[BFET] REMINDER: Year-end Grant Deadlines

[Michele Rockwell]

Grant staff,

I hope you're all doing well and not too stressed as we head into what might possibly be the most challenging fiscal year-end ever.

This is my annual reminder of the following year-end deadlines for grants awarded to your organization from the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC). This email is being sent to the following lists: Grant and Contract listserve, WEC listserve, WorkFirst listserve, BFET listserve, ABAWD listserve, and BEDA Directors list.  Please forward to others at your organization who may need this information.

Budget Revision Deadline:  June 15, 2020
This is the last day to submit budget revision requests for all grants that end June 30, 2020.  Submit those in OBIS<https://obis.sbctc.edu/>.

Organization program and fiscal staff should work together to be sure you've captured all expenses to date and can submit an accurate and final budget revision.

Invoice Deadline:  July 15, 2020
This is the last day to submit invoices for all grant expenses through June 30, 2020 (regardless of whether the grant ends June 30, 2020 or continues on into the next fiscal year).  Submit those in OBIS<https://obis.sbctc.edu/> as well.

Note:  Some of you are aware that we sometimes had the ability to accept late invoices in emergency situations in past years. Due to the timing of year-end this year, the early cutoff for interagency billings, and it being SBCTC's first year-end in ctcLink, we do not believe we'll have the ability to accept late invoices this year.

Tip:  The final billing deadline is a tight one.  Some organizations find it helpful to submit as many expenses as they can in early July and then submit a final invoice on the billing deadline day.  This is completely acceptable to do.  On that first year-end invoice, give the invoice an end date of 6/29/20 instead of 6/30/20 (OBIS won't let you overlap invoices).  Also, don't check the "final invoice" box on that invoice.  Then when you're ready to submit your "it's really final now" invoice on July 15 (or July 13 or 14), give it a start and end date of 6/30/20 (and type the actual date range into the "comments" field), check the "final invoice" box, and submit it.

Contacts:
Kari Kauffman in our office approves invoices.  If you need technical assistance with an invoice, contact Kari first.  You can reach Kari at 360-704-1021 or kkauffman at sbctc.edu<mailto:kkauffman at sbctc.edu>.

I'm still reviewing your budget revision requests (along with applicable program staff) and am available as a backup for invoicing questions.  You can reach me at 360-704-4343 or mrockwell at sbctc.edu<mailto:mrockwell at sbctc.edu>.

Karl Ludeman is also available as a backup for invoicing or budget revision questions.  You can reach Karl at 360-704-4344 or kludeman at sbctc.edu<mailto:kludeman at sbctc.edu>.

Time and Effort
Don't forget to make sure all applicable Time and Effort<https://ogms.sbctc.edu/docs/TimeEffortGuidelines.pdf> reports are completed and that you've reconciled those reports against payroll reports and the salaries and wages charged to the grant.  If you have to make any adjustments to what was charged to the grant, please do so on your May or June invoices.

I've had a number of questions from organizations about time and effort and signature collection while staff are remote.

If your organization has an electronic signature policy, follow that policy when collecting electronic signatures on time and effort (T&E) reports.  If your organization does not yet have an electronic signature, we will allow employees and supervisors to approve T&E reports via email.  To do that though, best practice would be for the employees to include a screenshot of their T&E report embedded in the email, for example:

Hi [Supervisor],

Here is my T&E report for the past pay period.  I certify that it is a true and accurate reflection of my time.

[cid:image003.png at 01D63A94.C06C6B70]

The supervisor would then forward that email with their approval to whomever tracks time and effort as a whole.  If it is the supervisor who tracks time and efforts, I'd suggest they just forward the email to themselves and save the email in their files.

We strongly encourage organizations to work on putting an electronic signature policy in place.  We recognize it will take time for a policy to be put into place, but we could be working from home off and on for quite a while.

Thank you so much for your hard work during this incredibly challenging time.  Please let us know if you have any questions.

Michele
________________________________
Michele Rockwell (pronouns: she/her) | Contracts Specialist | Education Services Division | Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges | 1300 Quince ST SE | PO Box 42495 | Olympia, WA 98504 | p: 360-704-4343 | f: 360-704-4418 | mrockwell at sbctc.edu<mailto:mrockwell at sbctc.edu> | www.sbctc.edu<http://www.sbctc.edu/>

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