Create a Seamless Invoice with Signature Template for Personnel

Invoice with signature template for Personnel

yeah it looks like it's already recording dot let me just press pause right now yes I'm sorry I just realized I was on mute um go ahead and um you could pause it or you could stop it and then restart it when you're ready to go okay just pause it for now and yeah we'll get started with our training today so hello everyone thank you for coming today to our training and happy St Patrick's Day um today in this training we'll be going over three main topics invoicing digital signature and fast formerly known as the financial assistance application submittal tool and just a reminder since we're on Zoom please make sure to rename yourself um as seen in this slide first last name and your organization name and then for there'll be two methods to ask questions during this presentation so during the presentation you can add questions in the chat and also there will be several q a periods throughout the presentation where you can raise your hand and ask your questions verbally to the presenters and so this is today's training agenda um we'll be going over the digital signatures on work plans and invoicing and the presenter presenting on these two items is Jason headington he is a Water Resource control engineer in the small Community Technical assistant unit one and presenting on fast is Rivera a Sanitary Engineering associate also in the small community technical assistance unit 1. good afternoon everyone um can everyone hear me yes we can hear you awesome um hello everyone my name is Jason headington thank you Michaela for the introduction and first I just wanted to start by thanking everyone for coming out today and attending this training I know that with competition like St Patrick's Day festivities in the March Madness Tournament um just happy to be here sharing some uh some important information about invoicing digital signatures with the group so before we get started I wanted to go through some of the common acronyms that are going to be used throughout the presentation so first uh if you've been with us for a long time a lot of these might be familiar to you but to create a baseline I've included um a lot of simple ones as well such as ta standing for technical assistance and tap stay for technical assistance provider we're going to be covering uh mainly the the PD or Project Director position within the technical assistance provider so this is the person who's identified on their agreement who can sign um who could sign invoicing documents as well as deviation forms and time requests for their agreement itself so um you uh you should all know who your designated Project Director is but This Acronym is going to come up throughout the the invoicing slides and then from from our end the division of financial assistance we're going to be referencing two main roles project manager and the disbursement analyst and so the project manager is the one who's kind of working with the technical assistance provider and helping manage the agreement and the work plans that are part of the technical assistance agreements and the disbursement analyst is one of the reviewers of the invoice once that's been submitted and we'll go through more specifically what the project manager and disbursement analyst role in the invoice process is later during this presentation however first I wanted to start with covering the Adobe sign process that was recently implemented um under technical assistance and so going forward DFA is going to be using Adobe sign to Route work plans for electronic signature and the link to Adobe sign is right here and after the presentation these slides will be available in PDF forms so you'll be able to access this link however this will take you to the Adobe sign website where you can log in using an adobe account and have access to the Adobe sign agreements and so um to use the Adobe sign agreement your technical assistance agreement or to use Adobe sign the website your technical assistance agreement must first be updated to contain language authorizing the use of electronic signatures and so I've pulled an example from one of our agreements but it'll look something similar to this there'll be a signature block here and it will contain language which in more words says that both the recipient and the state water boards agree that using this electronic signature is the same as a physical signature for the purposes of validity enforceability and admissibility of um of the documents so so if you already have this language added to your agreement you're you can start using the Adobe sign process if not work with your technical assistance project manager um to to inquire about the status of adding this to your agreement and so uh here are the Adobe Stein Adobe sign steps so once the work plan has been approved by DFA then the TA project manager is going to initiate the execution process using Adobe sign and so they'll set that up on the Adobe sign website and then the default routing is for the document to be sent to the TA provider Project Director then to the DFA signer and then once that's been completed the document will be redisbursed to both signers and everyone included on the CC list for that process and so um signatures will be requested by Adobe through this process and reminder emails will be sent automatically through the process um and then once the TA Project Director approves Adobe will automatically send the signature to DFA and like I said um and multiple copy will be sent to all of the people included on the CC list one thing I wanted to emphasize is that this is the default routing process and so each ta provider might have a unique um execution processes in place and we want to work with you to match up the Adobe sign process with what steps you already have um ongoing to make that as smooth of a transition as possible so for example I know that you can add an approver step into this routing process where it's not an additional signer but you can have an email designated to review the the workplane document and approve before it's sent to the TA provider Project Director and you can also adjust the frequency at which Adobe sends these reminders so the point being there's a lot of different settings that we are yet to explore in Adobe sign and so we encourage you to work with your ta project manager to talk about ideas for how to improve the Adobe sign process or make it better fit to your organization um the last thing I want to cover with Adobe sign is that there's a way that you can update upload your signature to your profile the benefit of doing this is that you would be able to access and sign documents from any um any device that could access your Adobe account in your email so the first step is you want to log into Adobe sign using the link that I provided earlier and then this image right here should be a representation of the home page and what you're looking for is on the right hand side here there's a I put a red box around it but there should be your name and then there's this my profile option under the drop down you're going to click on that and then that's going to open up this menu here and so then you're going to click personal preferences which has another drop down and then under that drop down is my signature and so this is where you can upload your signature and have it saved to your Adobe account and so once you get here you're going to click create and that's going to open this box where it says draw image or mobile and to create your signature you're going to select image and then you're going to upload a image of your handwritten signature to Adobe and once you've done that you'll it'll look like this bottom image here where you