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Sample invoice for services for Research and Development

>> I'm really excited to be here. I am Eugene Hwang. I am Acquisition Project Management Specialist for the Civilian Services Acquisition Workshop Program on the Office of Professional Services and Human Capital Categories. I've been with the GSA about 14 years as a contract specialist, project manager, and currently facilitator for the CISA program. And I'll pass to my co-host for her introduction. >> Thanks, Eugene. Hi, everybody, my name is Joy, and I'm an Acquisition Project Manager with Assisted Acquisition Services in GSA, and I'm happy to be supporting Eugene today as he delivers this webinar, and I'll be one of those helping out with monitoring the Q&A, so throw your questions at us and we'll do our best to respond. Thanks, Eugene. >> All right, so here are the topics that we'll cover today. We will cover what invoices information you should have, including file requirement, how to interpret and review and process those invoices. So let's talk about invoice. What is an invoice? I'm certain that all of you have seen and processed invoices, cable, phone, electricity, maybe you have some right now laying around your desk somewhere. We all know what invoices we have seen and processed, so why do we have this webinar? Let's look at some examples. So dictionary definition of an invoice is a list of goods sent or services provided with a statement of some [inaudible], a bill. Literally, a bill or invoice is something that's saying, "Hey, we want to get paid for a service we provided." So what is the difference between bill and invoice? Is there a difference? Bill and invoices are very similar, but invoices generally have specific information to the goods and/or services provided, as you see on this example here. So now we know there is a difference between bill and invoices. So bill, an invoice, invoice has a little more information, we still want to get paid, but what is something unique about government invoices? Is there a difference for government invoices? If there is, what is an invoice for government and how is it different? Joy, could you elaborate a little more on how government invoice is different from? >> Yes. So when a government employee accepts an invoice, it's important to keep in mind that you're not just accepting the invoice for payment, but you're also accepting that the work has been completed in ance with the terms and conditions of the contract and that the government is accepting the work. So that's a major difference. >> Thank you. So we've just briefly talked about what is an invoice, right? A list of goods and/or services provided with a statement of sum due for these, a bill, which is the dictionary definition, and then there's invoice, which government use as, meaning a contract is a bill or written request for payment under the contract for supplies delivered or services performed, which equals to proper invoice. Now, proper invoice does have a place in FAR, Part 32, Sub-Part 905. Proper invoice have a lot of information, which we'll cover in next slide, and please be mind with us, it's a little bit involved text here, but we will review all these items. So generally, when you see the government invoice, or any invoice, you will see what is this for, who it's been billing to, who is it from, and the amount. Now, on proper invoice for the government, the FAR regulates that you need to have listed here the names, addresses, billing information, there's a whole list of items that you need to see on an invoice. I will show you another additional part here. This is all the additional information from FAR. So on the previous slide and this slide, it requires all this information to be a proper invoice for the government. Now, I want you to pay attention at the bottom where it says the Pegasys Document Number, PDN, purchase order, PO, number of Accounting Control Transaction, ACT number, or Federal Identification Number. These are some of the unique numbers you may see with your invoice, but ensure that you check with your agency policy and contract requirement for which identifying number is required as you may not see all or any of these numbers. So let's go into some of the invoice examples, understanding the proper invoice need to have all these information. So now we are looking -- uh-oh, sorry about that. I think I skipped one. There you go. Now, this is an example of invoice. You see the invoice date, billing number, invoice number, task order number, it has amount on it, so it is having some of a proper invoice, but you may notice that it may not have all the invoice information to be a proper invoice. Does this make it an acceptable or unacceptable invoice? Let's look at another example. So here's another screenshot of an example invoice. It still have invoice date, billing number, and some of the information that is required to be a proper invoice. Now, you may see a different template, different format, depending on the vendor, but they should always have required information to be a proper invoice. Now, looking at this and considering some of bullet item for proper invoice information, is this acceptable or unacceptable? How can we tell the difference? Here are some additional information that your invoice may have, depending on your requirements, such as contract number, due date, billing information. So in order to be a proper invoice, there is a lot of information that invoice may need to have. Now, some items here we listed as cost and fees and contract value, funded value, these may not be applicable to your contract and you may not have this information on your invoice submitted. However, you need to consider this information to be crucial if your contract requires it. Joy, could you elaborate a little more into those? >> Yeah, so specifically for the contract value and the funded values, every invoice is going to look different because all contracts are