Now that year-end and quarter 1 is behind us, what is next? If you guessed Incurred Cost Submissions (ICS), you are correct. June 1st is fast approaching and there are a few housekeeping items you can do to ensure that your accounting team has an efficient and painless process ahead of them.
Capturing Final Costs and Closing Financials
Make sure all final costs have been captured and you have closed the company’s financials for the previous fiscal year. You can find a checklist of the Deltek Costpoint close steps in our Deltek Costpoint Month-End Closing Checklist.
Reconciling Ledgers and Statements
Reconcile your General Ledger, Project Ledger, and Statement of Indirects. These reconciliations are part of the close process mentioned in the previous section.
Using Cognos Business Intelligence (BI)
If you plan to use Cognos Business Intelligence (BI) to run your ICS reports, you must complete the ICS Codes on the Government Contract Info screen which is a subtask in your Project Master screen. To run the ICS report Schedule J, you must have the Costpoint Purchasing module.
Identifying Cost Pools
Pools must be properly identified on the Cost Pools Screen. If you make changes to the standard configuration, you must also make the same changes in Cognos BI.
Excel Downloads for Project Identification
Print an excel download from the Project Master screen so that you can easily identify the project numbers and project types.
The project type is the contract type per your contract. This will not necessarily match the billing and revenue formulas assigned. For example, you may have a Cost-Plus Fixed Fee contract type that is assigned a Loaded Labor billing and revenue formula to satisfy contractual requirements for invoicing and reporting. BUT this is still considered a Cost-Plus Fixed Fee regardless of how the system is setup to calculate invoices and revenue.
Reviewing Billing and Revenue Formulas
Print an excel download from the Print Project Revenue and Billing Formulas screen. You will want to run this for all active projects. This report provides a quick and easy way to see what billing and revenue formulas are assigned and at what levels of the projects they are assigned.
Organizing Your Incurred Cost Submission Folder
Create a folder specifically for your ICS by fiscal year. You will want to save all reports mentioned above along with the reports listed here and below.
- Trial Balance
- Statement of Indirect Expenses
- Project Status Reports (PSRs)
- Project Labor Summary Reports
- File listing active projects and contract types
- File with all active projects billing and revenue formulas and what levels those formulas are assigned
- Form 941s
- Cumulative Billed Amounts
- Costpoint has a new feature where you can print previously posted invoices from the Print Standard Bills screen. This is especially helpful during ICS time. No more hunting for filed, saved, and sent invoices. You can print straight from the source and compare the cumulative amounts to the PSRs.
- Cognos Business Intelligence (BI) has an entire package dedicated to Incurred Cost Submission (ICS) reporting. These are located under Team Content – Incurred Cost Submission.
- Reconcile the information from the Cognos BI reports to your Project and GL reports.
- You MUST have the “ICS Code” marked in the Project Master Screen for these reports to work. If you do not have the “ICS Code” marked it will not render these reports useless, but they will become a starting point as opposed to your full data needed.
Deltek Costpoint 8.1 Upgrade
Perhaps the second hottest topic is the Deltek Costpoint 8.1 upgrade. This upgrade offers significant enhancements and improvements for government contractors. Read the full list of updates in our articles (Deltek Costpoint Early Adopter Program 8.1 and Deltek Costpoint Early Adopter Program 8.1 Part 2). As Deltek continues to upgrade databases from v8.0 to v8.1 some bugs have occurred that are impacting our clients. We at Redstone GCI want you to be aware of the issues and work arounds provided by Deltek. You can find the complete list of known issues at this time here. Please do not hesitate to reach out to our Deltek Costpoint Consultants with any questions or concerns. We are tracking these bugs closely and will provide updated information as it becomes available to us.
Heather is a Senior Managing Consultant with Redstone Government Consulting, Inc. Her areas of expertise include supporting government contractors in the implementation and operation of Costpoint, assisting with employee training, and providing outsourced accounting services, including program control deliverables, financial analysis, forecasting, general ledger, unbilled analysis, reconciliation, accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, and payroll taxes. Heather specializes in best accounting practices, from setup and training to monthly processing. Heather has over 19 years of experience in government contracting, supporting a wide range of contract types and customers. Her areas of expertise include program control, financial analysis, forecasting, government cost accounting, and procurement. Heather’s hands-on technical experience in all aspects of the business department provides a unique set of expertise for our clients. Heather has led and participated in numerous Costpoint implementations and re-implementations for the Accounting, Projects, Subcontractor, and Planning modules. She has worked directly with our clients to design accounting systems that are meaningful and useful for each client. She provides training in these modules and has developed desktop procedures that allow for a quick and seamless transition and implementation of these modules. Her experience in utilizing and implementing Costpoint gives our clients a unique perspective on the best practices related to both implementation and government accounting procedures. Her knowledge and guidance of the setup and end-user experience helps to ensure our clients receive a fully configured system that not just meets their current needs but will also allow them room to grow within the Costpoint system in the future. Heather is also experienced in assisting clients with “day-to-day” accounting processes. She has experience with all the normal accounting processes, such as accounts payable, account receivable, journal entries, reconciliations, reporting, etc. She helps multiple clients to produce, review and submit all types of project billings, including experience with WAWF, NASA 533s and MORADO. She processes, reviews, and submits timekeeping, leave and payroll data for multiple clients on a regular basis. Heather’s knowledge and experience in all business departments provides an invaluable resource to our outsource clients.