have the option to edit the the signature still but it'll have a an image of your handwritten signature here and again this is important because on the work plans we want a signature that represents in your handwritten signature we don't want the we don't want anything that looks like typed or as a as a font signature we want to we want it to be a representation of your actual signature and so this process right here will ensure that it looks like this and then the second benefit is that once the signature is uploaded to your Adobe account you can click the link in the email to open up the document and then you can just click the box and it will automatically add your signature without any other steps required all right are there any questions from the audience about the the new Adobe sign process all right I'm seeing none so I know that part of the Adobe sign process is going to be to trial it first and then you might have organization specific questions for your project manager so definitely I encourage you to reach out and work with them as you've given this a try once or twice to see what modifications to this process are needed to to get the the execution running smoothly for your organization the next here we're going to move on to invoices and so the first step when talking about invoices is to go over the portion of the technical assistance agreement that covers invoicing because that's going to outline a lot of the um the provisions for your specific agreement and when you can and can't invoice so the information about invoices can be found in exhibit B funding Provisions in our standard DFA agreement template and the provisions included in exhibit B include some of the following so it'll outline eligible project costs and it states that these costs must be reimbursed through disbursement requests and we'll go over what a disbursement request looks like in the forms needed later in the presentation second it'll say that invoices must be submitted no less than quarterly and no more than monthly so a fancy way of saying you can invoice between one and three month intervals so typically we see a one month interval or three month interval third it says that invoices can only include work that has been completed which was performed after the agreement start date and contained within the agreement scope of work so important to summarize this point is that the work that we reimburse um must already be completed so we can't pay for work that has yet to be done and then finally the agreement will outline the final invoice request date and the final invoice must be clearly marked and submitted prior to this date and so on the title page there's a few important dates that the agreement highlights and so one of them is the work completion date and then typically right under that's the final disbursement request date and so just make sure that the final invoice for the agreement is submitted prior to this private Institute the second thing that containing the agreement is the indirect costs and so indirect costs aren't going to be covered in much more detail throughout the rest of the presentation but I wanted to highlight here kind of Define indirect costs and what are some examples of eligible indirect and ineligible indirect so indirect costs these are reimbursements for actual not budgeted costs that are associated with the implementation and management of the project and so some examples might be rents utilities office equipment office supplies postage telephone lines or staff training development these are items that are eligible in direct costs then they're required for managing and implementing the projects they could be included in the indirect cost line item of your agreement some examples of ineligible indirect costs might be copyrights taxes licenses fines penalties fees Insurance deductibles advertising tuition scholarship travel and meal costs not covered by Cal HR conference attendance and subscriptions or publication fees and so these are exhaustive lists these are some examples so if you have a question about a specific cost and whether or not then it's eligible then the first place to check would be in the agreement language and then if you want to confirm then reach out to your ta property project manager and work through it with them and so the third part of the agreement that's important is the one of the forms that you fill out to accompany the agreement which is called The Project Director certification form and it pertains to invoicing because it has this box right here that lists designee's name designate email and designee signature and so um any staff member that is designated in the Project Director certification form will be able to submit invoice documents and sign the invoice documents that we talk about later in the presentation so I'm going to skip forward to this summary here who can sign what so on some of our technical assistance agreements this authorized representative and Project Director um they can be occupied by the same person so for the purposes of this presentation we have the Project Director who's going to be the one signing the agreement related documents these first two and then they can also sign the invoice related documents which are these next three however if you want to designate a employee that can sign invoice documents and submit those to DFA then it needs to be done in the Project Director certification form and that authorizes them to to fill out and sign these forms right here and also to submit invoices through email so I want to start with an overview of the invoice review process and some of the target timelines and so important to note that the target review time is 45 days from invoice submission to the payment of the invoice however the the project manager and disbursement analyst review timelines are going to vary depending on the length of the invoice and the number of projects or number of ARS that are being invoiced so this 45 days is uh dfa's Target but it will it can vary depending on the um the length of the invoice in the like I said number of projects so the first step is as the TA provider the invoice is going to be submitted and we'll go over some of the proper methods of submission but then once it's submitted to DFA the it'll be given to the disbursement analyst who's going to review the invoice um and then these targets the 10 days and the 14 days are from the um the TA metrics that we sent out recently um so the disbursement analyst is going to review the invoice once they've finished their review they're going to send it to the DFA project manager who's also going to provide a review for the invoice and check all of the items that were flagged by the disbursement list this review might result in a dispute a dispute being a point where the the DFA PM will email the TA provider with a with a list of items that either need clarification additional justification or if there's a reason to deduct an amount from the invoice and such as an ineligible item if needed the dispute's going to pause the 45-day park Target clock so to speak until the dispute is resolved so if there's no dispute or once the dispute's resolved the DFA PM is going to approve the invoice and send it back to the disbursement analyst disbursement analysts will then approve payment of the invoice they're going to notify the TA provider and submit the invoice to accounting and so as the team provider this is probably the step where you receive an email from the disbursement analyst saying that the invoice has been approved and that payment will be um will be on its way and from this point what happens is the invoice goes to our accounting who also approves the payment and then accounting once payments approved releases the invoice to the