different. However, many times you'll see sort of a drawdown from the funded value. So a good practice would be to not only accept attachments that are PDFs, have that discussion with your contractor whether an Excel spreadsheet might be a useful attachment because you can see formulas, you can see the drawdown itemized a little bit more clearly. And Eugene will talk more about that later. >> Thank you. Hey, I'm seeing some great questions here. I'll answer these two quickly. Allen asked, are vendors required to send a paid-in-full statement? I've been told to upload such document for each U.S. bank credit card transaction. I not always received one. It's a great question, Allen, thank you. Some of these requirements may be what is on contract requirements, so the proper invoice, but FAR requirement may not state for your paid-in-full statement needs to be included in your submitted invoice. This may be something that your contract may require, and we'll look at next slides where you can find those information if there's additional requirements for your contracts requirement. There's one more. Toad -- Todd asks, I'm sorry, it does not look like an IPP invoice, Invoice Processing Platform. We weren't going to necessarily cover that, but we'll address that. These invoices are obviously vendor submitted, right? Not all invoices are going to have a template or similarity. You may have, depending on your contract, if you are doing ITs or professional services, you may have a similar template that's used in your agency or your contract shop. However, the IPP is a completely different beast. We will cover a little bit about GSA Assist a little later about how they process the invoice, and we'll touch little bases on IPP as this is something new that came on. Let's see, we are going to look at another example of an invoice here. So this is a sample invoice. As you see on the left corner, there's a CLIN and there's a quantity and description and amount. So these are only showing few of information that is required to be a proper invoice. What I want to discuss on this particular invoice is that when there's only a single CLIN item yet multiple description and quantities going to that claim, is this proper? Is this acceptable? Is this right? Well, that really, depending on contract, which is a great answer to every acquisition contracting shop, but for example, on this one, this particular example, yes, this is acceptable as long as they're describing the quantities and user data, and this ties back to the contract showing this is how they must bill. Here's another example, a little similar and different. Now, you see it has a big lump sum, big description, and there's a single CLIN number. Now, if you're looking at this invoice, does this look right? I mean, you see some of the proper information that need to be on the invoice, but just looking at this is very challenging. So how can you tell that, you know this has information required by FAR, but how can you tell if this is correct? What do I do with it? Well, that's where we need to look at the contract, and you need to really understand your role and what contract requirement is for the invoice. You should, you must should have the proper invoice detailed information, but if your contract requirement has additional information that needs to be submitted, such as description of each line item or quantities or deliverable date, they may need to be on your particular invoice and have them as a supporting document. So here are just some of invoice details. This is not necessarily part of the proper invoice requirement under FAR. However, with the detailed billing information, these might be something that contractually vendors are required to submit with their invoice. Again, there are some ODCs, training, travel, material and fees that you may not see on firm fixed price contract costs plus or other contract types, which we'll discuss a little later. And one crucial information on this, with a special, with a travel and ODCs, generally speaking, the travel requires pre-authorization, which we will call a little more later, but understand that when these detailed information is needed for your invoice, you may require supporting document per contract requirements. All right, so here is an example. Todd, I see the IPP portion, so we'll discuss that a little bit further down. So here's an example of an invoice. Now, when you're looking at this particular one, and if you're not familiar with this particular contract, it may seem a lot of information. It goes into details of each item, power supply, DXLinks, HDMI. It goes on and on, and it shows the quantity one, quantity two, and it does have a project number, ACT number, Task Order Number, so it seems like it has a proper invoice information, and do mind that I did a couple of dates off in billing information, so we're just looking at the description, but when you're looking at this, just out of your head, do you think this is a proper invoice, or do you think this is nonsense? Well, with this particular example, I have omitted one information which is the supporting documents, so when you're looking at this, there's quantities, doesn't have really deliverable date. Now, first thing is that you want to ensure invoice include the data that can be easily tracked and reviewed. If this invoice comes in with another supporting document showing that the NetLinx integrated controller cost is $2,000, great. Now you know what part of that total invoice amount is broken down to each individual item. So when you receive different quantities, each price should be itemized so calculation can be easily done and tracked, and also, if it has particular delivery date for your materials, that should be also included on invoices as well because it'll make it so much easier to track the information, validate, and process those invoice informations. So here's another example of labor hours. This invoice is labor hours. Note that it