Closing Multi-Year Projects and Grants

This process is applicable for any multi-year fund, such as all CIP funds and multi-year special revenue funds. It also applies to multi-year grants, such as the Capital Area Workforce Fund and to the Affordable Housing Fund. It does not apply to projects or grants that are budgeted in an annually budgeted fund.

The project/grantend field cannot be closed if there is any actual operating activity in the current fiscal year. A report will be generated yearly by Budget/Finance to the departments indicating any projects/grants with no actual revenue and expenditure activity in the current year and that have a future end date.

Departments should review projects/grants at least annually to determine if any project/grant should be closed. Keeping projects/grants on the books after they are finished distorts financial statements by misrepresenting the dollar value of active projects/grants.

After coming up with a list of projects they wish to close, the department should make sure that all payments and /or receipts have been made on the project/grant, including retainage payouts. The projects/grants should also be reviewed to make sure all encumbrances have been closed. If any adjustment needs to be made or has been made to actual expenditures or revenues in the current year, the department must wait until the next fiscal year to close the project/grant.

You can use the following screen links to review details on the projects/grants you wish to close:

You should contact your Budget Office Analyst to determine what will be done with any unused expenditure budget. After all necessary budget revision approvals are acquired, the Budget Office will make the necessary journal entries to move the unexpended budget amounts to the new location. Depending on the legal level of budgetary control, a budget revision may need to be approved by the Board of Commissioners before this entry can be posted.

After it has been determined that: (1) all payments have been made, including retainage payments, and all receivables, if any, have been collected; (2) all encumbrances have been closed out and (3) any excess budget has been moved, a final list of projects can then be sent to the Finance Department with instructions to close the project/grant.

You should also provide Finance with a listing of all Impromptu reports currently being used. These reports will be modified to either include or exclude the closed projects once the closing process has been finalized.

To officially remove the project/grant from inclusion in the budget model and financial statements:

The Budget and Finance Departments will meet for the final determination of entries that are necessary to make budgeted revenues, budgeted expenditures, actual revenues and actual expenditures equal at the cents level. If necessary, revenues will have to be moved into the project/grant to match expenditures.

By fund level reported in Financial Statements, certain accounts must have budget and actual equal. These accounts are: Transfers – In, Transfers – Out, Bond Proceeds. If these accounts do not equal, then it looks like additional transfers or proceeds need to be transacted. To keep this account in balance, projects/grants must be closed out only when these accounts are equal for both budget and actual at the specific subobject level to the exact penny.

In addition, the project trial balance should be clean in FAMIS. Using screens 6410/6420 in FAMIS, make sure there are no outstanding trial balance entries that need to be resolved in FAMIS. Commonly, there will be retainage amounts that need to be resolved for old projects.

3.	The project/grant closing entries by Budget and Finance should be made as soon as possible after the departmental closing process has occurred. Budget entries and Finance adjustments will be posted in the month the transaction was processed.

After Finance staff verifies that the closing entries posted correctly, Finance staff will enter the index and project/grant code end dates. This date will be the last day of the previous month. This will prevent any future posting on the accounting system against the index code and/or project/grant code.

Finance staff will update the project/grant detail and the index code to include a specified symbol at the beginning of the title. The symbol will be an indication that the project/grant has been officially closed. Different symbols will be used for each project/grant closed during that fiscal year. The symbols will be used as indicated in the list below:

~	FY 2005
*	FY 2006
@	FY 2007
&	FY 2008

Departmental reports will be modified with a filter. These reports can be run with or without the indicated symbols so that the Departments can have access to historical project/grant data.

After the closing process is complete, a list of the closed projects and all supporting documentation should be provided to the Accounting and Reporting Manager for the audit file.