May/June 2024

Happy Birthday to GEARS! No cake or candles!  But we are celebrating that GEARS is officially one year old and has successfully calculated and issued reimbursements for a full year!  During June we will process the final transactions to close Calendar Year 2023 grant agreements.

Reminder on reimbursements paid before July 1, 2023

Reimbursements paid prior to July 1, 2023 were paid through CARS.  Contracts, reported expenditures, adjustments, and payments for the period January to June 2023 are recorded in both CARS and GEARS. This means that GEARS reports contain full information for CY 2023 and may be used for audit and similar purposes. CARS reports through June 30, 2023 remain on-line for your convenience.

Expense Processing Job (EPJ) updates

Current Expense Processing Job (EPJ) dates:

• May payments (expenditures through March 2024 reported on or before 4/15/2024) have an EPJ date of 2024-04-19.
• June payments (expenditures through April 2024 reported on or before 5/15/2024) have an EPJ date of 2024-05-21.
• When Calendar Year 2023 grant agreements are closed in GEARS the reports with the final transactions will be published on-line and the EPJ date will be listed.

A few reminders:

• You need the EPJ date to select GEARS reports.
• We have a list of the regularly scheduled monthly EPJ runs on-line for your convenience. The Expense Processing dates are added shortly after the monthly EPJ run is accepted.  The list is found at GEARS Processing and Payment Schedule | Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
• EPJ runs generally occur during the week that includes the 20^th of the month.
• Off-cycle GEARS runs occur for several reasons. GEARS includes the off-cycle EPJ dates in the list of EPJ dates used on-line to select your GEARS reports. Agencies not included in an off-cycle run will only see report headers (no information) on reports for the off-cycle run.

Please contact DHSDESBFSGEARS@dhs.wisconsin.gov  for questions on CARS or GEARS reports or for questions on the close-out of CY 2023 grant agreements.

Closing Contracts on GEARS

CY 2023 grant agreement contracts will be closed on GEARS during early June. Contract close-outs on GEARS, like contract close-out previously on CARS, are completed as necessary to comply with State and/or Federal funding requirements. 

Contract close out periods vary based on funding restrictions. Most, but not all, contract close-out periods are 45 or 90 days after the contract period end date. The most common contract period end dates are the end of the calendar year (December 31^st), the end of the federal fiscal year (September 30^th) or the end of the state fiscal year (June 30^th).  However, there are multiple other contract period end dates based on funding restrictions. 

DHS’ ability to process and reimburse costs reported after the close-out period depends on the state and federal funding restrictions.  In most cases it is not possible to accept, process and reimburse cost reports for a contract once the contract’s close-out period has expired.  To prevent reimbursement issues, agencies should report all costs within the time-period allowed under their contract. Agencies are encouraged to:

• Verify the contract close-out period for profiles included within their grant agreement contract. You can do this by reviewing contract terms or via the on-line listing of profile close out dates,  2023 Listing of CARS/GEARS Profile Close Out Dates (Excel).
• Reconcile monthly. Reconciling monthly simplifies finding and resolving missed or over-reported costs. Monthly reconciliations help assure corrections are reported to and processed in GEARS prior to the profile close out. Please note that necessary reductions of reported costs will be recorded and recovered as appropriate, regardless of whether the contract close-out period has ended.
• Verify internal cost distributions, especially those that are applied quarterly or once per year, are up to date and have been properly reported to and recorded in GEARS.
• File timely GEARS reports. Report due dates, payment dates and EPJ dates are found here: GEARS Processing and Payment Schedule | Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
• A quick and important reminder. While most DHS grant agreement contracts are for periods of 12 or fewer months, some profiles are contracted on a multi-year basis.  Several multi-year profiles have contract periods ending during Calendar Year 2024.  If your agency has a multi-year contract expiring during 2024, please verify the profile close-out period and assure that all appropriate costs have been or will be reported prior to the end of the close-out period.

July 1^st Payment and Funding Control Release

This information applies only to agencies with profiles which have funding controls limiting reimbursements paid during the first specified number of months of the contract period.  Funding is controlled as specified in the grant agreement contract. Not all profiles are subject to funding control. 

All funding controls are released in July. This process is the same in GEARS as it was in CARS. Because of this, agencies with profiles subject to funding control limits may see a bump in payment amounts for their July 1 payments. This happens when the agency reported costs on profiles in excess of the funding control limits. Reported costs which exceed the funding control limits were not reimbursed. They are recorded on GEARS reports as overmatch. They will be reimbursed in July, subject to contract limits, when funding control releases. 

