Enterprise Services Automation (ESA) is a group of PeopleSoft modules that includes Project Costing, Grants Management, and Customer Contracts. Agencies that have started using ESA are considered to be “Onboarded” agencies.

Effective April 1, 2021 the Department of Labor (DOL) and Department of Transportation (DOT) will be the only onboarded agencies that manage projects, grants and customer contracts through ESA within the Statewide Financial System (SFS).

In order to establish a grant in the SFS, there is certain mandatory information that onboarding agencies must enter into the system. Access SFS Coach to find job aids containing more guidance. The mandatory information is essential to facilitate compliance with federal Cash Management Improvement Act (CMIA) and single audit reporting requirements; as well as for State Agency and the Office of the State Comptroller, Bureau of State Accounting Operations (BSAO) to completely and accurately report grant activity and/or request federal funds needed to finance payments from appropriated federal funds.

When a federal agency awards a grant to NYS, they issue a Grant Award Document or Notice (GAD), or similar document, to the State agency. The GAD contains critical information that must be entered into the SFS. The grant award document is not required to be submitted to OSC BSAO directly, however it must be attached to the contract within SFS. When the contract is submitted for OSC approval, OSC will review the GAD and complete the contract approval process.

Establishing a grant in the SFS requires the use of three integrated modules:

• Contracts (CA),
• Project Costing (PC), and
• Grants (GM)

The onboarding agency will enter information in each module as appropriate. As of April 1,2022, with the implementation of PCIP, ESA onboarded agencies can utilize the Project Guide and Federal Grant Request Guide to assist in Federal Grant Setup.

Effective October 1, 2015 the system will automatically generate a Contract ID, Project ID, and Grant Award ID Number. The Contract generates the Grant Award; establishing a one-to-one relationship. Therefore, for each grant, the Contract ID and Grant Award ID will be assigned the same number. The Project ID will not be equal to the Contract ID/Grant Award ID.

ESTABLISH PROJECT

The one contract and one grant award relationship will still exist; however, multiple Project IDs can be established for each contract/grant. The values for Project ID will no longer be the same as the Contract ID/Grant Award ID due to the system generation of these values.

Grant Match” – This type is used by Non-Onboarding agencies only.

As of April 1,2022, with the implementation of PCIP, ESA onboarded agencies can utilize the Project Guide to assist in Project Setup. See Chapter XIX, Section 2 Establishing a Project of this Guide for more information on establishing a Project in SFS through use of the Project Guide. Additionally, access SFS Coach to find job aids containing more guidance on Project setup.

ESA ONBOARDED FUNDS DISTRIBUTION

For On-boarded agencies, funds distribution is used on projects with multiple funding sources. See Section 7.B - Funds Distribution in this Chapter for further guidance. State Agencies may use SFS Federal Grant reports to monitor this activity. See Section 7.G - Statewide Financial System Reports in this Chapter.

ESTABLISH CUSTOMER CONTRACT

The Contracts module is used to facilitate billing the Federal Government and revenue recognition. A contract is necessary to identify related project(s) and to create an award profile for the grant that links the grant with the contract and project(s).

The contract is linked to a sponsor (federal agency), while billing parameters are also specified for OSC-managed grants. The designation of a sponsor is required for accounts receivable and receipt posting.

If multiple CFDA numbers need to be associated with one grant, then multiple contract lines will be created under one Contract ID Number, with each contract line representing one CFDA number.

Additional guidance can be found in SFS Coach. See: Training Material “Customer Contracts 101”.

As of April 1,2022, with the implementation of PCIP, ESA onboarded agencies can utilize the Federal Grant Request Guide to assist in Federal Grant Setup. (Navigate to: Customer Contracts > Federal Grant Request Guide).

BSAO has prepared a Federal Grant Request Guide Agency Walk-Through document to assist agencies in creating a Federal Grant: Federal Grant Request Guide Agency Walk-Through.pdf.

In SFS Coach, see Training Material, “JAA-GCC101-029” - Request a New Federal Grant using the Federal Grant Request Guide.
 

CONTRACT APPROVAL & STATUSES

The agency establishes the contract using the SFS Federal Grant Request Guide or through the manual process and submits when completed, which sets the contract status as PENDING_OSC_APPROVAL.

OSC will run a query for any contracts awaiting their review. After OSC completes the contract review and confirms the federal grant is available on the federal draw system, OSC BSAO will change the contract status to ACTIVE for OSC cash-managed grants; the status remains PENDING for non-OSC cash-managed grants.

Contracts with a status of ACTIVE will allow all expenditures (made to date and future) to be pulled into Billing and be eligible for reimbursement (up to the Billing Limit) by the federal government.

Contracts with a status of PENDING do not generate any billing activity. Non-managed grants will be changed to ACTIVE once an agency onboards and OSC performs the drawdown.

If OSC BSAO requires additional information to approve the contract, OSC will change the contract status to RETURNED_FOR_INFORMATION. A follow-up e-mail will also be sent informing the agency of the corrections required. The agency will be required to amend the contract via the Federal Grant Request Guide or Project Guide.

For grants pertaining to a disaster, ESA agencies should seek guidance from OSC BSAO for an Activity ID. For example, all Activity IDs related to COVID-19, should begin with “COVID”.

CONTRACT MAINTENANCE DUE TO FEDERAL AWARD CHANGES

Immediately upon notification of an award change by the federal agency, state agencies are required to update the contract billing limit to the new amount and adjust any existing project budgets as necessary.

Such changes include, but are not limited to, an increase or decrease in federal funding, project date changes, and expired federal grants.

