Your Accounting Chart of Accounts Could Be Costing You $!
Generic general ledger account titles such as advertising, entertainment, and travel could be causing you more headaches when your cognizant audit agency comes around due to their non specific or incorrect naming convention. It’s a good idea go through your chart of accounts periodically to ensure that accounts are specific enough to detail what is in the account without cluttering your systemwith more accounts than are necessary. For instance, Advertising should be classified as Marketing unless the account only contains Unallowable Advertising costs. Trade Show costs should be segregated from Trade Show Booth costs, as setting up a Trade Show Booth is not allowable whereas attending a Trade Show is. Other accounts we commonly see that could have a better or more specific naming convention are: Continue reading »
Where Do You Get Your Government Contracts Information?
Aronson’s FedPoint blog fills the requirement for contractors seeking to stay up-to-date with important news and trends. FedPoint help government contractors keep current through original articles, online resources, reading and research recommendations, statistics, trends and more. Are there topics you’d like to see more of? Post your comments or send an email to Ask Fedpoint – let our experts know what information you need to have to make informed decisions, increase government sales, and streamline your business for maximum profitability.
Ask FedPoint: How to Deal with Inactive Contract Clutter in Deltek GCS
Dear FedPoint: My active contracts are getting lost on our Contract Revenue Summary Report due to the large number of inactive jobs that exist in our GCS Premier accounting system. Can I suppress inactive contracts from showing up on this report? - Rose, Annapolis, MD
Dear Rose:
Currently, GCS does not allow for the suppression inactive contracts on this report. To get around this, you can set up a new division assigning inactive contracts that you wish to suppress to this division. All of the inactive contracts that you assigned to this division will group together on the report. You will then be able to discard the pages for this division.
To execute this work-around you will need to do the following: Continue reading »
Ask FedPoint: Printing Checks on Blank Card Stock
Dear FedPoint: My CFO asked me if we can print our checks on blank check stock. Can Deltek do this? – Bill, Crofton, MD
Dear Bill:
If you are running Deltek Costpoint, you can print both your accounts payable and your payroll checks on blank check stock. The benefits of printing on blank stock are that you save money by not having to order pre-printed checks and, if you print checks for multiple companies, you don’t have to stop and load different check stock for each company in your printer.
When printing on blank check stock, you have the flexibility of printing a message on the check stub and, for accounts payable checks, printing a short memo on the face of the check. You also have more flexibility with accounts payable checks regarding the columns that appear on the check stub.
If you want to start printing on blank check stock, you will need to do the following: Continue reading »
Ask FedPoint: Tips to Prevent Administrative Conflicts with Settings in Deltek GCS and T&E
Dear FedPoint: Does anyone have a cheat sheet or tips to prevent administrative conflicts with the settings in Deltek GCS and T&E? Example: I’m always forgetting to update the work force file in GCS. Since I’m in T&E daily, it is more natural to navigate to the charge trees. Needless to say, when the Time data is imported into GCS, I get the “friendly” reminder to update the work force file. – Maxine, Washington, DC
Dear Maxine:
Below are some tips for GCS and T&E to assist you:
Here’s a checklist of GCS addition/updates that will require to you export the GCS tables to T&E.
- GCS Employee Master File
- Setting up a new employee
- For changes to an employee’s division, dept, suffix or default pay type
- GCS Employee T&E panel
- Setting up a new employee
- For changes in the primary supervisor, work group, timesheet class, email address or timesheet schedule of an employee. Continue reading »
Ask FedPoint: Getting Detail for Specific Billed Items – Deltek and Cognos Impromptu
Dear FedPoint: I’m using Deltek to bill a cost-type contract on a bi-weekly basis. Recently, I have been asked by the customer to provide backup for specific billed items. Using the standard non-labor detail reports, I see all of the transactions for the period but i am unable to see which ones were billed on a particular invoice. Is there a report that I can run that will provide me this information? - Carolyn, McLean, VA
Dear Carolyn:
By utilizing an add-in software, Cognos Impromptu, you can create a report that provides the voucher number, vendor ID, transaction amount, transaction description, check number, check date, check amount, invoice number the transaction was billed on and the date billed. By filtering on any transaction with a status of “Billed” you would be able to isolate those transactions that were previously billed. Please refer to the “AR14ODC” Folder to create the report with the above listed data items.
Have a question for “Ask Fed Point”? Send it in and you may see your question and answer here next month! Looking for assistance with your Deltek System or Deltek Outsourcing needs? Call or email John Betz, 301-231-6231, jbetz@aronsoncompany.com.
