Survey Manual 327.1 To: "AO - All Administrative Officers", "HS - Headquarters Secretaries" cc: "Alice A Sabatini, Administrative Officer, Reston, VA" , "Catherine L Hill, ACH/Operations, Reston, VA" , "Alice C Dilandro, Secretary (S), Reston, VA" , "Emma H Miller, Computer Assistant, Reston, VA" From: "Alice A Sabatini, Administrative Officer, Reston, VA" Subject: Survey Manual 327.1 Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 15:16:09 -0400 Sender: "Emma H Miller, Computer Assistant, Reston, VA" The following Survey Manual Chapter 327.1 is being issued as a WRD supplement. A hard copy will follow. Department of the Interior Water Resources Division GEOLOGICAL SURVEY MANUAL Financial Management Operating Budget ______________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 1 Division Financial Plans 327.1 Approval of Agreements in the Administrative Information System ______________________________________________________________________________ 1. Delegation. The approval of agreements in the Administrative Information System (AIS) is hereby delegated from the Region to the Cost Center effective at the start of fiscal year (FY) 1998 (October 1, 1997). The cost centers are responsible for the accurate recording and approval of all funding data in the AIS. Regions are responsible for the review of all cost center data at yearend and to work with cost centers to correct errors as necessary. 2. Definitions. All funding and agreements are maintained in AIS. The agreement detail frame in AIS contains a field for tracking the status of agreements. When entering an agreement in AIS, one of the following selections must be made to indicate the status of the agreement (level of assurance of obtaining a signed agreement). F Firm: agreement is signed by both the customer and the USGS; amounts are finalized. H High: agreement has been signed by the USGS but not the customer; amounts are certain. L Low: agreement is being negotiated and has not been signed by either party; amounts are relatively certain. P Planned: negotiations are tentative and amounts are speculative. U Unsigned: agreement has been signed by the USGS and not the customer; amounts are certain; and the cost center is performing work on the agreement in anticipation of receipt of a signed agreement. Funding that is not attached to an agreement (unattached; funding only) and as such has no funding status assigned, is considered to have a low status and appears as low on Region and Headquarters AIS reports. 3. Background. Each month on a schedule determined by Headquarters at the start of the fiscal year and communicated to cost centers by the Regions, cost centers are required to transfer their funding to the Regions and/or Headquarters. This transfer can and should take place every time an agreement is entered or changed, but it must be transferred at least monthly. A cost center has the option to transfer all funding or any combination of funding (by status and fiscal year). When the transfer process is invoked, funding records that have changed since the previous transfer are sent to the Region and Headquarters AIS data bases. The Division uses the information from the funding transfer to estimate the division assessment income, so it is important to transfer all funding each time for the current fiscal year or as instructed by the Region or Headquarters. Funding with a status code of Unsigned (U) is transferred with High (H) funding. Division Financial Plans Part 327,Chapter 1 Current Process (effective before and during FY 1997): Firm (F) funding has to be approved by the Region or Headquarters before it is transferred to the Federal Financial System (FFS). Only firm approved funding is transferred to the FFS. This approval process compares the paper document (hard copy of the agreement) with the data recorded in the AIS to ensure that both are consistent. As such, only in rare instances do the Regions approve funding when the hard copy agreement has not been received and reviewed. The approval of all agreements by the Regions causes delays in transferring cost center funding into FFS. We want to record as much funding in the FFS as possible in order to avoid spending control violations (where we have spent more money than we have recorded in the FFS at any given time) so it is important that agreements get transferred to FFS as soon as possible after they are signed. 4. Procedure. Cost centers will be required to review and approve their firm (F) funding agreements in AIS. No additional approvals will be required by the Region or Headquarters prior to transfer to the FFS. The AIS transfer process has been modified to accommodate this change. An agreement should never be approved at the time of original data entry. Ideally, the approval should not be applied by the same person doing the original data entry, but rather by someone else who reviews what has been entered and compares it to the hard copy agreement. For example, the agreement and funding data could be entered by an administrative assistant or technician and approved by the administrative officer. The following items should be reviewed to ensure completion and validity of the agreement: 1. Original signatures by both parties. 2. An acceptance letter is attached to all Other Federal Agency (OFA) agreements. 3. OFA agreements do not exceed $250,000 unless the cost center has a written delegation for approval above that amount. 4. A signature from Headquarters if the agreement is nonstandard. 5. All pen and ink changes to the agreement amount or period of performance are initialed by both parties. The following items should be reviewed prior to applying an approval to ensure that the information on the paper agreement document is correctly recorded into the AIS: 1. Agreement number 2. Customer number (Note: number must be valid in the FFS vendor table VEND) 3. Period of performance (Note: period of performance must span into and/or beyond the current fiscal year) 4. Funding status (must be firm) 5. Agreement code [Note: code should be the number assigned to the document by the customer (e.g., purchase order number, MIPR number, interagency agreement number, etc.)] 6. Dollar amounts and funding distributions between fiscal years (Note: amounts cannot exceed that shown on the agreement and amounts shown in the current fiscal year should agree with the amount of work being performed in that same period) 7. Assessments (rates and amounts) To approve an agreement, change the Agreement Signed Status field on the Agreement Header to "Y". The Agreement Signed Status field is on the Agreement Header frame, but is not currently displayed on any reports. The easiest way to determine the Agreement Signed Status value for agreements is to query the Agreement Header frame (for all agreements or specific ones), and then move the scroll bar in the bottom of the table field to the far right. The column titled AG S.S. is the Agreement Signed Status field. Division Financial Plans Part 327,Chapter 1 You can then scroll down through the records to pick any agreement that needs to have this field changed. The process outlined above will be used each fiscal year from October through July. In August and September, the Agreement Signed Status field on all agreements that are anticipated to be signed (status H) or on which work is being performed (status U) should be changed to "Y". This will allow the records to be transferred to the FFS and expedite the closeout process. Records that are marked Y when the agreement is not signed should be rare and the signing of the agreement should be pursued with the customer to ensure that all signed agreements are received no later than September 30. Cost centers will continue to forward a copy of all agreements to the Region or Headquarters as appropriate with a copy of the Summary of Program report. The Regional offices are required to review each agreement prior to the end of the fiscal year to ensure that all information listed above has been recorded correctly in the AIS. Regions must work with cost centers to correct errors and to ensure that all corrected agreement information is transferred to Headquarters by the September funding transfer deadline. Regions may use the Date Region Approved field of the agreement detail frame for in-house tracking purposes (e.g., to indicate that they have reviewed the agreement) without impacting the district approval process. 5. Further Information. Questions on the procedure for approving agreements should be addressed to your Regional Administrative Officer. 6. Effective Date. This directive is effective on October 1, 1997, and will remain in effect until superseded or cancelled. This directive supersedes the Water Resources Division supplement dated July 9, 1990, Financial Plan (Status-of-Agreement Terms).