state's controller's office who will then send out the the check and so this process takes on average four to six weeks so going back to the first step the invoice submission there's two methods for submitting invoices the first is emailing the invoice submission to the DFA PM along with uploading the invoice to fast simultaneously and if you're doing this method then what happens is you'll send the invoice to the PM and then the PM will forward the invoice to the disbursement inbox see seeing the disbursement analyst um and then the second method is emailing directly to the DFA disbursements inbox along with a simultaneous fast submission and so if you're doing this method the as a TA provider you would just send the invoice directly to this email address right here DFA disbursements at waterboards.ca.gov and you would CC the PM and the da on that submission just so that everyone's in the loop and knows that the the timeline for the invoice review has begun and so um you might notice that these are very similar to each other with the only real difference being where the um where the invoice is submitted via email but for both it's important to note that the email submission must be sent from either the Project Director or an authorized email account on the PE certification form which is what we covered earlier so if uh if you want to designate a staff to be able to submit invoices on behalf of the program then you can work with your ta project manager to add them to that designees list under the Project Director certification form and here we have the required documents that should be contained within an invoice submission and so the first one is the disbursement request form or the dis form and we'll have some examples of uh what a correct correctly filled out forms look like in a few slides second we have the reimbursement request form or form 261. this one we also call the RR form so there's there's three different names for it this one needs to be separate from the invoice package as a whole so form number one and form number three can be in the same PDF but form number two the reimbursement request needs to be its own separate PDF form for reasons that I'll cover later in the presentation the the third item is the invoice package itself and so this is going to contain some forms related directly to the invoice such as the invoice submittal checklist the labor certification form and then all supporting documents needed to back up the information that's put onto forms one two and then three a and three B required item is a copy of the progress report I've included an asterisk here because the progress report doesn't need to be contained in your email submission specifically but it should be uploaded to fast and approved by a DFA project manager um before the invoice review process starts so what you can do is if if your progress report's already been reviewed and approved you can make sure that the box in the invoice submittal checklist is checked for the progress report this lets everyone know who's reviewing that that item has been taken care of um so so just to summarize you you can include the progress report in your invoice submission if you want to um however if you're doing it separately both of these items should be uploaded fast just make sure that your progress report has been approved and uploaded fast prior to invoice submission and so here's the example of form number one the disbursement request form um once you've executed your agreement with DFA the disbursement analysts will send out some template forms for you to keep and that will help you with your invoice invoicing so this will be included as one of those template forms and all of the whites based on the form will will either be automatically updated or you won't need to fill that in um you just need to fill in the yellow spaces so you can see here on the form that there's some numbers so it's numbered one through ten um contained on page two of this document are some helpful instructions for each of these specifically to help you fill that out but um to to summarize what you need to do is just fill in the yellow spaces let's Follow the yellow brick road so this green box here these spaces these spaces and these spaces make sure that you fill out the information uh related to this invoice the the invoice that you're completing and then make sure that the Project Director signs here and dates um unless your ta agreement contains match funds then you can safely ignore this box 8 here now it's not required to be filled out and so elaborating on the signature here from the Project Director this image that I pulled is from the the instructions that are sent out along with uh the invoice templates and so you can see from here that signatures one through four are acceptable on the dis form so that's this Adobe digital signature here with the digital date stamp or any of these three signatures that resemble a handwritten image of an image of a handwritten signature what we don't want is this type on the right there is a typed signature with like that font like signature font we don't want that any of these other four can be used on the on the dis form and second we have an example of the reimbursement request form and so on this one you only need to fill out the following three sections this area in the middle right here where you input the amount requested and these two zones at the bottom or you input the signature and the date um and the important part here is you can see that there's these blue sections at the top right and then there's some more blue sections um below that's kind of cut off by the image but these you don't need to fill out because the disbursement analyst is going to complete this form once they receive it so just to repeat you only need to fill out these sections that are boxed in green and then the second point for the reimbursement request form is that like I said earlier this needs to be a separate document from the from the package submission and that's because if you include it in the package these uh these fillable forms these light blue ones will be destroyed and uh we the disbursement analysts won't be able to fill out the remainder of the form so make sure that you submit this as a separate PDF to keep all of these fields intact then similarly here's the instructions um for acceptable signatures on the RR form important to note here is that signature a is the only signature type that will keep the formulas intact so if you're submitting digitally please just use signature type A so that none of the fields contain on the form are destroyed all right moving on to the package itself the first document that you need to include in the package is the invoice submittal checklist this one is more for the TA providers benefit it has a list of required documents on the on the invoice some of these that we've already gone over such as the RR form the dis form and these top two right here but as the provider you're just going to check the box yes if you've included all these items and then you're going to include a signature and a date at the bottom uh the signature type for this one can match the same requirements as the dis form and then the second document included in the invoice package is the labor certification form and so this document is important for summarizing all of the Personnel Powers contained within the invoice and putting all of that information onto one page so you can see that we need employee name and employee classification so for your admin time and for all the time spent on work plans you're going to list um employees that or um that were involved in that work then you're going to list the classification and then some of the other information here on the right and then the