Redstone Government Consulting Blog | Compliant Accounting Infrastructure (13)

What is a Contract Brief?

A contract brief is a document which identifies information about the contract, contract administration representatives and significant contract terms and conditions.

Learn how to avoid the seven most common pitfalls in the Accounting module on your path to Costpoint success. Timing of AP check reversals and posting costs in the wrong accounting period can have serious impacts on accuracy of reporting and productivity within your organization.

Have you ever wondered how to be successful in Deltek Costpoint? Follow these ten best practices and you’ll be on your way.  From the initial submission of the employee timesheet to month end processing, there are many components along the road to being paid and closing out the accounting period.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued Topic 842, Leases, in February 2016 effective for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2018. The change was “to increase transparency and comparability among organizations by recognizing lease assets and lease liabilities on the balance sheet and disclosing key information about leasing arrangements.” For the past 40 years or so, operating leases were only required to be presented in the disclosure and were off-balance sheet transactions. Other than the new asset (Right to Use asset) and a related liability on the balance sheet, the impact on the income statement (a single line item for lease expense) and cash flow are unchanged, at least under GAAP. International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) now requires all leases be treated similar to capital leases (Topic 842 calls these finance leases). So, under IFRS there will be more unallowable interest to properly account for on Government proposals and contracts incorporating FAR Part 31.

Apportioning the Costs of Buildings

The SBA and Treasury have made it clear that if you own or lease a building that you sublet to another company, the portion of the lease or mortgage expense that can be used as nonpayroll costs for PPP loan forgiveness is limited to the share of the expense applied to the business who’s PPP loan is being forgiven. The simple example is, you lease an office building for $10,000 per month and sublease part of the space to another company for $2,500 per month. Only $7,500 would be used toward your nonpayroll cost for loan forgiveness. This proration applies to utility and other shared costs of the tenants.

On August 17, 2020; Acting Principal Director for Defense Pricing and Contracting issued two memos providing guidance in support of DFARS Class Deviation 2020-O0013 and 2020-O0021 – CARES Act Section 3610 Implementation. There is also a memo providing contracting officers with a template for a Memorandum for Record to document the file for the issuance of the Section 3610 related contract modification.

5 Things You Need to Know Before Your Update

In previous blogs, we have recommended preparing a CAS Disclosure Statement (DS) soon after emerging from small business status. We also recommended reviewing your cost accounting practices prior to preparing a Disclosure Statement to prevent having to change afterwards and ending up requiring a cost impact statement. So, by now you are probably wondering what this mythical beast is and what is the big deal about preparing it.

Accounting for Bid and Proposal (B&P) Explained

Bid and Proposal is a topic that comes up with our contractor clients on a regular basis. Most questions surrounding this topic involve: whom at the contractor should be charging B&P, especially, contractor personnel that typically charge overhead or G&A. We understand why this is confusing. It is our opinion that the guidance per FAR (Federal Acquisition Regulations) and CAS (Cost Accounting Standards) regarding this topic is unclear and leaves contractors scratching their heads trying to be compliant.

Unanet’s robust project management and budgeting features are primary reasons some of our clients choose Unanet as their accounting system of choice. One of our main goals during an Unanet implementation is to utilize as many of the project management features in the system as possible and train our clients on maintaining the correct information to manage their work properly. What are your project management and budgeting needs? The following options are available in Unanet: