Automated Standard Application for Payments (ASAP) is an electronic payment and information system developed in 1995 to provide a single point-of- contact for the request and delivery of federal funds to coincide with state cash outlays to meet program needs. Federal awarding agencies establish individual grant award authorizations into ASAP accounts to control the flow of federal funds to the state. Once an ASAP account is established, the federal agency can increase or decrease award authorizations at its discretion. This system fully integrates grants management with payment management so that state draws can never exceed the award authorization entered in the ASAP system. Award - See Grant Award

Award Periods relate to the length of time that a federal grant award is available for program purposes. Award periods vary by program but include: (also see Grant Award Status)

• Performance Period - The period of time between the grant award begin date and the grant award end date when the grantee satisfies the program and/or reporting requirements of the grant award. During this time, a grantee may request funds, adjust drawdowns and report award expenditures. The program office may make changes to the grant award authorization, but once the performance period ends, the closeout process begins. The closeout process may include liquidation, suspension and closeout.
• Liquidation Period - The period immediately following the end of the performance period. During the liquidation period, no new obligations may be incurred; all old liquidations must be removed or paid; payees can process drawdown requests and adjust drawdowns before reporting final grant expenditures.
• Suspension Period - Immediately follows the liquidation period. During the suspension period, no drawdown requests may be processed; therefore, no additional expenditures may be recorded against an award. Recoveries (refunds, rebates, disallowances) of payments to payees may be processed, but the resulting increase in the federal funds cash balance must be immediately returned to the U.S. Treasury to avoid a state CMIA interest liability. Grantees are often required to file final expenditure reports at this point to the awarding agency and the reported expenditures MUST agree with the life-to-date expenditures recorded in the SFS.
• Close-Out Period - Follows the suspension period. During this period, the Federal Government will close the award and deobligate all undrawn funds. Once OSC and the cognizant state agency receive notice that the award is closed by the federal agency, the contract and grant award records can be closed.

Block Grants are primarily issued to government units in accordance with federal statutes and may be used for a variety of activities within a broad functional area.

Cash Management Improvement Act (CMIA) refers to federal legislation that was enacted in 1990 and subsequently amended to improve the transfer of federal funds between the Federal Government and states. The objectives of CMIA are to minimize the time between the transfer of funds between the Federal Government and the states and the presentment of checks or settlement of electronic fund transfers (EFT); ensure that federal grants and funds are available when requested and needed; and to assess an interest liability to the Federal Government and/or the states to compensate for lost value (e.g. investment earnings) of funds.

With few exceptions, a federal interest liability accrues when federal transfers to the state are delayed beyond the date the state cash outlay occurred or when state funds are advanced because of federal delays in establishing award authorizations. Conversely, a state liability is recorded when the state receives federal funds prior to the date needed to fund immediate cash disbursements whereby checks have cleared the state’s bank account or EFT settlement occurs.

Note: See Section 12 – Cash Management Improvement Act of this chapter for special CMIA-related procedures.

Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) is a comprehensive index of federal domestic assistance programs by federal administering agency, subject and program name. The CFDA is a government-wide compendium of over 2,100 federal programs, projects, services and activities. This compendium can be accessed at https://sam.gov/.

CFDA Number is a five-digit number assigned to a federal program and included in the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA). The first two positions of the CFDA number identify the federal agency administering the grant program and the third thru fifth positions identify the major program. The CFDA numbers are placed in all federally-funded grant award profiles, used by New York State in the annual Treasury-State Agreement (TSA), used to accumulate expenditure data needed to prepare the state’s annual Schedule of Expenditures of Federal and Non-Federal Awards, and will be referenced in Single Audit reports.

Closeout (of an award) refers to the discontinuation of an award after state program services have been provided, all disbursements have been made, and the Final Report has been submitted to the federal awarding agency, accepted, recorded and is in agreement with the advances and payments reflected in the Federal Government’s payment management system.

Cognizant State Agency refers to the state department or agency that has direct operational responsibility for managing a particular federal grant. Answers to questions relating to funding, status and reporting on the activity of a federal grant will always be the responsibility of the cognizant state agency even if the program and/or state appropriations are fully or partially sub-allocated to other agencies.

Contracts is the link between the Grants and Projects Modules in the SFS. This link also facilitates the billing process in SFS, allowing OSC to drawdown funds from the Federal Government. Although the SFS contains numerous statuses, only those currently used by OSC for federal grants are described below:

• PENDING_OSC_APPROVAL - Once an agency enters a Federal grant award and associated Customer Contract via the Federal Grant Request Guide and submits, the contract will go into this status until OSC reviews and approves the contract.
• PENDING_AGENCY_APPROVAL - DOT specific status
• RETURNED_FOR_INFORMATION - Once OSC reviews a Federal grant award and associated Customer Contract, if additional information or a change of information is necessary by the agency, OSC will change the status from PENDING_OSC_APPROVAL to RETURNED_FOR_INFORMATION.
• PENDING - Once the Contract is reviewed and considered complete and accurate by OSC, this status is used for non-OSC cash-managed grants. This prevents transactions from flowing into the billing interface to indicate OSC draw down of Federal funds. Transactions against the grant award may be processed. This status will be used for non-OSC managed grants.
• ACTIVE - Once the Contract is reviewed and considered complete and accurate by OSC, this status is used for OSC cash-managed grants. This allows transactions to flow into the Billing interface to indicate OSC draw down of Federal funds. Transactions against the grant award may be processed. This status will be used for OSC managed grants.
• CLOSED - The grant has been officially closed by both the state and federal agencies. This is a permanent change. No further processing can occur against the contract. The contract cannot be selected for transaction processing, but historical data is available for query.

Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) is a system that provides a unique nine-digit identification code that is issued by Dun and Bradstreet to identify payees (e.g. New York State agencies or award recipients). DUNS is part of a Federal Government-Wide project to use single identifiers for federal grant recipients. On April 4, 2022, the federal government stopped using the DUNS Number to uniquely identify entities. Now, entities doing business with the Federal government use the Unique Entity ID (see below definition) created in SAM.gov.

Enterprise Services Automation (ESA) is a group of PeopleSoft modules that will be implemented or upgraded as part of the Enterprise Enhancement Phase 1 (EE1). These modules include Project Costing, Grants Management, Customer Contracts, and Program Management which support the full project lifecycle, and provides for the collection of costs and management of financial and operation information for projects.

Federal Domestic Assistance Program is any program, activity, service, or project that is funded in whole or in part by the Federal Government. These include but are not limited to general purpose aid to states, assistance to states to finance essential services and productivity efforts, public assistance or benefit programs, entitlement grants, block grants, student loan programs, etc.

Federal Grant refers to federal financial assistance (grants, cooperative agreements, loans, loan guarantees, property, interest subsidies, insurance, direct appropriations and other non-cash assistance) and federal cost reimbursement contracts that entities receive directly from federal awarding agencies.

Final Report denotes any of a number of reports submitted to a federal agency that is the last report providing an accounting of how a grant was accounted for by New York State. Common report names include, but are not limited to:

• Federal Financial Report (SF-425);
• Financial Status Report (SF-269).

Once a Final Report is filed, it is expected that no further transactions will be processed against that grant.

Financial Report refers to either the Federal Financial Report (SF-425) or the Financial Status Report (SF-269). The SF-425 report was designed to combine and replace the SF-269 and SF-272 reports. However, not all federal agencies have made the transition. Some agencies require the SF-425 be submitted to the financial office, while the SF-269 is submitted to the program office. Some agencies require the SF-425 be submitted to the program office. These forms are submitted at specified intervals, as required in each grant’s award documents. The amounts reported on these forms must be traceable to SFS records.

Fiscal Year for New York State is April 1 - March 31. State appropriations provided for federal grant purposes are generally appropriated based on the federal fiscal year. That is to say that the 2011 state appropriations would contain authorizations for April 1 - September 30 (second half of the 2011 federal fiscal year) and October 1 - March 31 (first half of the 2012 federal fiscal year). In the SFS, state appropriations are assigned a Budget Reference Code in the appropriation record that denotes the year in which the appropriation was enacted by the legislature. Conversely, in the federal grant management and payment management systems, federal grant awards are assigned a year code that represents the last year of the federal fiscal year.

For example, a 2011 state appropriation for the federal grant period October 1, 2011 - September 30, 2012 would be assigned a state authorization year of 2011 (year of enactment), while the grant year contained in the grant award number would be 2012.

Formula Grant is an allocation of federal funds to a state or its subdivisions in accordance with distribution formulas usually prescribed by law or administrative regulation, for continuous activities not necessarily confined to a specific project.

Functional Clearance Patterns are used annually in the calculation of state or federal interest liabilities pursuant to the Cash Management Improvement Act of 1990. Annually, the state develops a clearance pattern to determine the check clearance time, or days outstanding, for each check issued during the state fiscal year (April 1 - March 31) based on all checks issued involving federal funds. The state then uses this information to calculate dollar-weighted clearance days and clearance patterns for all payments made from federal funds, including payments involving EFTs. By agreement with the U.S. Department of the Treasury, OSC reviews and adjusts, as necessary, these clearance patterns for the purpose of calculating CMIA interest liabilities.