total will be filled out automatically the important part of this forum is that this amount right here the total Personnel cost this needs to match whatever is reported in the dis so the dis has a spot for personnel costs on the invoice make sure that whatever that number is matches up with whatever numbers reported here and that the rest of your supporting documentation supports getting to this number similarly the signature type for this document can can match the dis requirements as well and then finally we have some examples of the supporting documents that might be required on your invoice and so the first being the progress report and as we discussed before you can include a copy of your progress report with your submission or you can have just an approved copy uploaded to fast either way the the project manager is going to use the progress report when they're reviewing the invoice and so it's going to be um Supple it's going to be supplemental to the invoice review and it is not required so wherever you want to include a copy of that either an email submission or a previous submission to fast is good second you're going to have one or perhaps multiple depending on your agreement pm and admin details forms and so this is for any work done to support the agreement itself not necessarily specific to a one work plan or one AR and then third you're gonna have work plan invoice detail forms and so for each AR you're going to fill out one of these forms and it'll detail the amount of personal hours spent on the work plan as well as any um of the other agreement categories such as travel or consultant costs for that work plan um and then fourth you're going to include the labor certification form and you're going to include any backup documentation you might need to support the numbers included on there um five any travel costs associated with the project make sure you include your seats um six again receipts for supplies and equipment for any um of those costs being claimed and then item seven is invoices for professional and consultant services including laboratory services so to summarize I'm gonna back up here on your supporting documentation you're going to have one invoice submittal checklist one labor certification form summarizing all the labor done on the invoice and then you're going to have a different mix of these items here depending on what's being played um you most likely you'll have one admin sheet for the admin work done and then you'll have work plan invoice detail forms for each AR and there's some exceptions to this such as if your agreement has multiple um administrative like categories or if you are participating in capacity development work you might be tracking the specifics of um item three differently or item two but that's kind of a on average you'll have one of these and then multiple of these form of these item three all right and so um I just have really quickly some examples of the PM and admin form and the workplain details form and so these are very similar um you'll note that there's a there's a spot for personnel and then all of the other agreement categories here this first form is just for the admin work done to support the agreement and the second one is for um most commonly each AR is going to have one of these in the invoice so you can see at the top here it says ta start date ta recipients uh work plan ID number so you'd fill out this and that would indicate to the person reviewing which project this is for and then you can include Personnel consultant costs for that work plan on here next I wanted to cover some of the Cal HR guidelines the calendar guidelines for travel are quite extensive and I recommend for going to their website which I've linked here to fully review some of the conditions and criteria for their travel however there's there's three big categories of travel there's the meals there's the overnight lodging and then there's the personal vehicle mileage rate and so these three tables are something that it's a good idea to check every time you're doing an invoice just to make sure that the the rates have not changed that you're using the correct rates and so you can see the rates for meals up here um please reference the calhart website to determine um the length of travel and how that corresponds to what meals can be claimed um there's there's separate rules for travel less than 24 hours versus travel that goes longer than 24 hours and those are explained in in better detail on their website however these are the the rates for meals that can be claimed second we have the maximum lodging reimbursement rates All Counties accept the ones that are listed in the table have a maximum rate of 90 and then these counties the maximum rate increases per night and so again if you're looking for information about a specific County or if you're wondering how taxes for the room are affected in contribute into this number then that information can be found on Cal hr's website and then finally the the current vehicle mileage reimbursement rate is listed on the website in this table here and so for 2023 that number is 65 and a half cents per mile as you can see in the first row and so when you're preparing the travel supporting documentation you're going to want to include these four items that I've listed here so the first being the starting and the ending address of the travel the second being the total miles traveled the third being a map showing the route taken and I put an asterisk here because um If you're receiving backup documentation from a subcontractor we're not requiring them to include a map of their travel specifically however know that we still need to have information about the travel to to verify it um DFA does and the DFA project manager might request justification to support the review of the travel and so however for the TA providers we're asking for a map showing the route taken on the travel and then item four is that justification that I mentioned so any additional information that helps explain what route was taken how many miles were traveled if there were tolls um for example would be helpful anything helpful to supporting the um the support the the documentation should be included in a written note then other types of travel such as rental cars and flights might require additional items to these four such as receipts or cost comparisons depending on what method of travel is used and so I've included an example of backup documentation that we might want to see on an invoice for travel and I'm going to highlight the the four items that I just went over so the first item is we want to see the start and end address and you can see that that's listed up top here the travel started at Golden Gate Park and they traveled to dfa's headquarter buildings in Sacramento second we have the total number of miles driven and so that's 85.9 and from the justification we know that this was a round trip so but the we have the total mileage from point A to point B listed here on the backup item three is the map and so by right clicking on Google Maps and clicking print you can get a very good map of the travel conducted and include that in the invoice package and then also on Google Maps if you use this method you can include item four justification quite easily because there's a section to type out notes so you can see that this person um they explained that and confirmed that this is a round trip total of 179 miles they confirmed the start time and the end time of their travel which might be helpful for determining meals eligibility um under Cal HR they've noted that they drove six miles on site which is helpful if their claim is ends up being higher than this 179 for example if it's 185 miles then we know that the extra mileage