tracks rate, current balance, and cumulative balance. Now, when you're looking at labor categories or labor rates, you must ensure it matches awarded rate and not-to-exceed hours. Excessive hours compared to previous invoices, ensure there is funding available. It is a lot different from material, and we'll cover a little bit more as a firm fixed price and time and material contract types and how those can be reviewed. Next slide here, and this one is on materials. Joy, could you elaborate on this particular invoice and their cost? >> Yeah, when you have an invoice for ODCs, we call them, other direct costs, or materials like this, you want to make sure you're checking for receipts. A lot of times purchases like this could be pre-authorized on a request to initiate purchase or a rep or even a technical direction letter, a TDL, so you'll want to check against those pre-authorized purchases and make sure the cost hasn't changed between then and now when they're invoicing. A lot of times with invoices like this, a little more complicated, you'll see multiple attachments, so just look through all your attachments and maybe even at the beginning of a contract when you're establishing your relationship and your processes with the contractor, maybe discuss what attachments are we going to want to see for this type of work or these type of materials so you're all on the same page. >> Thank you. I just noticed some question here that I think I missed. So some of them, Gracie is asking, what if contract does not itemize each item? So previous slide here, it's going through some of -- sorry, here's the material on it. So it's asking, all are shown under a single CLIN, will the mod have to be created to itemize in the contract? Well, that is a great question, Gracie. Generally speaking, you will want to look at the contract requirements, which we'll cover in down slides. However, that if you did not have this required information, if your contract did not designate, hey, when you submit an invoice, you shouldn't have all the itemized line items, mod may be required. However, you might want to refer back to the proper invoice and the FAR requirement that when they submit the invoice, the invoice must have itemized list, the cost of each line item, and so forth. So I would refer back to your FAR clause included on your contract, and however, if it was not discussed during a time of post-kickoff meeting, maybe mod is required, but I would refer back to your contracting officer. Generally speaking, if you have a lot of material that's your purchasing, generally the vendors should submit all the itemized list of quantities and each cost item. All right, and then there is one more question I want to -- this was anonymous, seems to me that invoices are for business service supplies while bills are tied to personal transaction. I'm not quite sure what you're asking on that, but generally speaking, we will cover the example here I have in materials, labor hours, and cods [phonetic], travels, and all that. So if you have additional follow-up on that, I'll greatly appreciate to elaborate a little more so we can cover that for you. So here is another example of invoice. Now, please note that all these invoices may look different than what you may receive depending on your contract requirement or template that may be required to use. This example is subcontractor's costs. So when you have a prime subcontractor relationship, and "prime" meaning submitting the invoice for the subcontractor, they are required to submit all the subcontractors' costs on the prime's invoice, meaning that when prime submits an invoice for $100,000, they should have -- if a part of that invoice was from subcontractors, they should have detailed information or what was submitted by the subcontractor as part of a prime invoice package. Here is an example of invoice that it's a credit. Sometimes invoices are credit. You may not see this often, but the invoice could be submitted within the government or state that it is a credit, and when you receive these types, you should be able to easily identify the submitted invoices, whether it's a payment or invoice, and have detailed information of what they are. If it's credit, what it's a credit for, their returned cost or they discharged labor hours or excessive hours, and then make sure that those information are detailed if it is on credit. All right, here is another example of invoice. Joy? >> Yeah, I think my comment for these would be, if you see invoices like this, sometimes you want to check with your customer, whoever the customer is, could be external. I know that is the case for AAS. We have served external customers who have their own systems that track work orders and stuff. So if you have work orders or other identifiers that tie back to the work on the customer side, you might want to consider incorporating that into the invoices that the contractor submits. That way we can track that work from cradle to grave, or from work being authorized to work being paid for. >> Thank you. I'd like to also point out, this particular invoice, if anybody like to think about it, now, on the second right on bottom, it says "paid via government credit card," government purchase card. You shouldn't be seeing this type of invoice. If the invoice is being submitted, I assume this is above your micro-purchase threshold or purchase card limit, so you shouldn't see that. If this invoice comes in, "Hey, here's the invoice, I want you to pay me," but there's a note or supporting documents showing that, oh, yeah, you know, it's paid by government purchase card, you should be rejecting that. So it is very important for you to review all the details on submitted document of the supporting document on that invoice. So now we had some questions on, and we've just covered some labor, direct materials, and so forth, so where can you find information on your invoice? I mean, we understand that the difference between invoice and