North America’s fast-growing technology companies – get in the market!
The Deloitte Technology Fast 500 recognizes North America’s fast-growing technology, media, telecommunications and life sciences companies. The program is based on percentage revenue growth over a five year period, recognizes all areas of technology — from Internet to life sciences, from computers to semiconductors — and includes both public and private companies.
We recently shared the GSA Schedule 70 Monthly Sales Report for April which indicated a significant spike in Schedule 70 sales for April as compared to the same time period last year and the continued strong growth of sales to State and Local Governments (STLOC) through the GSA Cooperative Purchasing Program. The Fast 500 provides further evidence of the strength of the GSA Schedules Program, nearly one-third of the top 25 of 2008′s fastest-growing technology companies held GSA schedule contracts.
2008′s top five companies (including two GSA Schedule holders) experienced an average revenue growth rate of 90,540 percent over five years, up from 41,093 percent in 2007. Continue reading »
Ask FedPoint: Subcontracting on GSA Task Orders – IFF Responsibility
Dear FedPoint:
When a prime contractor is awarded a GSA Schedule Contract and subsequently receives a delivery call under the schedule, I understand that they are responsible for the IFF. Subsequently, if the prime subcontracts a portion of the order, my understanding is that he is still 100% responsible for the IFF and can either withhold the .75% from the subcontractor’s invoices, or have it “built-in” to the rate that he charges the Government above and beyond the cost of the subcontractor. Please clarify the validity of each of the approaches.
Lori
____________________________________________________________________________
Dear Lori:
Thanks for the great question! There are many situations to consider when determining whether or not IFF should be remitted for work performed by a subcontractor on a task order issued against a GSA Schedule contract. Four possible situations are identified below:
Ask FedPoint: GCS users…Is your Cognos Impromptu collecting dust?
Dear FedPoint: What can I do to get the maximum benefit out of Cognos Impromptu? We’ve finally installed it but we’re simply not using it. Help! - Jason, Germantown, MD
Dear Jason:
Here are some ideas that will help save time and maximize the return on your investment:
- Do you have a 3rd Party Payroll service and first enter your timesheets into GCS and re-enter the time into your payroll software manually? Impromptu can generate a CSV file that sends hours and dollars to ADP.
- Do run payroll in GCS but still manually prepare a spreadsheet providing 401(K) census information to your plan administrator? Impromptu can be used to generate this information automatically.
- Do you manually create spreadsheets to summarize information out of your accounting system? In many cases, a simple query can save you valuable time allowing you to focus on more important issues at hand.
- Ever wish you could include unposted labor hours in your project summary reports? Use Impromptu to combine data from Time Collection and GCS Premier into one report.
These are just a few ideas on how you can use Impromptu. Whether or not you currently own it…there are many ways this tool can be used to improve your department’s efficiency.
Have a question for “Ask Fed Point”? Send it in and you may see your question and answer here next month! Looking for assistance with your Deltek System or Deltek Outsourcing needs? Call or email John Betz, 301-231-6231, jbetz@aronsoncompany.com.
Ask Fed Point: Upgrading Cognos 8.1 Reports to Cognos 8.3 Reports
Dear Fed Point: Currently my company uses a third party service provider to host our Cognos 8 reporting solution and we have decided to bring that application in house. When I tried to export the files out of our hosted environment and load them back into our new onsite environment the reports did not work. What could I be doing wrong? – Fred, Alexandria VA
Dear Fred: I am sure there are many ways to approach the task of upgrading your Cognos 8.1 reports to either version Cognos 8.3 or Cognos 8.4 but on a recent assignment we discovered a potential shortcut for converting a small number of reports when faced with a similar situation.The client had asked us to move approximately 15 reports from one environment where the application was being hosted externally by a third party vendor to a local environment where they were going to manage the application going forward. Continue reading »
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What We Are Writing
- A Marriage of Inconvenience: GSA Schedule Contracts & The Contractor Code of Business Ethics & Conduct Clause
- Emerging Small Businesses: To Grow Your Business, You Must Plan For Growth
- Government Contracting: Look Before You Leap!
- GSA Schedules – Strategies for Success
- New Employee vs. Independent Contractor Considerations
- Pay on Display – Understanding the Executive Compensation and Subcontractor Data Reporting Requirements & Ramifications
- The GSA Schedule: Your Ticket to the Federal Market (May 2010)
- The New FAR Codes of Conduct and Compliance Program Provisions
- The Seven Deadly Sins (of contract compliance)