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February 2024
Humming along into 2024
We are very happy to report that GEARS continues to process contracts and expenditure reports correctly, calculates payments accurately, and is properly generating reimbursement reports. The reports for the January 2 and February 1 payments have Expense Processing Dates of 2023-12-20 and 2024-01-19, respectively.
As a reminder, you will occasionally see off-cycle run dates within the listing of Expense Processing Dates. Only those agencies included in the off-cycle runs will generate reports related to those runs and they will be notified of the appropriate Expense Processing Date of the reports.
There is one (and only one) regularly scheduled monthly GEARS Expense Processing job. It generally occurs the week which includes the 20th of the month. The GEARS Processing Schedule is found at GEARS Processing and Payment Schedule | Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Each month’s Expense Processing Date is listed as soon as the GEARS run is reviewed and accepted. Please refer to this schedule to identify the regular monthly GEARS Expense Processing Dates.
Good-bye to Calendar Year 2023
Many DHS grant contracts run on the calendar year basis. If your grant contract ended 12/31/2023, it is time to complete your final reconciliation of costs reported to and recorded in GEARS to your accounting records. Remember that while costs were reported to and reimbursed by CARS during the first six months of calendar year 2023, those costs and reimbursements are recorded in GEARS! This means that the totals shown on your GEARS report should reconcile to your accounting records.
CARS reports remain available on-line. If you need month specific information for reimbursements paid prior to July 1, 2023, please see the appropriate CARS reports. For monthly information related to reimbursements paid July 1, 2023, or later please see the appropriate GEARS reports.
Final expenditure reports are due in accordance with the terms of your Grant Agreement
A listing by profile of when final reports are due is found on the GEARS home page, Grant Enrollment, Application and Reporting System (GEARS) | Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Scroll down the page to the Related Resources section and click on 2023 Listing of CARS/GEARS Profile Close-Out Dates. The final report due date for profiles within the State/County Contract is Monday, March 25, 2024.
When preparing and submitting a Final Expenditure report, remember to check Final Report, rather than Original or Additional/Adjustment, at the top of the Expenditure Report form and to format your subject line as Agency #-Agency type-Contract Year-FINAL-Report Month & Year-Agency name, where the month and year is the final month of your contract.
GEARS Works
As we continue to work with GEARS, we are happy with the improved functionality and reliability it provides. For example:
- Payments are made based on agency banking information contained in STAR, strengthening security over that information, and standardizing associated procedures.
- It is now possible to export all GEARS reports, including the GEARS-603 reports, into Excel or other formats as needed to analyze or share information within your agency.
- Agency naming standards are simplified. This may seem like a small improvement, but often times small is good. CARS limited agency names to 25 characters which resulted in abbreviations that were often hard to decipher. No such limit exists within GEARS. We were able to respond quickly to a request to update a number of agencies’ names.
Looking Ahead
Some changes you will see:
- We are going bi-monthly with this newsletter. As agencies become more familiar with GEARS, we will move to a quarterly, and eventually an as-needed, newsletter. We will send out news flashes when necessary.
- We are updating the (formerly CARS) GEARS manual to provide more information on how to work successfully with GEARS. We are also working to make these pages more user friendly. Updated information on preparing and submitting GEARS expenditure reports was recently posted. Please see CARS/GEARS: Expenditure Reporting | Wisconsin Department of Health Services .
- GEARS reimbursement reports, with the exception of the GEARS Payment Report, were built to mirror their CARS counterparts. This was intentional to assure agencies received consistent information, regardless of whether it was generated by CARS or GEARS. We are investigating whether and what types of additional reports are needed.
- We have been working on modifications to the GEARS Payment Report.
- When using the current version of the GEARS Payment Report you can search by agency number and agency type code or by the payment reference number. To search based on your agency number and type code, enter those codes and then select your agency number/agency name from the list in the Agency Number/Agency Name field. If you leave that field set to ALL, you will see payments to all agencies with the same agency type code.
- Beginning with the February GEARS run, entering your agency number in the Agency Number field on the GEARS Payment Report will bring up all payments to your agency for the payment dates specified. For counties, to see all agencies within your county leave the Type Code field set to ALL. To see just your agency, enter both your Agency Number and your Agency Type Code.
We appreciate and thank you for the questions and suggestions we have received to date, both from our partner agencies as well as our internal staff. When questions arise or you have suggestions for improvements, we hope you will continue to contact us at DHSDESBFSGEARS@dhs.wisconsin.gov formatting the subject line as Agency #-Agency Type-Agency name-OTHER.
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See you next newsletter!
As we move forward and changes are considered, we will continue to share information with you through this newsletter. We will aim for timelines that provide you with information when needed without cluttering your e-mail box.
Our goal remains—100% of GEARS payments accurate and on-time!
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