The OSC has until 2018 to finish its audits of Special Education Providers. They have been hiring new staff to accommodate the need to complete more than 260 audits in the next four years. If you have not gone through an OSC audit yet, you know one is coming. Over the next few months, we will take you through certain aspects of an OSC audit and provide insight into what you should be doing.
The Initial Call:
At some point, you will get the call, letting you know that you will be visited by the OSC. The OSC will be looking to audit your last three years of filed CFRs’ (in this case that would be fiscal 2014, 2013, and 2012). Following the call, will come an e-mail providing a questionnaire for you to complete, which focuses on your internal controls and a listing of 23 items that you will need to put together in a little over a week.
While many of the items on the list should be things that are readily available, it is still a significant amount of information to pull together in a short period of time.
Recommendation:
We recommend that you go through the questionnaire and the list of items needed now and start assembling the package you will need. For each item on the list, you will want to not only pull together the information, you will also want a narrative to explain what you are including in the response.
The best approach here is to develop a folder by year of the information or a portal/Dropbox to hold the information. Each year, you can remove the oldest year, and add the most current year so that you always have three years of information available.
If you have any questions about the initial list, or what is needed, or if you would like us to work with you to assess your situation, Please don’t hesitate to call Ken Cerini, Partner at 631-868-1103.
In our next installment, we will start to breakdown the 23 item request list.
Kenneth R. Cerini, CPA, CFP, FABFA
Managing Partner
Ken is the Managing Partner of Cerini & Associates, LLP and is the executive responsible for the administration of our not-for-profit and educational provider practice groups. In addition to his extensive audit experience, Ken has been directly involved in providing consulting services for nonprofits and educational facilities of all sizes throughout New York State in such areas as cost reporting, financial analysis, Medicaid compliance, government audit representation, rate maximization, board training, budgeting and forecasting, and more.