How to Help Us Pay Your Agency Correctly and On Time

During the short time, generally 2-3 days, between the 15^th of a month and that month’s EPJ run, the GEARS Team completes final entries and performs systems checks that verify the information for 400 – 600 expenditure reports from local agencies and for hundreds of contracts.  This is "crunch time," when we make sure everything is entered, verified and approved for processing before GEARS runs. This work is essential to our goal of 100% accurate payments on time every time.

Agencies can help us make sure that their reported expenditures are entered correctly and reimbursed accurately and on time.

• Report all expenditures appropriate to a profile once and only once. We see reports with the same profile listed multiple times with different amounts of expenditures listed for the profile.  Please sum costs for a profile prior to reporting and report each profile only once.
• Do not report multiple months’ expenditures on a single report. File separate reports for each month's incurred expenditures. Report expenditures by the month they happened. Behind the scenes, the report month may be significant. 
• Check the proper box at the top of the Expenditure Reporting Form.
  • Check the Original Report box the first time your agency reports expenditures for the report month.
  • Check the Additional/Adjustment Report box when reporting increased or decreased expenditures for a report month for which an Original Expenditure Report has already been submitted. Report only the increases/decreases to previously reported costs.  
  • When filing an Additional/Adjustment report provide comments in the column labeled “If Additional Exp or Corrections, comment as appropriate.” This helps the GEARS Team enter the reported expenditure correctly. Comments too long for the report form can be listed in the e-mail transmitting the expense report.
  • Check the Final Report box, if this is a final report submitted in accordance with the terms of the grant agreement contract between your agency and DHS. Report only the increases/decreases to previously reported costs.
• Make sure the subject line on the email agrees with the report submitted. Verifying that the Contract Year and Month Costs Incurred listed on the email subject line agrees the contract year and report month on the Expenditure Report helps ensure accurate and quick entry into GEARS.
• Do not send a “Replacement Report.” This is not an option, and we can’t process this request. The GEARS team has received reports marked “original” with a note in the transmitting email that the report is a “replacement.” Instead, prepare and send an Additional/Adjustment Report, as noted above, when your agency finds that expenditures were not reported or were reported in error on a previous report for the report month.
• List profiles from lowest to highest on the Expenditure Reporting form. Listing profiles from low to high helps in the process we use to verify information is entered properly prior to the EPJ run. While we will not delay or return a report not in numerical order, the process will be much easier if you list from lowest to highest.

Upcoming Changes

• New e-mailboxes. We will eventually be setting up new e-mailboxes referencing GEARS instead of the prior CARS system.  And just like the US Postal System, when that occurs emails sent to the old addresses will be forwarded to the appropriate new address.  In the meantime, please continue to send GEARS Expenditure reports to DHS600RCARS@dhs.wisconsin.gov.
• This newsletter is moving to a quarterly. We hope this will allow us to stay in touch without adding to e-mail overload. If a GEARS topic requires quicker notice to you than the regular newsletter allows, we will send out a GEARS newsflash. Past copies of the GEARS newsletters remain available on-line at dhs.wisconsin.gov/gears/updates.htm
• We are cleaning up our subscriber list. The technical experts on our communications team have identified email addresses not connected with DHS grantees, undeliverable email addresses and other questionable email addresses.  These will be removed from our GEARS subscriber list.
  
  Removing those types of emails from our subscriber list helps us evaluate whether the information in the newsletters is being viewed.  It does not, however, tell us whether the newsletters are providing the information you, the reader, needs and expects.   For that we need and welcome feedback from you.  Please let us know, via e-mail to DHSDESBFSGEARS@dhs.wisconsin.gov when there are topics which you’d like us to cover.

• The subscription process is changing. It will still be possible to subscribe to the GEARS e-newsletter from the GEARS homepage. To prevent some of the clutter in the subscriber list, the requestor will not be added to the subscriber list immediately, but will instead receive an invitation, with instructions on how to respond, to subscribe. When the requested subscriber information is submitted, new subscribers will start receiving the GEARS newsletters.

In Closing - We Appreciate You

The change from CARS to GEARS has been a long and sometimes challenging process.  We appreciate your understanding and patience as changes were made. We expect that we will continue to fine-tune and improve GEARS over the next few years. It is true that there is nothing as constant as change.

We hope that you will continue to contact us with questions and suggestions related to GEARS. Our goal remains 100% of GEARS payments accurate and on time.

GEARS Home

Please do not reply directly to this email message.  Please direct questions to DHS DES BFS CARS.