Federal Grants Compliance Audits
Managing grant compliance is a complex task, requiring rigorous oversight, accountability, and strategic planning. Federal and state agencies rely on grant funding to support critical programs, and ensuring compliance with both programmatic and financial requirements is essential. At Myers and Stauffer, we provide comprehensive grant auditing and consulting services, helping our clients meet compliance obligations while optimizing grant management strategies.
Key Auditing Services
Managing grant compliance is no simple mandate. Federal grant funding is not without its challenges, but we have worked with our government agency clients to perform compliance audits, program integrity audits, and other operational support services to ensure compliance with both the spirit of the grant intention and the letter of its regulatory requirements. Through these opportunities, we have identified hundreds of millions of dollars of inappropriate payments and recoveries, prevented unnecessary program expenditures, assisted in the development of state reimbursement systems, performed eligibility audits and analysis, defended audit findings from providers’ administrative and judicial challenges, and performed data management and analysis services to assist our clients in better managing their programs.
Diligence, rigor, and discipline define our audit approach. We conduct our work with integrity and accountability, and we exercise care and caution to demonstrate proper stewardship of the trust our clients place in us. Backed by skilled and experienced professionals who meet the highest ethical and compliance standards, we have solid working relationships with our clients, built on foundations of trust we have strived to earn through our history of strong performance and exacting execution.
How Myers and Stauffer Can Help
Although the specific procedures required to complete any audit project are dictated by the specific audit objectives, engagement scope, and the size and complexity of the area(s) or systems being audited, we apply a common, baseline approach to all audit engagements. This ensures consistency, efficiency, transparency, and quality for projects, while also ensuring compliance with the appropriate engagement standards. In particular, we use a risk-based audit approach for each engagement, which allows for flexibility while being risk-sensitive, effective, and maximizing the use of our experience and professional judgment.
We know that each agency is unique and stands alone in terms of its populations, challenges, and needs. While each state and local agency knows best the circumstances of its communities, our nationwide government health care experience gives us a perspective that our clients find helpful. Our audit teams specialize in performing compliance audits, program integrity audits, and other operational support services to local, state, and federal agencies. And our clients know that our findings inform our recommendations for programmatic and systematic improvements in grant management processes—now and well into the future.
Consider the Following:
- Agencies may not have internal policies in place to dictate standard grant management processes across offices.
- The management of grant documentation may not be uniform across program areas or departments, resulting in difficulty in obtaining information efficiently.
- Budget and fiscal operations may not operate in tandem, with program staff responsible for
day-to-day grant management activities. - Communication of federal award information to sub-recipients, per requirements in 2 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) §200.332, may not be consistent across grants or may not be verifiable due to missing grant documentation.
- Deliverable due dates may not be managed uniformly across program areas or departments, which can place programs at risk if reporting dates are not met.
- The disbursements may be under the budgeted amount. This can indicate that improved management of available funding is warranted.
Program and Financial Compliance Reviews
Demonstration of comprehensive oversight of programmatic and financial requirements is important for grant recipients to show they are using grant funding appropriately and consistent with established goals. Ongoing program compliance and financial monitoring is an effective method for providing oversight of grant programs and sub recipients and contractors before, during, and after a grant’s lifecycle.
We work with clients to develop monitoring and oversight tools to review adherence to grant requirements and federal regulations, appropriateness of expenditures, invoices and supporting documentation, and oversight and monitoring of sub-recipients and contractors. Compliance tools can be designed for future use by our clients, allowing for easy modifications to criteria conforming to different grant programs and requirements.
Why Myers and Stauffer
We intentionally restrict our practice to government-sponsored health care and human service programs. We are exceptionally sensitive to public scrutiny, performance expectations, and the high levels of accountability and integrity required of government agencies and policy makers. By virtue of our CPA firm model, we conduct ourselves according to rigorous professional ethical standards designed to serve the public good.
For More Information
| Bob Hicks
CPA, Member PH 816.945.5321 |
Colleen K. Lancey
CPA, Principal PH 816.945.5329 |