being claimed was um for what they drove on site and then they have also noted that they included are that they will be reimbursing for tolls and so then we know that we're looking for receipts for the for the tolls and so um in in this image this is um like if this was a page after the consultant um backup documentation showing the travel this would this would answer all of um most of our questions and so that includes the types of forms and the types of backup documentation that we'd be looking for in an invoice and so that's what gets submitted to DFA disbursements once DFA disbursements receives the invoice package they're going to begin their review and they're going to utilize these categories here and so first they're going to check the invoice forms they're going to check if the forms are complete correct and if they're referencing the correct time frame make sure all the items are in the billing period they're also going to check the invoice submittal checklist to make sure that all of the required items are included and will be checked off by the TA provider and the bulk of the review is going to be focused on this work plan invoice details and supporting documentation and they're going to review items such as making sure that the rates in the labor certification form are eligible based off of the agreement budget asterisks here because uh the budget that's submitted with your technical assistance agreement has classification information and so we treat that as the maximum for that classification so when we when we're checking individuals on the labor certification we just need to ensure that their rate doesn't exceed the the rate set for that classification in your budget and so um that's what the disbursement analysts in the PM we're going to be looking for on this item and then in general the the PM will check if project costs are eligible the PM working more directly with the with the work plan will have a better idea and so the da often will flag items that um that are questionable and then the PM will make the final review third the PM's gonna check the all the travel and make sure that the to meet the Cal HR guidelines and then they're going to check the supporting documentation such as uh consultant invoices make sure that those are within the correct billing period and then finally as they go through the review the disbursement analyst is going to be looking at the calculations and making sure that there's no typos or errors that they can in those documents okay and then once the da completes their review the GFA project manager will begin their review and approval and so some of the items for the backup documentation are going to overlap for example the the project manager is going to be checking for eligible costs as well it will be checking all the items flagged by the disbursement analyst they're going to be checking for making sure costs are directly related to project work and they're also going to be checking the the rates and travel however the project manager is also going to cross-reference the progress report with the invoice and make sure that all of the work being reported in the progress report is matching up with the work being invoiced in the invoice and make sure that if there's any delays or issues that are noted in the progress report that um that we're not paying out for delayed work in the invoice too early for example they're just going to make sure that the reports match up with what's being requested in the invoices and then of course they're going to check calculations as they go also looking for typos and um and other calculation errors and so I've I've mentioned a lot of eligible versus ineligible costs and so I've compiled a list that should look pretty similar to the indirect costs from earlier but with a few key differences however note that there's a difference between agreements based off of salary and Fringe versus agreements that are based off of the standard hourly rate and so I'll actually cover that first if we look at item number two here if you're using the standard uh if you're using the salary infringe reimbursement method then Consultants can't charge indirect costs overhead or markup fees and I know that recently we've been developing agreements with consultantee providers and so those ta providers are using a standard hourly rate for reimbursement and have different requirements for this so asterisks on the indirect costs being ineligible at base it's based off of the the method of your reimbursement and then second um we have overtime hours charged at a higher rate another asterisk here because um we we might need to pay out overtime at a higher rate if that work is um uh sorry I'm blanking on the turn but um basically if it's a prevailing wage if the overtime hours are paid at prevailing wage then we might need to pay them out but this asterisk is here because um overtime hours need to be approved by DFA prior to being conducted and then whether or not the overtime hours are eligible is a more of a case-by-case analysis so if you know that you're going to need overtime on a project make sure to work with your ta project manager first and um confirm the the overtime being conducted the reasoning behind that send that to the project manager and then they will work out with you um whether or not the overtime hour rate can be used but so that's why there's an asterisk here but for the in general over time hours should not be charged and it should be charged the normal rates um and then the rest of these items we have equipment not specifically needed for the project tuition fees deductibles for insurance audit costs travel meals outside of calichar and then some of the similar items to the indirect costs I've seen earlier I will highlight here though that legal fees associated with litigation are not are ineligible costs and so here are some common invoice errors that are found during the review and so the first being if incorrect or missing signatures and dates um on the invoice so if they if if there's any incorrect or missing signatures then that needs to be corrected before the invoice can be approved oftentimes that's a dispute item second if there's items outside of the billing period they need to be accompanied with justification explaining why the items being charged outside of the billing area billing period like I said previously we can't reimburse for work that is yet to be completed but if you have work from a past invoice period without any justification on it then that's not going to be eligible and you need to work with the TA project manager to provide justification for why those items are being charged outside of the building period third we have uh incorrect invoice submission methodology you're going to want to stick to one of the two methods we highlighted earlier in the presentation and then fourth calculation errors which happens to everyone but any work you can do to kind of catch those and get on top of it will definitely smooth out the review process fifth any deviation from Cal HR travel guidelines this can cause problems during the review so this might include um the consultant rounding up on the number of miles they're claiming for rounding down even um and any other deviations such as not using the correct mileage rate they sometimes use a previous year's mileage rate which reduces the total claim so a good thing to check when they're claiming travel is just to make sure that the correct calorie chart guidelines for the when the travel was conducted are being used missing or incorrect consultant backup documentation so we need to um we need to have a invoice included even for subcontractors even if the subcontractor is doing work at like a um I like a flat fee so um often times in speaking for