Funding Technique - U.S. Treasury rules and CMIA statutes restrict the state’s drawdown of federal funds to actual, immediate cash needs. For most federal grants, the state uses either an actual clearance, ZBA - ACH or an actual clearance, ZBA – same day payment pattern, by which the state requests funds such that they are deposited by ACH in a State account on the settlement date of payments issued by the State or the State shall request funds the same day it pays out funds.

Some grants (e.g. Medicaid) are cash managed based on an estimated check clearance pattern wherein federal funds are requested and received in an amount equal to the estimated amount of checks presented for payment against the state’s checking account(s) or EFT settlement occurs. All of the funding techniques used by NYS are interest neutral. A variety of other funding techniques are contained in the annual Treasury - State Agreement (TSA).

Grant awards are authorizations granted by the Federal Government for purposes and activities set forth in federal appropriation acts, statutes, agreements or regulations. Unless otherwise provided for, grant awards become available at the start of the federal fiscal year (October 1st). Pursuant to state law, state appropriations are required before any payments financed by federal grant awards can be made.

Grant Award Notices are delivered to cognizant state agencies advising the recipient of the amount of federal financial assistance that is available for federally-supported programs for a specified period of time. Each award notice contains a unique Federal Grant Award (FGA) number which is used by all federal and state grant management, payment management, and reporting systems. Copies of grant award notices must be attached to the Federal Grant Request in SFS for review by OSC, prior to the allocating of any funding sources.

Grant Award Number are delivered to cognizant state agencies advising the recipient of the amount of federal financial assistance that is available for federally-supported programs for a specified period of time. Each award notice contains a unique Federal Grant Award (FGA) number which is used by all federal and state grant management, payment management, and reporting systems. Copies of grant award notices must be attached to the Federal Grant Request in SFS for review by OSC, prior to the allocating of any funding sources.

The accuracy and consistency of the award number cannot be overstated since this is the main link between the SFS, the Federal Government’s Grant Management Systems (GMS), and the Payment Management Systems (PMS).

Grant Award Status describes the status of awards within the SFS and federal grant and payment management systems.

• ACTIVE - The award period has not expired, and the award authorizations are current. A grantee may request funds, adjust drawdowns, and report award expenditures for all active awards.
• EXPIRED - The award period has ended, but the Final Report has not been accepted by the awarding agency. After an award has expired, no new obligations are permissible but final accounting adjustments or drawdown adjustments are allowed.
• OPEN - Awards may be either active or expired.
• CLOSED - The award period has expired, all disbursements have been made, and a Final Report has been submitted by the cognizant state agency to the federal awarding agency, reviewed, and approved. This report must be in agreement with the advances and payments reflected in the Federal Government’s Payment Management System. Once closed, no transactions may be posted in the federal accounting system and these awards, and related records, may be closed in the SFS.

Grant Management Systems (GMS) are used by federal agencies to manage the multitude of awards granted to state and local governments. These systems contain the federal grant award number, and for each award, the amount of award authorization, life-to-date expenditures made by the grantee, and the unspent award balance.

Grantee is an entity (e.g. cognizant state agency) that applies for and receives a grant award from the Federal Government. The grantee is responsible for ensuring the grant is administered in accordance with all federal rules, regulations, and laws. Suballocation of all or part of an award does not relieve the grantee of such responsibility.

Integrated Grant and Payment Management System (IGPMS) is a centralized financial management system designed to integrate financial management, grants administration and payment management systems into a single system. Moreover, the integrated system uses the latest in financial management technologies (relational database, Internet technology and a Windows environment) to link grants management with payment management systems in an efficient and effective manner so that federal award authorizations, undrawn award balances and state requests for federal funds to finance current disbursements are available using electronic means. Integrated systems are fast becoming the standard for Federal Government agencies and fundamentally changes the manner in which the state receives award authorizations, draws down funds from the U.S. Treasury, and provides financial reports on grant award activity.

M-Year Legislation was enacted in 1990 to limit the period of federal grant award funds to September 30 of the fifth federal fiscal year after the period of availability. For example, a one-year federal grant award authorized to begin on October 1, 2011 expired on September 30, 2017. Except for awards for which a specific federal law extends the availability for expenditure of obligated balances, any undisbursed balances of federal grant awards are withdrawn by the federal awarding agency and are no longer available for program expenditures. In some instances, the life of a federal award may be more or less than five (5) years and is set at the discretion of the awarding agency. Agencies should check with their federal program liaison to confirm the award period.

Non-Onboarding Agency refers to an agency that has not implemented ESA.

Non-OSC Managed Grant Awards are those for which OSC does not perform the cash drawdowns. Although SFS reports may be used in the calculation of the drawdown amounts, the summarization of the data is performed by agency staff using their own procedures, processes, and/or systems. These grants will have a contract status of “PENDING” which prevents the transactions from flowing into the SFS billing interface.