government invoice and bill, we understand what proper invoice means and what kind of information you need to have, but it doesn't necessarily perhaps tie into your exact requirement. Maybe you're doing research, maybe you're doing professional services, maybe you have a bunch of subcontractors on that requirement. Where can you find those informations? Well, there's FAR 15.204-1, Uniform Contract Format, where Section G and Section H have some of this information you can find, especially in Section G, the contract and administrative authority, this will have who's reviewing it, who's certifying it, and who's paying it, and information on invoice instruction, how it should be submitted, what information is required, invoice submission such as frequencies, and other invoice requirements, supporting documents, rejection process, and so forth. Under Section H, you have a special contract requirement, travel authorization request and how travel authorization requests should be submitted prior to travel itself and/or tools, and other direct costs, ODCs. Joy, could you elaborate on why UCF is important for the invoice processing? >> Yes. So probably many of you have already received an answer to your questions. Go check your contract or check the contract terms and conditions. So this is what we're referring to. This provides the framework or the structure for where you can find the information that's relevant to your question. Another good tool is Ctrl-F. Just search the document for the word "invoice" or "billing" and you can find out where all that information is contained in your documents. >> Oh, there's a good comment here, most of our contract now falls on the FAR Part 212 which no longer uses UCF. Well, that is true. I mean, again, depending on your agency policy and some of your particular requirement, you may not use UCF depending on your agencies. Again, I just have to echo what Joy said already. Sometimes you need to check your agency policies and looking back to the contract. And I would love to hear a little bit more about if you're using FAR Part 12 and using UCF, how are you sharing the invoice instruction and the requirement with your vendor? All right, so, so far, we discussed what the invoices, where you can find information. Now you can identify what proper invoices and what information you should have and where to look for. What are the next steps? Do you need to look at is it accepted, reviewed, who reviews it? You have your finance team that process your invoice which you accepted. What information, additional information needs to be reviewed and validated, then something you may be tracking internally, your funding tracking, for example, and does it require a certain acceptance form, such as the DD250, or receipt, or a travel pre-authorization as a supporting document? I know we already discussed that a lot of these information can be found on your contract. Is there anything else we should be aware of? Joy, would you like to chime in? >> So I can offer my perspective from how AAS operates. It's going to look different for every contracting shop, I'm sure, depending on what your teams -- how your teams are structured and what roles you have on your teams. In AAS, we tend to have a CO, a CS, a contract specialist, we have project managers oftentimes, and then sometimes we have internal and/or external CORs, and then all of us have our budgeting and finance people who are also interested in invoices as well. So somebody brought up a question earlier about what are the roles and how do they fit into the workflow? It's going to vary. In AAS, the contract specialist will review the invoice and make a recommendation whether we should accept it. Basically, they're reviewing against the terms and conditions of the contract, make sure that everything looks appropriate, provide that recommendation to the CO. The COR also has responsibility and authority to review and make a recommendation based on their understanding of the contract as well, and then the CO makes a determination and either approves or rejects, or approves for partial payment, so maybe a portion of the charges are correct and accurate and acceptable, but maybe the contractor inadvertently invoiced for something that's not complete yet. Well, we don't want to pay for that yet until it's complete, so we're going to pay for the stuff that's completed and then hold off on the other charges. At that point, when the CO has made a determination, the PM will go into whatever the invoicing system is. For us, it's called "GSA Assist," and then the PM will accept the invoice for payment. So at that point, there's some stuff I'm sure that happens behind the scenes with maybe finance or treasury, and ultimately the payment will reach the contractor after that. So it's, obviously, with that many people, it's important to communicate clearly and openly with people. If there are questions about the invoice, don't just go through the process, go through the motions. Pause, take a moment, ask some questions before you proceed. >> Thank you. I just want to echo what Joy said. It is very important to understand your workflow, the process of how your invoice is being submitted to your agency or your contract, and if you have a flowchart, especially, who's going to review what the next step is. If there's some questions or rejection item, who gets to speak about that, who needs to be contacted, so it is very important to understand the invoice process workflow for your contracts. I see we have a really good question. I will have some of them answered at Q&A time a little later, but one thing I do want to address here quick is, again, thank you so much for pointing out that UCF is not required for the simplified acquisition and so forth. Now, the example we shared earlier was to show where the invoice processing information could be for your contract if you are using UCF. So if you're using [inaudible] on the valid threshold or commercial item, you may have