Redstone Government Consulting Blog | Incurred Cost Proposal Submission (ICP/ICE) (5)

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.

UPDATED – June 18, 2024

Believe it or not, getting DCAA to show up and complete a “Paid Voucher Review” is “Good News.”

To understand where I’m coming from with this statement, let’s start with a little history.  The way DCAA dug itself out of its incurred cost backlog hole was with low risk sampling, provided for under FAR Class Deviation (2012-O0013) – DCAA Policy and Procedure for Sampling Low-Risk Incurred Cost Proposals, issued July 24, 2012.

You now understand a little bit more about provisional billing rates from our first of this two-part series. In this second part of our coverage of provisional billing rates, we delve a little deeper into the purpose behind provisional billing rates as well as how to prepare them and the differences between provisional billing rates and proposal bid rates. Knowing these details will enable you to prepare an accurate DCAA submission.

In its report dated November 27, 2018 (DODIG-2019-029), the IG reviewed 12 of 540 task orders (issued between September 2014 to October 2017) to determine if contractor employees met the contract schedule labor qualifications.  The contract vehicle is the OASIS (One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services), administered by the GSA, but used by multiple DoD (and other Government) agencies. The good news is that the IG reported 1,175 of 1,287 contractor employees met the labor category qualifications; the bad news is the remaining 112 employees did not meet the labor qualifications, and/or the DoD agency could not document that contractor employees met the labor qualifications. Thus, DoD agencies authorized $28 million of potentially improper payments (based on the IG’s statistical projection), authorized $574K of potential improper payments for employees who did not have qualification documentation, and did not consider the potential impact on contract performance and price before authorizing $6.8 million for employees without relevant education and work experience.

The incurred cost submission is required for all federal contractors holding cost-type or time and materials (T&M) contracts and is a universal requirement regardless of agency customer. All contracts requiring the incurred cost submission will include the Federal Acquisition Regulations "Allowable Cost & Payment Clause" (FAR 52.216-7) and/or the "T&M Payment Clause" (FAR 52.232-7). Following are answers to frequently asked questions and pointers to resources to help you.

This blog was first published on the Deltek Government Contracting Blog as a guest post by Redstone Government Consulting.

The incurred cost submission is required for all federal contractors holding cost-type or time and materials (T&M) contracts and is a universal requirement regardless of agency customer.  All contracts requiring the incurred cost submission will include the Federal Acquisition Regulations “Allowable Cost & Payment Clause” (FAR 52.216-7) and/or the “T&M Payment Clause” (FAR 52.232-7). Following are answers to frequently asked questions and pointers to resources to help you.

As a business owner or executive, it is highly likely that you are not preparing and submitting your business tax return. After all, tax rules are complicated and submission requirements can be a little unnerving. So, for those reasons and for peace of mind knowing that your tax return is prepared correctly, a savvy business owner or executive will outsource their tax preparation to a trusted firm that specializes in taxes.

Since most incurred cost proposals (ICPs) are due June 30, it is a good time for contractors to review the DCAA criteria for audit selection in order to minimize (where possible) the potential that their ICP will be selected for audit. All ICPs with an auditable dollar volume (ADV) greater than $250 million are automatically selected for audit. ICPs with an ADV between $100 million and $250 million of ADV that have not been audited in the last 3 years are also automatically selected for audit. ADV is determined by the amount of cost reimbursable, i.e. cost type and T&M, contract revenue for the fiscal year.

It’s a busy time of year for us and many of our clients, but I wanted to take this opportunity to remind all of our readers of a few upcoming things to keep in mind. For most of our clients, January was a whirlwind of closing 2016 and getting all W-2s and 1099s completed. February will be spent ramping up for financial statement audits and the corporate tax deadline, but for government contractors there’s also a few extra things to do this time of year.