Procedural Changes for Fiscal Year 1998 Closeout Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 16:41:53 -0400 To: "AO - All Administrative Officers" From: "Alice A. Sabatini" Subject: Procedural Changes for Fiscal Year 1998 Closeout Cc: "Catherine L Hill, ACH/Operations, Reston, VA" , "HS - Headquarters Secretaries" The attachment referenced in this memorandum will be distributed hard copy. In Reply Refer To: Mail Stop 442 July 24, 1998 MEMORANDUM To: Administrative Officers From: Kelly L. Bradley Chief, Financial Operations and Reporting Section Subject: Procedural Changes for Fiscal Year 1998 Closeout This memorandum is to inform you of changes to the fiscal year (FY) 1998 closeout process and present you with a closeout calendar. This memorandum supplements the closeout memorandums that will be distributed at a future date. This FY, the Department of Interior's (DOI) Annual Financial Report (AFR) is due February 1, 1998. In FY 1997, this report was due on March 1, 1998, but DOI's report was not submitted until April-one month late-due in large part to the USGS. This fiscal year at the DOI Financial Management Conference in May, John Berry, DOI's, Chief Financial Officer, made it clear that we will meet the AFR deadline this fiscal year. In order to meet the DOI deadline, the USGS must shorten its closeout processing time frames. As a result, WRD cost centers will have less than two days to prepare their closeout adjustments and Headquarters will have less than 2 days to review, process and close out the division. We realize this will not be a simple task but we have confidence that you will work with us to meet these deadlines. Please be aware that we negotiated with the other USGS divisions and the Office of Financial Management to have as much time to close out as could be allowed. Other USGS divisions are working within these same time frames. The closeout process in WRD will be similar to last fiscal year with one exception. Last year, cost centers prepared the AIS Drawdown Report and entered adjustments on-line in FFS, placing the document on hold to be processed by Headquarters. This fiscal year, some cost centers will have the authority to process these documents in FFS rather than placing them on hold for Headquarters to process. Cost centers not given the authority to process documents in FFS will continue to enter the document in FFS and put them on hold for Headquarters processing. We will be working with the Senior Administrative Officers to determine which cost centers will be given authority to process FFS documents. Determination will be made based on the number and accuracy of prior year closeout packages, as well as, the comfort level of the cost center processing the documents. All documents must still be added to the AIS Drawdown Report and documentation must be submitted with their closeout package along with funding adjustments. No funding adjustments will be processed after the deadlines. Therefore, please try to have your funding finalized by the August funding deadline. Headquarters will do a post review of those cost centers that process their own documents to ensure positive closeout balances and verify the validity of those documents processed. The major change to the cost center processing the document in FFS is that if the document is not entered correctly or is missing data in the mandatory document fields the document will not process. You will receive notification of errors that will need to be corrected before the document will process. In the past, when putting documents on hold, the cost centers were not aware of the errors Headquarters received when processing the documents. Errors are not generated until a document is processed in FFS. Please do not be offended if your cost center is not chosen to process documents. This will not be a negative reflection on your cost center. This is a new process this fiscal year that we intend to implement division-wide in future fiscal years. Attached is a calendar indicating the dates the FFS reports will be distributed during closeout and the due dates for cost center closeout package to be received at Headquarters. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. We look forward to working with you and your staff. Attachment (included only in the hard copy distribution)