different information that you can't define on UCF, then you may need to come see your contract itself to see what kind of information is provided. So thanks for your comment. Here, I think that was all on that UCF one, so great. So some of these questions, I really appreciate it. We'll definitely try to tackle all these a little later in Q&A session, so please keep asking these questions. Really, thank you. All right, let's look at next example. So part of requirement, again, this is just the example of some supporting document. This is for the travel, as you see, you may be very familiar with using Concur. It shows, basically, taxes, and this is room reservation. So with the travel, you want to have all supporting documents submitted with invoice. Obviously, you already, if you have travel and you're getting travel reimbursement, you need to submit Uber receipts, parking ticket receipts, tax receipts, so when you are traveling and travel is required by your contract, that should submit all receipts because that will allow you to validate whether it exceeds the pre-authorization amount, and if it is exceeding what those particular line items are or what item that's been exceeded, those preauthorized costs, so that way you can validate, make good sound judgment whether they should be approved or rejected depending on your contract requirement, that this is why it's very crucial to have all supporting document, especially with traveling, even food receipts. >> So if I could jump in, Eugene, we've got a couple of questions about the partial payment, so I kind of wanted to go back to that for a minute, maybe add some clarity so that people can ask follow-up questions if needed. So with a partial payment, imagine this scenario. You have three claims on a contract and a contractor submits an invoice with charges against each of those CLINs, say one of those charges is incorrect. Say maybe it's work that hasn't been completed yet. The other two CLIN charges, they look fine. We could accept that, but we can't accept this. It is 100% the contracting officer's call whether they are willing to do that. It sounds like some of you guys may be in a contracting shop and there's a policy against that. Follow your policy. There may be something in the contract even about that. Follow your policies. Follow your contract terms and conditions. But it is true that there may be times when you could accept some of the charges, but not the others. Hopefully, that answers the questions, but if not, feel free to ask some follow-on. >> Thanks, Joy. Here is a screenshot, an example of DD250, which is Material Inspection and Receiving Report for the military. Generally, this is used in place of acceptance reports. So depending on your contract, I have seen DD250 utilize a lot for technical instruction. I see this a lot with the military contracts, DoD contracts. Instead of submitting bills of receipt or, for example, at the commissary, we have used this as receiving services or hours that's been permitted, and the COR on location will sign this document as acceptance of a service being performed. Now, if it's a commercial contract or depending type of your contract, you may not use DD250. You may have separate acceptance document formatting, or you may just plain out use subcontractor or vendor's invoicing format as acceptance report. But again, this is a DOD example. They use DD250, which captures related to the proper invoice listed item and checking those items off. Now, we talked about what the invoice and different invoices and what's required information you have, some of the process and some of the challenges you have. So now we got to the point of processing, whether you're accepting or rejecting. I got an invoice from my contractor. Now what? So now you've reviewed it, what's the next process? Joy, would you like to go further on the Prompt Payment Act and then the date processes. >> Yup. So we are subject to the Prompt Payment Act which says we pay the invoice within 30 calendar days of the invoice being submitted, and after the 30th day, we start to accrue interest. And as you can see down at that last bullet, interest, the interest rate right now is not low. So I'm sure some of you may have contracts where you're receiving invoices worth, you know, valued at millions, so it's not a small amount. So you want to make sure you have someone on your team who is facilitating a timely review and acceptance process, whether that's the PM, the COR, whoever it is, is keeping things on track so that there's a timely acceptance or rejection as applicable. >> Thank you. All right, so now we just briefly talked about time it's required, the process, and so forth. So how do you interpret if it's a firm fixed price? What kind of amount you're looking at? How should that be paid? What if it's cost reimbursement? So the question we're asking, paid for receipt on the food, like a time and material. How do you go about paying it? How do you make sure the invoice submitted has all this information? You validate it. Okay, now, depending on contract, how do I will pay about this? Does it affect the invoice type? Does it affect your invoice submission and processing? Yes, it certainly does. So for the firm fixed -- firm fixed price contract, which is my favorite one because it makes it really easy. See, when your invoice comes in, you should confirm the total amount invoice by invoice level and breakdown of each claim, and because they're generally set amount for each service provider, whether it's monthly, frequency, or quarterly, dollars divided by your total sum amount as its firm fixed price. Only charging parties ensuring that you have funding available and the amount that's billed are matching in ance with the contract. So confirm the surveillance inspection report. Again, those are the items which should be submitted with your invoice and supporting document. You wouldn't want to pay a firm fixed price contract if you don't have a