the the salary and Fringe agreements um we we need to see the hours and the the rates for the subcontractors as well working on items however um we need to see those as well as an invoice in general even if they're doing work that would be reimbursed at a at a standard rate so um this item just make sure that the consultant can submits proper backup documentation and then lastly we have unclear annotations so through the process of copying the invoice documents and putting them into the PDF and submitting there might be like a one-time colored pen markings that now look the black just like with the other characters or there might be um notes that were once there that maybe got cut off and so sometimes it's difficult to read or understand notes on the PDF document so a really helpful tip for submitting the PDFs is to include a comment on the PDF document explaining the purpose of a note and that's going to speed up the review process greatly for the da and for the PM so once the PM approves the invoice they will submit the whole package to the disbursements email address and so this package is going to contain the checklist that both the da and the PM utilize to complete the review it's going to contain the dis and RR forms the dis being signed by the PM and then if there were any disputes involved with the invoice the PM's going to summarize those include a copy of the email chain in the in the submission package for approval the the disbursement analysts will then accept that package and um prepare the RR form and submit that to their manager for approval and then once the that managers given approval the disbursement analyst will email the TA provider informing them the payment or that the invoice has been approved and that the um they will be sending the payment um to the accounting or accounting department and so from there we get to the end of our timeline where accounting approves the payment and sends it to the state controller's office and that process taking about four to six weeks and then I want to highlight here if um if at any point in the process um you suspect that the invoice has been like you need to know a status of it just work with your technical assistance pm and they will do their best to get you an update on where the invoice is at in the review process it might be more difficult if the invoices on the later stages with the state controller's office but we can do our best to estimate a time frame by which you might see the the check in the mail and then finally I wanted to end off with some best practices when submitting invoice packages um so first just check that the valid signature types are used on all the invoice forms and if you need a reminder of what those are you can reference back to this PowerPoint slide and it will have the different signature types that are accepted for some of our different invoice forms second verify that um the deductions that you that were up on past invoices are recorded and then updated for your next submission so oftentimes uh we'll make a deduction on an invoice but then the next invoice after that comes in and that deduction wasn't applied to the previous expenditures so just make sure that as you receive invoice approval notifications no data if there's been any deductions and make sure those apply to the next invoice third verify that the Personnel amount claimed on the dis matches the amount claimed on the labor certification which we went over and then fourth double check any travel that it meets calhart guidelines and so this last one especially is just helpful to to just verify that the correct mileage rate was used the correct number of miles was claimed that that'll help speed up the invoice process um greatly and thank you everyone for um sitting through all of the information about invoices I know there was a lot of forms and uh requirements covered but if you have any questions about the invoicing process please uh raise your hand or put them into the chat for us to answer speakers you can tell me and ask your question hi Jason I have a question in regards of in submitting invoices could you clarify if we can submit invoices while we're going through an amendment process basically we're extending contracts are we able to submit invoices during that period um it depends on whether or not your current agreement has expired or not so if if you're amending ahead of the work completion date then um depending on how close it gets then the answer is yes so for example if it's a few months away and the the invoice process is going to be complete then yes however if your current agreement has expired then you're going to need to complete the agreement Amendment first and then submit your invoice claim after okay thank you does anyone have any other questions for adjacent hi Jason sorry I can't raise my hand um wrong Zoom platform I had a question about the mileage so you're saying if we use the Google platform and we type in the justification for why we're claiming 183 miles and the map said 179 that would be allowed from the state so if we went to where destination and let's say we had to do medium household income surveys and we were driving around that Community you're saying that we don't need a map for let's say the 10 miles we drove around that particular Community for it as long as we wrote it here for that specific purpose yes so um if if you do provide a map for where you drove in the community that's great however like let's say that you're leaving from DFA headquarters in this image and your community is in the Bay Area so if you just provided the map shown here and then if the extra mileage was like six or seven miles and you included justification with that um it's subject to whoever's reviewing your invoice whatever project manager is reviewing but in most cases I think that would be sufficient oh yeah go ahead Michaela yeah sorry I wasn't sure if you saw the question in the chat go ahead so it says you noted a difference earlier between a TA provider versus a subcontractor invoice procedure for the mileage are there other differences in requirements between the two types of invoices um I'm gonna I'm just giving it a thought um um not not for the travel no um that I can think of if anyone else wants to chime in with other differences they might be thinking of go ahead um but I will I will highlight um on the Travel portion I was talking about um a TA provider versus a subcontractor for what we're looking at with travel backup documentation in in both cases the TA provider and the subcontractor need to keep all of their backup documentation on file in the event of an audit we're just not requesting the full maps from the TA subcontractors or from the subcontractors on the agreement and then just to just to make sure that we're on the same page I'm going to skip forward here too so when I was discussing ineligible costs we have the um ta agreement salary and Fringe reimbursement type versus the standard hourly rate type so to answer the second part of your question where you asked about if there's differences between the two types of agreements um there are versus when you're when you're considering if it's a non-profit ta provider using salary infringe or versus a standard hourly rate type agreement some of those differences being the one I highlighted here versus how consultant indirect costs overhead or markup fees are considered and then others um are going to depend on the agreement itself and I know that we're still developing some of the agreements that are using standard hourly rates so as um if you have further questions as we go along about those types of agreements then um any of the TA staff can help you answer those as well any other questions for adjacent before I take our break all right