Any change that will/has cause(d) expenditures/disbursements to exceed award authorizations must be IMMEDIATELY addressed by the cognizant state agency. Failure to properly decrease the Customer Contract billing limit and/or Project budgets timely would permit state expenditures that cannot be drawn nor reported to the federal government as a reportable expenditure or may cause an over the limit condition which prevents reimbursement by the federal government. Failure to properly increase the Customer Contract billing limit and/or Project budgets may prevent additional program State expenditures from being charged and/or reimbursed.

ESTABLISH GRANT

As of April 1,2022, with the implementation of PCIP, ESA onboarded agencies can utilize the Federal Grant Request Guide, as referenced above, to assist in Federal Grant Setup.

The Grants module is used for award management and to store the grant award’s key data elements to be used for processing and reporting. This is essential for many statutory reports as well as other reporting needs. The Grants module primarily interfaces with the Contracts and Projects modules. Every grant will be established with a grant type of “Federal Grant”.

Within the Grants module, the Reference Award Number field is used to capture the actual grant award number and is the critical field used to summarize data in SFS reports. Due to system generated auto-numbering, the federal award number (GAD) can only be found in the reference award number field for grants established after October 1, 2015. The one contract and one grant award relationship will still exist; however, multiple Project IDs can be established for each contract. The values for Project ID will no longer be the same as the Contract ID/Grant ID due to the system generation of each of these values. Awards with multiple CFDAs or match components will no longer require multiple contract, grant award and project combinations.

CFDA

State agencies are responsible for ensuring the CFDA number is accurate and agrees to the GAD upon grant set up. The CFDA number is critical for compliance and reporting purposes. Failure to enter this number will prevent the grant award from being established in the SFS. Grant awards with multiple CFDAs will require a primary CFDA number be designated. The State agency may select any CFDA number associated with the grant award to be the primary.

If a new CFDA number is required that does not already exist in SFS, the State agency must submit a request to the [email protected] mailbox. The request must include the following:

• SetID: NYS01
• CFDA Number:
• Effective Date: 01/01/1901
• Status: Active
• Short Description (limit of 30 characters)
• Program Title (limit of 100 characters).

State agencies must ensure the new CFDA Number is included on the federal website; https://sam.gov/content/home.

The grant award will have the status of ACCEPTED once set up is complete.

PROJECT BUDGETS

Once a grant is established in the SFS as detailed above, it becomes available for budget transactions. Based on the available grant award amount, the agency will create, approve and post the Budget Journal in the Project Costing module (not the Commitment Control module) to create the Project Child Budget. If the initial available balance is less than the grant award amount, budgets can be increased as additional amounts become available on the federal system. The generate parent functionality will create/update the Project Parent Budget when the Project Child Budget Journal is posted. If a budget is established or changed in KK in error, the transaction will not flow into PC and the budget amounts will not get updated. Agencies must reverse any budgets set up in KK in error.

Agencies can establish their federal project budgets at 100% or at an amount less than the actual award amount. At the time of on-boarding, agencies will be given the opportunity to request a budget tolerance if they plan to use the cost allocation functionality and can demonstrate a need. All requests for budget tolerances on project budgets are subject to OSC approval. Requests should be sent to [email protected].

It is the agencies’ responsibility to monitor all project budget levels and investigate and timely resolve any overspent budgets. These transactions should be temporary in nature and should not remain against an overspent project budget or grant amount that cannot be billed. For more information on cost allocations, see Section 7.D - Cost Allocation in this Chapter. If an agency knows at time of establishment that a portion of the federal grant amount is to be made available to other State agencies, the initial budget journal can indicate lines for all necessary BUs. Otherwise, the project budget can be allocated at a later time. In SFS Coach, see Training Material, “JAA-GCC101-024” – Grant Sub Allocate.

Agencies must monitor that their project budgets are at appropriate levels. If the project budget is too low, it will prevent the State agency from spending up to the authorized grant amount. If the project budget is too high, expenditures could exceed the Customer Contract Billing limit and federal reimbursement cannot be executed for all federal expenditures.

LIQUIDATION DATE

The Liquidation Date is used to control processing. After a grant’s budget period ends, agencies have a defined amount of time within which to pay any obligations that were incurred within that budget period before they lose the ability to draw down federal funds. This is called the liquidation period. Federal regulations dictate the liquidation period for every federal grant. It is the agency’s responsibility to update the liquidation period of each grant. That date will then be used in the budget definition as the end date in the SFS. This budget definition end date is enforced by the system so that no transactions will post against the budget following this date.

Since voucher payments will be made several days after submitting a voucher, it is possible that a check or ACH payment may be made subsequent to the liquidation period which may not be able to be reimbursed by the federal government. Therefore, it is critical that agencies take into account the delay between submitting a voucher, paying it, allocations and actually requesting the drawdown of federal funds. Any charges for which funds cannot be drawn down from the federal government must be transferred to a state-funded account or other appropriate federal awards as soon as it is determined those funds will not be reimbursed.

For more detailed information about the project budget process, see Chapter VI, Section 5 - Project Budgets in this Guide.

SUBALLOCATIONS

Once an agency determines that a portion of the project parent is to be given to another agency, the cognizant agency will suballocate the Project Budget by posting an Interunit Budget Transfer Journal within the Project Costing module (not the Commitment Control module) to move the Project Child Budget Authority (the generate parent functionality will create the Project Parent Budget when the Project Child Budget Journal is posted). For further information on suballocations and possible KK transactions, refer to Chapter VI, Section 3.A - Overview in this Guide.

A suballocation of project budget authority to other state agencies will never relieve the cognizant agency of their responsibility for ensuring compliance, especially as it relates to over-disbursement of award authorization balances. For each grant, the NYGR0210 contains budget and financial information for all BUs.

Guide to Financial Operations

REV. 01/23/2023