surveillance completed or the inspection report comes back as inadequate. If there's issues, you should not pay the invoice. You should always address those items before processing invoice. Now, cost reimbursement contract, it gets a little more complicated with this one because you need to ensure the labor categories are correctly invoiced, label, rates are in there, it's authorized, and ensure that there's -- if there's overtime that has been incurred, is it approved. Contract may not approve the overtime unless there's, you know, funding. So overtime, you need to really be careful with the cost reimbursement, especially on the overtime, just because you may have a correct rate, you may have the amount available, but if it was not authorized by a contracting officer or contract -- the approver, that invoice should be rejected. And also note that the award fee and fixed fee is, of course, the contract fee determination plan, it gets a little tricky, and who is expert on this? Joy. >> I'm not an expert, but I will say I've learned a lot working on some cost reimbursement contracts. One thing to keep in mind is that on cost reimbursement contracts, the contractor for the FAR has to have an adequate accounting system, so they should be able to break out the costs in a way that's clear, easy to read, and easy to track. So if you are receiving invoices where it's all over the place, I would push back. I would have a conversation with the contractor and say, "Tell me about your system. What kind of reports is it spinning out? Like, how can -- how else can we depict this data and information in a way that we can actually read this?" There's a lot of charges that come into cost reimbursement contract invoices, so you want to make it as easy on yourselves as possible. Another thing I wanted to bring up was some of these bullets. Try not to get too hung up on the award fee stuff. There are required documents on cost reimbursement contracts, like the Award Fee Determination Plan, and there's a resulting report that comes after that. The award fee will be specified on that report. So you want to refer to other documents that have been produced during the invoicing process. You want to refer to those and make sure you're all tracking the same numbers. If not, it's not a huge deal. Like Jane said in the Q&A, she often will ask for a draft invoice, you know, maybe sent via email before it's put in the system because it's harder to come back from an invoice that's already been submitted in a system. That can be a good practice. I've seen that a lot of times. You want to be careful not to overdo it and put more burden on the whole team. So, but if it calls for it, if you think that the contractor may need to revise some things before they submit in the system, that could be a good practice. I think that's all I had. >> Yeah, I will follow up on Jane's comment, too, and thanks for sharing. One of a good practice is draft the invoice, especially if you have a small business or first time doing government contract, or if you have a well-known contractor that it's going to be very big invoice, huge project, research and development and those types, yeah, it is a great idea to have initial draft invoice, read them through together, make sure all the proper information is in there, and you can basically set the tone for that, and, you know, first two, three months of reviewing invoice together and having draft the invoice, that will make your rest of the contract very, very easy. Now, there are some questions. I will leave this slide -- again, this slide will be shared with all of your attendees. So we're going to cover time and material contract here and some of the travel along with the slides. There was some question came up about, hey, for the travel receipt required, or do you need to validate -- let me see, the question was for the travel. John, any insight on how to read the invoice as a high travel volume? We have invoices that were travel, and supporting document can be hundreds of pages long, wow, any given month, which timeline to be accepted is extremely difficult. Well, unfortunately, I don't think there's any easy way out because you're giving the pre-authorization on your travel, and travel funding should not be exceeding it, meaning that when the invoice comes in, you need to validate that against your pre-authorization plan, pre-authorization information. If you only approve $1,000 for some of the travel, including taxi, airfare, and a hotel, and the invoice comes in for $1,100, well, how can you validate it without having that pre-authorization and the amount to compare it to against the receipt? So it is very challenging. I will think little more about it on that. A hundred pages, that sounds a lot wrong. And also, for the travel, you have to -- there was one question. It looks they deleted it. Here you go. Julia has to coordinate to verify all travel costs are within federal travel regulations. Yeah, hotel within per day rate, all that, again, going back to the travel pre-authorization, which is why it is important to have that information, so you can validate against it. Simple answer is yes, coordinate to verify all the travel costs when the invoice is submitted and supporting document validates the cost that's been submitted. With the time and material contract, contractor must list each labor category and actual hours worked during the time and must provide the hour rates and [inaudible] contract. The contractor must also list the materials for which reimbursements is requested as allowed by the contract. Joy, could you talk us, a little segue into TDL? >> Yeah, I probably won't spend too much time on this because some may not even be aware of TDLs. I don't know how common they are, but a technical direction letter is a way to compartmentalize work, package it separately from everything else that's going on. It's still in scope and everything. It's just -- it's a package of work that we kind of keep it