Agreement language will be available at least 90 days prior to start-date (by 10/1/2017).
The New Grant Agreement language will be required in execution of the CY2018 State-County Contracts.
All information will also be published to the DHS CARS web page.
WHSFMA 2017

6. Federal Reporting Requirements
Loss of Federal funding will be mitigated.
Monthly expenditures will be processed and paid more timely to CARS agencies.
Payment time will be shortened by 30 days.
CARS processing schedule for CY2018 is included in your handouts.
Many of you may be reporting timely or as what is being proposed already. If so, THANK YOU!
For others, we are hopeful that this requirement will not cause any additional work effort but only more timely work effort.
More importantly, we truly believe that more-timely reporting will mitigate any potential loss of Federal funding
The processing schedule for CY2018 for is included in your handouts.
WHSFMA 2017

7. Sources of Information
CARS Home page:
CARS Reports page:
State and County Funding and Contract information:
CARS Contact information:
Additional sources of information for CARS can be found here.
With that, I can field any questions you may have.
WHSFMA 2017

8. Questions
WHSFMA 2017