if there's not any other questions at this time we'll be taking a 10 minute break and we'll resume our training at 306. thank you everyone thank you everyone hello everyone hope you had a good break um since it has been 10 minutes we will continue with our training and for this part of the training I will hand it over to ibby to go over fast good afternoon my name is CPM Rivera and I work in the small communities ta unit I also serve as one of several financial assistance applications submittal tool administrators and today I will give a quick overview about fast how the TA program uses fast address some common issues that have come up provide some resources for fast and give a live demonstration so the financial assistance application submittal tool fast is a web-based interface it's used by the division of financial assistance to administer Grant and loan programs in particular for the purposes of the TA providers the majority of you will be if you're working on a full planning project you will start and submit a application in fast that's separate and apart and I'll talk about that in a few slides fast is available 24 hours a day 365 days a year a user account is required to access fast and um so the TA program uses fast as a portal to collect information um and tier providers will use fast in two different ways One You're Gonna um we use it as an agreement application portal so that means um in the past we had a solicitation in 2016 that allowed the TA providers to apply and then they were selected and then they used that application as their agreement application which means they would upload deliverables project reports and invoices it's the same pin for the entire agreement for the new ta providers we are in the process of creating those applications or the agreement applications for you it will reach out to you separately to get that set up um and then the second way is applying for Grant and Loan funding on behalf of systems so that's the clean water srf and drinking water srf planning or construction applications and that will have a unique proposal identification number or pin for each application so um before I continue so there there are distinctions there's a a clean water planning application there's a clean water srf construction application there's a drinking water srf planning application there's a drinking water srf construction application so um knowing which one of those you're going to be applying for on behalf of a system or whether the assigned work would be uploaded as a deliverable that distinction is made in what we refer to as an AR assignment email that email um we'll let you know whether you're doing a full planning application I mean a full planning project or if you're preparing and submitting a planning application and whether it's clean water or drinking water so you're always going to want to refer back to that AR assignment email so who has access to the agreement application um when we set up those applications for you the TA director Project Director is going to be automatically Associated um then any additional staff that that needs access because they've been designated the person to upload deliverables or progress reports or invoices um they can be added to that agreement application at the request of the TA project manager so who has access to funding applications um in fast so typically that would be the person automatically the person who started that application it could be a TA staff person it could be I mean ta provider staff it could be the water system or sewer system or even a consultant for one of the Water Systems additional staff can be added let's say a TA provider staff has started the application but the system wants system representative wants to take a look at the application they need a fast user account and we can get them associated with the application and we'll talk about that in a few slides um a little bit okay oops all right so there's um a couple of issues that have come up repeatedly in fast um and there's five of them the first being adding and removing user access to an application and that could be the agreement application um as well so there's a tab in fast that's titled add user you can as long as you know their username and it is case sensitive you can add them or you can de-associate that user from the application so that's for the agreement application or an application that you're submitting for funding for a water system or a system or the second option is you can send an email to the fast help desk with the following information the proposed identification number the name of the staff person and whether you want to add them or remove them the second issue that has come up is creating correcting an applicant organization um typically this occurs when at the time of setting up the app starting a new application for some reason or another the person clicks the wrong button and they let's say it's rcac and they have listed rcac as the applicant they need to change that so the way to do that would be to send an email to the fast help desk with the applicant organization name their legal name right their legal entity name and their address and the proposal identification number and then we can correct it behind the scenes so it's an easy fix so you don't need to panic but you just contact the fast help desk and we can take care of that for you the third issue that comes up often is who's the srf project manager for this clean water srf or drinking water srf planning or construction application and the good news is we can tell you if they have been assigned we can look that up in fast so you can one check with your ta project manager or you can contact the fast help desk and we can look it up for you typically it takes like five weeks from the time when you submit an application for that um for a project to be assigned an srf project number and a project manager okay so the fourth common issue is deleting an attachment let's say you've uploaded the wrong deliverable um the wrong version Etc to your app your agreement application or even to one of the funding applications so the you are not able to delete an attachment after the application has been submitted and fast however you can contact the fast help desk with the proposal identification number the title name the attachment title name upload date and time and see your ta project manager and then we'll take a look and see if it's something that we can do we try to discourage people from deleting things because fast is like a snapshot in time but we understand that occasionally stuff happens and you do need to remove something wrong project wrong document that sort of thing um so contact the help desk if you need to have something removed the fifth common issue is correcting a selected funding program for an application so um we do not have an easy fix let's say you started an application it was supposed to be a construction application you started a planning application by mistake for drinking water you contact the fast help desk and you say hey can you change the funding program no we cannot unfortunately but what we can tell you to do is to start a new application and you know submit it the here's the thing in fast when you start a new application and I'll show you in a little bit you are able to there's a screen pops up where it shows you which funding program you have selected and if you pick the wrong one you can go back and correct and fix you could go back and select the appropriate funding program so it's just another double check and how do you know which funding program you should be at selecting um for the application again you're going to refer back to your AR assignment email so you know which whether you're doing drinking water clean water