Onboarding Agency refers to an agency that has implemented ESA.

OSC Managed Grant Awards are those awards for which OSC performs the cash drawdowns. Most of these awards take advantage of the SFS billing functionality to calculate the drawdown amounts. These grants will have a contract status of “ACTIVE”.

Payment Management Systems (PMS) enable the state to draw funds from the U.S. Treasury to finance state-administered federal programs. The systems developed by the Federal Government and used by New York State include voice response or telephone, ASAP, G5, PMS, IDIS, etc. Federal drawdowns are usually initiated by the state based on actual program expenditures and are cash managed to ensure that federal funds are not transferred to the state prior to the time such funds are needed to make program payments. If the request for federal funds is approved by the Federal Government, then funds are transferred to the state by:

• FEDWIRE - Payment will be electronically transferred to the state’s bank account through the Federal Reserve Bank network. Payment is usually made the same day if funds are requested by 12:30pm EST.
• ACH - Payment is electronically transferred through the Automated Clearing House payment system to the state’s bank account the next business day.

Project in SFS is a temporary group of activities designed to produce a unique product, service or result. In the SFS it is used to collect and track costs related to those activities. The Project Costing module provides a centralized repository of project data to support management of a project or program. Among other activities, Federal grant awards are tracked via project spending in the SFS. Chapter XIX of this guide provides detailed explanation on how Projects can be used.

Project Costing Improvement Project (PCIP) enables the use of the Project ID to represent individual projects, each with one or more funding sources, rather than a project being representative of a single federal grant award. Agencies are no longer limited to the Project ID being used only with the Federal fund. Chapter XIX.1.C of this guide provides detailed explanation on the PCIP changes as they related to Federal grants.

Quarterly Federal Cash Status Reports (SF-425) contain the grantee’s drawdown transactions and authorized changes (e.g. new, expired, inactivated, closed) in grant awards during the quarter. The reports are used to reconcile state drawdowns. Discrepancies between the state’s records and the Federal Government’s must be immediately investigated and resolved by the cognizant state agency.

Single Audit Act of 1984, and related amendments, requires every state, local government, and non-profit organization that receives $500 thousand or more in federal financial assistance in any year to undergo a single audit for that fiscal year. For major federal programs, auditors are required to perform cash management, program compliance, and performance tests to confirm that federal grants are administered in accordance with the terms under which the grants were awarded. Auditors are required to report to the Federal Government and prepare schedules of their findings and questioned costs. In order to perform such tests, each federal grant must be established in the SFS with a CFDA number and a unique Project ID. The audit period for the Single Audit is the same as the state’s fiscal year.

Sponsor refers to the federal awarding agency. Sponsor is also referred to as the Customer.

Statewide Cost Allocation Plan (SCAP) is the state’s plan for allocating centralized service costs to appropriated funds outside the General Fund group of accounts. Annually, the Division of the Budget (DOB) contracts with a consultant to determine the statewide costs for services provided by one state agency to other state agencies. These costs include, but are not limited to, DOB, Office of General Services, Department of Civil Service, and the Office of the State Comptroller and represent expenses for centralized services which are used to calculate the state’s indirect cost rate. The indirect cost rate is included in the SCAP and sent to the Federal Government for review and approval. Once approved, this rate is applied to personal service expenses paid from non-General Funds and results in an indirect cost allocation included with the bi-weekly fringe benefit allocation. A new automated process was implemented as of July 1, 2018 that will no longer use quarterly agency billings and AP vouchers to record FBIC transactions. Instead, the new process generates journal entries to the General Ledger in the Statewide Financial System (SFS) on a more real-time basis that is better aligned with the timing of payroll charges.

System for Award Management (SAM) is the official online registrant database for the Federal Government. SAM collects, validates, stores, and disseminates data in support of federal agency acquisition and award missions, including federal agency contract and assistance awards. State agencies are required to register in SAM in order to be awarded contracts or grants by the Federal Government. For each DUNS number used by a state agency, a separate registration in SAM is required.

Registrants are required to complete a one-time registration to provide basic information relevant to procurement and financial transactions. Registrants must update or renew their registration at least once per year to maintain an active status. In addition, entities that apply for assistance awards from the Federal Government through Grants.gov must now register with SAM as well. SAM validates the registrant information and electronically shares the secure and encrypted data with the federal agencies’ finance offices to facilitate paperless payments through electronic funds transfer (EFT).

Unique Entity ID (UEI) is the official identifier for doing business with the U.S. Government as of April 4, 2022. Entities registering in SAM.gov are assigned a Unique Entity ID as a part of the registration process.

Guide to Financial Operations

REV. 04/26/2023