Are You Ready?

Big Changes Coming to the Data

Collection Form and Process
By Matthew Duvall, Senior Manager
8601 Robert Fulton Drive l Suite 210 l Columbia, MD 21046 l 410-423-4800 l Fax 410-381-5538 l www.uhy-us.com
U H Y L L P b r i n g s s p e c i a l i s t s i n n o n p r o f i t
s o l u t i o n s i n a c c o u n t i n g a n d t a x
istration as the requirements for the
password are pretty stringent: no
more using your childs or pets name
with 123 after it! The best part
about the passwords, though, is that
they expire every 60 days or after 30
days of no activity. So if you log into
the Federal Audit Clearinghouse
website on an annual basis, be pre-
pared to get those creative juices
flowing to come up with a new pass-
word at each login!
Once youve successfully registered
and logged into the system, the certi-
fication process has changed as well.
This is one place where the govern-
ment made the process a little easier.
No longer will you be required to type
in a signature code; rather, upon ini-
tially setting up the form, the user will
designate via name and email address
which individuals should have access
to the restricted certifying officials
only pages. The expectation is that
the certifying officials, of both the au-
ditor and the organization, will just be
continued on page 2
the next level of service
For more information,
please contact Jennine Anderson
at janderson@uhy-us.com
Nonprofit
Insider
December 2013 Vol. 4 No. 5
ing made are in an effort to streamline
the form to allow the federal agencies
to more easily extract information
about the results of the financial state-
ment audits being submitted.
The real impact the new form will
have on you will be in the submission
process. Traditionally, under the old
system when the form was ready to
be submitted, the auditor would send
you an email with a report identifica-
tion number and password that all
parties involved would use. That in-
formation would allow you to login,
review the form for accuracy and cer-
tify it by entering a signature code.
With the newprocess, however, those
relatively simple steps are no more.
Now, each user, i.e. the audit partner,
the audit staff, the organization sign-
ing official and the organization staff,
will be required to register on the
Federal Audit Clearinghouse website
and obtain a unique username and
password.
Be sure to have pen and paper handy
when you go through this initial reg-
I
f you are subject
to OMB Circular
A-133, you know
that part of the
final process in-
volves the comple-
tion and submission
of the Data Collec-
tion Form to the Federal Audit Clear-
inghouse. The streamlined process
that we have all come to know and,
dare I say, love, is about to be turned
on its head.
Although the final version of the form
is not yet available and the original re-
lease date of October 2013 has come
and gone, we do know some of what
we can expect.
First, the newformmust be used for fis-
cal years ending in 2013 and beyond.
Second, the majority of the form will
still be completed by the auditor. Third,
the majority of the information col-
lected will be the same, but the format
in which that information is entered
and presented and the level of detail
required will change. The changes be-
UHY Advisors
Mid-Atlantic MD, Inc.
Tax & Business Consultants
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licitation of any service or product. This information does not constitute the provision of legal advice, tax advice, accounting services, investment advice, or professional consulting of any kind. The information provided herein should
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required to click a button in order to
certify the form.
A couple other
changes to expect...
Previously, scanning a paper copy of
the audited financial statements and
uploading that PDF to the Federal Au-
dit Clearinghouses website was ac-
ceptable. Now, as part of the stream-
lining on behalf of the federal
agencies that we discussed above, the
audited financial statements being
uploaded will need to be text-search-
able. This is a fairly simple adjustment
to make, but it will now allow the
federal agencies to do quick word
searches for phrases such as signifi-
cant deficiency, material weakness
or any other undesirable wording that
an organization doesnt like to see in
their audit results.
Another change that we can expect
is actually pretty useful. Previous
data collection form submissions to
the Federal Audit Clearinghouse will
be available in users individual ac-
counts. This means no more search-
ing the Federal Audit Clearinghouse
website for previous submissions.
Combing through the old website
often proved difficult when search-
ing by an entitys name since charac-
ter limits required frequent abbrevi-
ations, e.g., Association was entered
as Assn or Center was entered as Ctr;
and if this wasnt done consistently
from year to year, good luck! This
new feature may be of limited ben-
efit for some, however, as the sys-
tem will rely on the email address
provided on the previous submis-
sions when populating users indi-
vidual accounts.
Since the new form hasnt been re-
leased yet, you may be worried about
timely submission of your fiscal year
2013 form. Under normal circum-
stances, the rules require the submis-
sion of the form within the earlier of
30 days after you received the final
audit report or nine months after your
fiscal year end. For those non-Decem-
ber 2013 year end clients, there is a
pretty good chance, under the normal
due dates, that your data collection
form could be late, but the OMB has
granted a submission extension until
January 31, 2014. To simplify the
process, the extension is automatic
and there is no approval required. As
you know, a late submission of a data
collection form can impact whether
an entity is considered low-risk for A-
133 audit purposes in subsequent
years, so we are glad the extension is-
sue has been addressed.
If youre interested in becoming even
more intimately familiar with the de-
tails of the new form and submission
process, you can visit the Federal Audit
Clearinghouses Data Collection Form
website for a detailed instruction man-
ual; you can also visit the website to
keep up to date on the status of when
the form will be released in its final
version. Of course, we can help you
too. Give me a call at 410-423-4800 if
you have any questions.
Ive got my fingers crossed that the
rollout of new data collection form
and website will be smoother than
that other government website weve
been hearing so much about!
Big Changes Coming to the Data
Collection Form and Process
continued from page 1
the next level of service
Previous data collection form submissions
to the Federal Audit Clearinghouse will be
available in users individual accounts.

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