The Disaster Assistance Accounting process will be used each time there is a disaster event. This process requires the participation of staff in the Division of Budget (DOB), Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services (DHSES), the Statewide Financial System (SFS), and impacted New York State agencies. This process will allow New York State agencies to respond to a disaster event and receive budget relief by transferring the costs to DHSES. It will also enable New York State to obtain reimbursement of allowable disaster costs from the Federal government.
When a disaster occurs in New York State, immediate response by State agencies is necessary. Agencies have the ability to act quickly once Executive approval is given by purchasing necessary services/supplies and deploying manpower to address the disaster incident. This purchasing power is afforded to the agencies by their existing budget appropriations.
This process may operate within two phases:
- Response - Immediate response to the disaster by Agencies
- Recovery - Planned activities as approved by FEMA
The Project Costing (PC) and Commitment Control (KK) Modules in the SFS are used to meet disaster accounting and budgeting requirements and to provide a central repository of disaster project-related information. This process will allow the DOB to more easily track and report on disaster related spending and costs by disaster and agency.
Disaster Event Life Cycle/Process
Prior to a pending disaster event, DOB will make a determination on whether the event should be tracked (i.e. storm tracking toward New York). If DOB determines tracking should occur, DOB will prepare agency guidance concerning Project IDs and Activity IDs to use for financial transaction coding.
Once the disaster event happens a series of activities must occur. DOB provides prepared guidance on tracking agency costs by event. For each disaster event that requires individual tracking, a new project (Event Project) and activities to track the costs are created. Based upon a request from DOB, SFS will create the project within the DHS01 PCBU, along with two Activity IDs. One Activity ID will be created to support automatic reclassification of costs to the DHS01 GLBU and central disaster assistance programs and another will be created to support tracking of costs for the disaster within the Agency without the automatic reclassification. DOB will also establish the funds distribution rules for the project.
SFS will complete the requested configuration and communicate to DOB, the values that have been configured in the SFS and that the funds distribution rules have been setup.
DOB will issue a new Budget Bulletin to provide guidance to agencies regarding the new disaster event, and include the Project ID and Activity IDs that agencies will include on transactions to record costs associated with the disaster event and the accounts and programs to be excluded. Once this guidance is provided, agencies will submit vouchers, expense reports and GL journal entry transactions charging their general fund appropriation/segregation using the Event Project and Activity IDs. OSC will approve transactions as part of their normal business process.
Transactions are then collected into Project Costing and funds distribution applied by project/activity. The fund distribution rules transfer costs to DHSES within the general fund. Costs now reside in the DHSES appropriations/segregations and the agency budgets have been restored.
In some cases, an agency may not be able to use the event project in the first instance. In this case, they can code transactions to track the disaster activity and later submit GL journal entries transferring the costs into the Event or grant project(s). If an agency needs to use an agency specific project, they can request an activity that provides the ability to identify costs by disaster so that the costs may be easily identified for subsequent transfer into a reclassifiable disaster activity. Agencies will complete a COA Change Request Form (tab Proj_Act) and submit it with the new HelpDesk incident. The COA Change Request Form can be found at https://www.sfs.ny.gov/secure/files/infocenters/COA_ChangeRequestForm.xlsx. SFS will create the new Activity IDs with the existing Agency Project ID and notify the agency when this is complete.
When the disaster event is declared a disaster by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), State Agencies, DHSES and FEMA determine what work needs to be accomplished and create project worksheets. DHSES receives a federal grant award covering established project worksheets and provides the documentation to OSC BSAO. OSC BSAO sets up the grant contract, project, and grant in SFS. DHSES staff will transfer existing costs from the event project (general fund) to the federal grant project (federal fund) to enable reimbursement to NYS. Agencies will continue to use the event project with DHSES periodically transferring those costs to the grant project. Transactions for entities other than State agencies will be received by the SFS carrying the appropriate SFS grant related Project ID and Activities, collected into Project Costing and processed to Billing. OSC will then perform a drawdown on the Federal draw system.
Additional information can be obtained from each agency’s DOB Examiner.
Guide to Financial Operations
REV. 07/30/2015