planning or construction um that information is contained there okay oops uh oh sorry all right here we go resources so there are several resources on the fast website um we have of course the fast help desk we're available Monday through Friday 8 A.M to 5 p.m our email is fast underscore admin waterboards.ca.gov our phone number is 1-866-434-1083 um if you call and I'm available I will answer the call if I'm not we ask that you leave a voicemail message leave your name and phone number twice so if I don't catch you on the first time I catch it on the second time and a user manual so we have a user manual um in fast that you can refer to it's geared towards applicants you know the people who are applying um and then the third we have a how-to videos of several they're geared towards those who are applying for clean water srf or drinking water srf application and it shows you how to create an account how to start submit an application all that good stuff so um let's do a demonstration of fast oops all right can you see my screen oh we're still seeing the PowerPoint hmm now can you see my browser window yes we can see it now thank you all right so this is the fast website and I don't think it's showing very well all right here we go so just to give you a quick orientation the FAQs how-to videos user manual um even links to funding programs that are available in fast you can go here look it up um so we're gonna create an account and the username is K sensitive so here's your reminder okay so let's create an account and fast is a two-step process increases just a little so you can see it better okay so fast is a two-step process well actually three but we'll talk about that in a minute so let's say um you are creating an account for yourself you work for rcac we're gonna try a rule assistance it's not listed as role assistance okay we're gonna try RC AC and it's here and you have two options so if you work out of the freeboard drive office you're going to select that one and then if it's not the correct one you can create a new organization and you would enter the legal entity name for the organization provide the address and if you have a duns or the unique um entity number you could enter that so um for the purpose of today I'm going to enter one that I created myself okay so that's step one this is step two you're going to enter your information oops first name last name enter if you can we like to have phone numbers so that way we can reach out to you if we need to by phone um I'm going to enter my email address and as a means to avoid having a lot of Bounce backs we ask you to do it twice all right and you have the option of subscribing to email alerts however um when we say email alerts that means you're subscribing to receive emails about every funding opportunity made available and fast and that could potentially be funding programs like grants it could be um loan programs it could be some that have a set deadline some that have are continuously accepting applications and it could potentially be a funding program offered by another state agency so if you don't want to receive all those emails you would select no if you do leave it as yes let's type in a new um a new user account let's see if this works and we're going to type in a password and your password needs to have an upper lowercase and at least one new numeric number and a special character all right so I have my password in there I've selected my what my security question is going to be and you'll need that the answer the question and the answer for if you need to retrieve your password okay oh I didn't like that let's see okay all right so now um it says the log go back to the to the login page but as you can see up here it says new accounts must be activated before an user can log on to fast so please check the email set at the time of account creation for the activation link so you create an account go back to your email get that confirmation email and there's going to be a link you're going to click on that it's gonna take you to a screen that says activation successful now you can log into fast so I'm going to log into fast as an applicant or we say applicant but it's really anybody who's submitting an application on behalf or of their organization or another organization okay I'm going to select applicant in your case it would just be applicant and the name of your organization all right so this is the applicant main menu you can start a new application you can check existing applications that haven't been submitted you can also look at submitted application and submitted applications are read-only so you only get to see things you don't get to modify any information so once an application is submitted and fast it is read-only um so I'm going to show you how to start a new application these are this is our system disclosure we ask that you use Microsoft Edge because it's a one browser that we support at the water board we encourage you to save your work often um the system will time out after 90 minutes and so if you walk away for a meeting phone call take a lunch and it goes longer any work that's not saved will be lost and there's no way to recover it um disabled pop-up block blocking software so you can check each of these this is going to appear each time you submit uh you start a new application you click on the continue button so USTA providers are always going to select option two applicant organization is not the same as submitting organization you're submitting an application on behalf of another organization so option two and this is where you are going to specify who your applicant is um you can just type in a simple one word couple words and it'll give you everything that contains that word you don't need to really concern yourselves about the organization department or the organization ID you wouldn't know that off the top of your head so it's okay to bypass that I'm going to select Pico again if you don't find the organization here you're working with a system that's not in fast already you can create the record for them but again you need their legal entity name and their address to create a record is I'm going to select city of Pico Rivera these are all the funding programs currently accepting fast there are deadlines um as I said it's easy to get confused there's a clean water srf construction and implementation application clean water State revolving planning drinking water State revolving construction drinking water State revolving planning so for our purposes I'm going to pick drinking water safe revolving planning and this is the screen that I talked about where it's like gives you an opportunity to double check what you selected in fast we refer to funding programs as rfps requests for proposals so um just you know when you see this think of funding program title and so again you're going to be referring to your AR assignment email to confirm that you have the correct um you're applying for the correct funding all right so and again this is a description so you should know that you're selecting the correct one we're going to say okay you can go back and check um like if you were supposed to be applying for construction you could click back and you are able to select the other funding programs so I'll just do that all right so now it shows drinking water construction you're great your applicant organization is the city of Pico Rivera you are you know your it'll be your ta provider name continue to application and this is the page where you'll enter basic information the project title project description if you're working with a drinking water system you're going to enter their water system ID the numbers not CA you're just the numbers for their ID you're going to specify the district office t