Many state agencies are experiencing both gratitude and frustration about their post-pandemic reality. They are grateful for the sizable federal funds allotted during the COVID-19 pandemic but frustrated by their lack of grant management resources to meet the subrecipient monitoring requirements that come with the funding.
The good news is that with the right technology, state agencies can improve their subrecipient monitoring process.
Since 2020, the federal government has given more than $800 billion in grants to states as part of its pandemic response, a significant increase from amounts states typically have seen over the past 15 years.
With such a substantial increase in grant funding, the need for grant management has also increased. For some agencies, employees with little to no grant management experience or training have had to take on new responsibilities including subrecipient monitoring. Additionally, agencies across the country are struggling with training and equipping employees to handle subrecipient monitoring.
When employees don’t have necessary resources to perform their jobs efficiently, they can get overwhelmed, which can lead to an increased risk of error and audit findings. Just like builders need the right tools in their toolbelts, state agency employees need the right technology at their fingertips.
While spreadsheets, sticky notes, and reminders on phones might be useful in gathering necessary information, there’s a more effective way to execute subrecipient monitoring.
We developed Crowe Dynamic Review Manager to help organizations collect, review, validate, and analyze grant data in one place for an improved subrecipient monitoring process.
When public sector teams have the right technology, they can better achieve these key outcomes:
State agencies might need to monitor thousands of subrecipients on an annual basis. It can be tedious to keep up with all the steps, such as determining who needs to be monitored, contacting and scheduling subrecipients, and requesting and reviewing data. Rather than spending time on manual data entry or setting reminders, employees can use automation features to reduce their workloads and improve accuracy.
Crowe Dynamic Review Manager can autogenerate notifications to grantees requesting that grant documentation be submitted to the state. The system automatically notifies a set group of grantees to submit documentation and allows grantees to submit the data and supporting information in an organized manner to provide an audit trail of documentation.
Crowe Dynamic Review Manager can also manage important risk assessment, monitoring, and reporting functions – all crucial aspects of subrecipient monitoring. Managing these tasks in one location can help identify risks and provide advanced knowledge of areas to be addressed in monitoring activities and reporting of the use of funds.
Keeping all documentation and communication related to subrecipient monitoring in one location is critical. By using a centralized platform, agencies can build and improve continual collaboration among fiscal, program, and other agency staff.
A unified system also streamlines administrative operations. When everyone involved with subrecipient monitoring is working from one source, the status of activities can be tracked, and more resources can be deployed to areas that need attention. Staff can also prioritize tasks and identify high-risk matters, and new staff can access job aids to help with training.
One of the many examples of Crowe Dynamic Review Manager assisting with collaboration is in the subrecipient risk assessment process. Instead of several program departments separately performing risk assessments without collaborating with other departments in the agency, inputs for the risk assessments could be centralized in one place, which can help avoid overlooking risks affecting numerous grants to a subrecipient.
Dashboard and reporting features with data visualization capabilities allow teams to dive deep into the details as well as view the big picture of their data.
With this need in mind, we built Crowe Dynamic Review Manager on the Microsoft Power Platform™ and integrated it with Microsoft Power BI™, a solution that allows users to integrate, transform, and visualize their data in a format more understandable than endless spreadsheets and documents.
Whether an agency needs to establish a subrecipient monitoring process from scratch or fine-tune an existing one, technology is the starting point. Using a system like Crowe Dynamic Review Manager provides a framework for implementing subrecipient monitoring best practices and employee training so that state agencies are set up for success.
Consistency across agency program areas can be achieved when a centralized system is configured to meet the specific needs of individual programs while also providing overall consistency that meets agency grant management policies and procedures. Crowe Dynamic Manager can be configured with agency processes and policies to provide workflows and documentation that meets agency requirements.
Taking proactive steps is critical for public sector agencies. By investing in your subrecipient monitoring process today, you can prevent future audit findings, financial waste, potential fraud, legal issues, and funding loss.
Crowe Dynamic Review Manager simplifies subrecipient monitoring. Plus, if you work with Crowe, you can get the public sector expertise you need to make the most out of the technology and keep your agency running efficiently.
Microsoft, Power BI, and Power Platform are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.