separate. When invoicing for TDL, it can cause some complexities and confusion, so it's important to establish a system up front before you start issuing TDLs that somebody -- everybody will understand this is how we're going to invoice for this. When a TDL is complete, we put it on the invoice. We know what we're looking at when we're accepting. So I think it'll come with its own maybe identifying number or something like that. When you're going through your invoice process and putting that into your contract during the time of award or modification, then just make sure you're capturing the whole invoice process in the data and information that you want to see, especially if it includes TDLs. >> All right, thank you. The ODC and travel, as we already discussed, that each travel authorization request also share the invoice travel has to be approved and ODC are expenses that other than direct costs, labor, hours list, and vendor's price list. So we'll talk a little more in the Q&A because there's a lot of good question came through, so I'll leave this slide as information to you, but to allow us a little more time on Q&A, we're going to just move on to the next slide to show just some of examples here quick. This is an invoice example that earlier I shared with you. The lump sum comes in, you may have separate funding associated, too, with that. So it is required that each claim should have its own lines of accounting, but depending on your contract requirement and contract type where the funding is coming from, such as O&M funding, R&D funding, you may need to track those funding separately, what those invoiced items are, so it is crucial for you to have this tracking mechanism. This is just the example. The vendor necessarily does not need to submit what line item is hidden, but when the invoice comes in, those supporting documents should allow you and assist you to track where the -- which funding document or which lines of accounting the money should be paid for. Here's a little segue into GSA Assist. If you have a contract with the GSA, it is very -- it makes it very easier because the invoices are still processed in GSA, GSA Assist. Invoice will come in, the COR reviews, validates, and it goes to the PM, GSA PM to certify that invoiced amount and goes for final approval. So just a little plugin for GSA Assist, which the IPP does same, so we'll cover here it in the Q&A session a little bit. So now you have received invoice, validate it, figured out where the information should be, you match that against the contract requirement, and made sure their invoice either correct or wrong. We'll talk about the reduction process a little bit. But, so what should I do next? It is really important you're skilled in reading, and screening invoice depends on your familiarity with the contract terms and condition as well as your system for tracking funding and billing as well as knowing your contract. So it is, again, important to understand your internal approval rejection work process, invoice process, as well as validating the invoice submission and understanding, if you are responsible, what numbers are, what they should tie to, and if any other funding document allocations should be tied to. So it is very important, again, I'd like to emphasize that you should really read your contract and understand how invoices should be processed. And this was something that Joy mentioned earlier, too. It is very important for regularly reconcile with your contractor and COR or any interested party so you understand when something does not marry up, whether it's contract requirements, invoice process you have, have the conversation, you know, talk to them before, and if it's that way, you can always work out the kinks. You can educate your vendor, which will make your life a lot easier on processing invoice. Here's an example of another GSA Assist screenshot. So when the invoice is approved via GSA Assist, we actually assign to each line item and deliver and how -- and this is a great way to just showcase that the GSA Assist will track how much funding each line of accounting left, how much is spent, how much money is left, and the [inaudible] as well, if it's a first-in-first-out. Again, just a little segue to GSA Assist, but this is a good idea if your agency doesn't have a funding tracking system like this for you to track whether it's a direct sell sheet or have some work process implemented so you can ensure your funding is tracked as well as the invoiced information. All right, here is one question I'd like to share. Invoice amount is higher than warrant. So this is apply for GSAM, or under GSA, so if your agency, I would recommend checking in with your procurement analyst or your own internal SOP. The question is, can you approve invoices that are above their warranty? They're over warrant level. Yes, it is acceptable for any contracting officer within that agency, this one is special in GSA, regardless of warrant level to approve invoices for any amount. This is because the warrant officer will authorize the contract amount, the award amount. As invoicing portion, you're only validating against what to be already executed on the warrant officer. So even if you are -- your warrant is only $100,000, the invoice come from half million, let's say, you can still approve it because this was warrant -- approved on the warrant officer. So with that said, it is a Q&A session. We have great, great questions, and some of them, I'll have to say, I might have to do some researches on it. So unfortunately, I have not used the IPP a lot, so we'll touch that a little last, but some questions, so for example, can we get a copy of the slides? We'll get that out to you, so we'll dismiss that. And those who say you have 100 pages of traveling invoices, shoot me an email. I'd like to do a little brainstorming and show you what we have done previously to simplify that. But let's go through some more questions. So, Todd, earlier the question, you were saying the IPP was mandatory. Yes, it is mandatory, but right now we still have a transition time. So if it's not completely implemented, you're still processing invoice at your agency level. So I hope that answers your question. If I'm incorrect, please let me know, but that is my understanding at this time. So there was question about pre-authorization part. We have a contract includes meetings and working group, remote location for which contract included but don't have any requirements. Contract included, but don't have any requirements, that travel need to be pre-authorized. That is questionable to me. It is limited to two overnight field trips and contractor coverage travel expenses arrangement, then they bill a lump sum for the trip. Is that correct procedure, or do we need to include a FAR that we missed a little later on travel? I will be curious of what agency this is. I mean, I know certain agencies have a particular little difference on their travel. I mean, DoD have obviously very robust requirement on travel and pre-authorization. I will question -- I personally would really like to question that vendors are billing lump sum on the travel and you're not identifying the itemized list. That is very questionable to me. So I will have the conversation. I would love to chat with you. Please shoot me an email. We can talk details after this webinar. So there is another question. For Indian Health Services, our supplier receiving department approves the invoice and IPP [inaudible] finance for their final approval for payment, co-handles the service invoices. Thanks for the information. I'd like to just tie back to 30-day invoicing processing, that within GSA, we like to process GSA invoices within seven days of receipt. Part of that is once the contracting shop, including COR, processes invoice by seven days, meaning that we recommend for certifying or accepting the invoice, it goes to our finance department who have to process it, too. So you need to consider, in that 30-day built in, consider the finance department and how that gets transactioned out, too. Now, let's see here, some question. I appreciate some of these comments. There's comments or information that if your agency is using IPP, IPP does not allow for partial suspension. Now, that ties into partial payment. You know, it is really, depending on the contract, if it's a firm fixed price, you will not likely do the partial payment on the firm fixed price, but your contracting officer may allow, if it's a small business, small dollar value, or if it's a big invoiced amount for small business, they may need to require. There is a policy that allows the partial payment on those acceptable, and so that way there's less financial burden for the small businesses. What do you do when contract company sends late invoice? Well, one thing is, the invoice comes in, you have 30 days, right? Prompt Payment ACT. If they don't send the invoice, as a COR, as a PM, I will reach out, hey, the frequency of this invoice is supposed to be monthly, bi-monthly, why aren't you not sending the invoice, I'll have the conversation, but there isn't really -- unless it's built into the contract, I don't see how you could penalize it. I would just ask them, hey, if you'd like to do work without getting paid, continue to do so, but you wouldn't want that because that'll make things really challenging for you later when you're tracking and validating those invoices submitted. Now, I will try to just cover a few other questions here as we're approaching to the time. Taxes, obviously, with the traveling, government does not pay taxes. You should have those tax-exempt letter issued at the time of award and all that. So if you -- the question is, does the invoicing approval official have to verify if there have been the contractor invoice included tax, exclude tax? Yes, you will need to validate and verify taxes or whether include it and exempt it. Let me see here. >> Okay, it looks like -- I was going to say, we might have time for one more. >> One more, yeah, thank you. >> Yeah. Well, I think we answered most of them. Again, our information is available with the slide. If you have any question or comments about some information, need clarification, please reach out to us. We'd love to talk with you and get some ideas. If there's any correction we need to make, love to hear from you. Thank you so much. >> Oh, guys, thank you. I'm going to go ahead and launch the poll that you guys had asked, that we didn't do earlier. So I want you guys to get that information. So Eugene and Joy, we're asking about your experience with invoicing, so if you wouldn't mind just, you know, doing this really quick to make sure we get them that information, we'd all appreciate it. So while you guys are answering this poll, I just want to thank you guys. Joy, Eugene, this has been fantastic. You have gone through so much good information and what seems like maybe a simple thing to someone outside of contracting, I guess, there's so much to it and it takes a lot of time, and if you're doing it right, it can, you know, really require some of your attention. So thank you guys so much for presenting this and sharing your information, and if we weren't able to get to everyone's questions, we do have a copy of them. We'll try and get those answered and have them out to you. So all righty, I will go ahead and stop this poll, and then we will have one other before we go, and if you guys have to go, I completely understand, but I want to thank you. Let's see, it's not liking that one. Okay, well, that one it doesn't want to watch, so we'll just forget that. But I want to thank you all for just a wonderful two weeks. I think we've had some great training, some wonderful resources and things to think about, and so we just appreciate all your feedback and your attendance, and we couldn't do it without these wonderful instructors, so thank you guys so much. >> Thank you all. >> Thanks, everybody.