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September/October 2024
We're going quarterly
With the successful close-out of calendar year 2023 on GEARS, and over a year’s worth of GEARS successful payment processing, this newsletter is officially moving to quarterly. We hope that by doing so we will continue to provide local agencies with useful GEARS information without cluttering your mailboxes. We can issue GEARS newsflashes if needed.
Expense Processing Job dates and where to find them
While we were sending this monthly, we were including the GEARS Expense Processing Job (EPJ) dates which are used to retrieve the GEARS-603 and GEARS-620 reports. The EPJ dates are available on-line at GEARS Processing and Payment Schedule | Wisconsin Department of Health Services. As a reminder when downloading GEARS reports, you may see more than the regular monthly GEARS EPJ dates; the additional dates are for off-cycle EPJ runs. Only agencies with transactions approved for off-cycle processing will see updated information within the GEARS reports for those EPJ dates.
For those with questions, the GEARS Team can be reached at DHSDESBFSGEARS@dhs.wisconsin.gov. We will help resolve questions on how to report costs to GEARS, how to use the on-line GEARS reports or where to find other needed GEARS information.
Contracts ending September 30, 2024
September 30 is rapidly approaching. Agencies with grant agreement contracts ending 9/30/2024 should verify that all appropriate costs have been reported and reimbursed by GEARS.
Corrections to previously reported costs, increases or decreases to originally reported costs ONLY, should be submitted on an Additional Report for the original report month. Including comments helps the GEARS team ensure corrections are entered properly. Finding and fixing problems as early as possible helps assure funding remains available.
Questions related to GEARS reporting and/or reimbursements should be emailed to the GEARS Team. Please be sure to include your contact information, including your phone number. This helps us to respond to and resolve questions quickly.
GEARS Reports
The detailed information on how to access and use the GEARS-603, -620, and Payment reports on the GEARS Manual pages CARS/GEARS: Manual | Wisconsin Department of Health Services has been updated recently. Included below is more detailed information about the reports that are available in GEARS.
The GEARS-603 Report
A GEARS-603 report is generated for each Report Month/Contract Year based on the Expense Processing Job (EPJ) date. This allows agencies to verify costs reported and processed based on reports submitted and processed.
The GEARS-603 consists of two or three sections depending upon whether an agency has Allocated (type G) profiles. Agencies with Allocated profiles will have a first section which shows costs reported to the Allocated Profiles and the results of the allocations. The -603 for agencies that have no Allocated Profiles will not include this section.
The next section is organized by profile type (see CARS/GEARS: The Five Types of Profiles and How They Work | Wisconsin Department of Health Services for more information) and provides a listing by profile of costs reported and processed within the EPJ run. This section can be used to verify costs reported and processed in GEARS. For agencies with Allocated Profiles, please note that costs are included in the column labeled Net Expense Reported for both the profiles from which cost were allocated and the profiles to which costs are allocated.
The final section of the GEARS-603 is the Distribution of Expenditures. Listed in profile number order, this section does not include allocated from profiles. Expenses are shown after allocation in the allocated to profiles. This section of the GEARS-603 report provides information on how reimbursements are calculated. Current and contract-to-date information is provided on expenses, contract balances and payments.
The GEARS-620 Report
The GEARS-620 provides agencies with information on Adjustment profiles (type A), Non-Reimbursable profiles (type D), Sum Sufficient profiles (type E) and Contract Control profiles (type F). Profile type G, Allocated profiles, are not included on the GEARS-620 reports.
Unlike the GEARS-603 this report can be generated for a single or all contract years and is not report month specific. By selecting ALL contract years, the total payment shown on the GEARS-620 report (and the related details) will agree to the amount shown on the GEARS Payment Report for the same payment date.
The GEARS Payment Report
The GEARS Payment reports provide agencies with the amount of their planned payments after the EPJ run has been approved and prior to the payment date. The Payment report can be used to research or track prior payments by specifying a range of payment dates.
After going live with GEARS, the Payment report was modified to allow counties to view payments for all agency types within the county on a single report. By leaving the Agency Type dropdown menu set to ALL, agencies will see all payments to their agency by Type Code for the specified payment date(s).
The GEARS-610 Report: Info by Profile ID number
The GEARS-610 report provides information by Profile ID number. This report was developed to assist DHS contract managers and accountants in their review of financial information submitted by the agencies, to help manage grant funding and to meet a variety of federal and state grant financial reporting requirements.
GEARS - It's not just a reimbursement system
While accurate and on-time reimbursements to local agencies is our #1 priority for GEARS, the system provides a whole host of other benefits. Here are some of them:
Federal Reporting—GEARS is essential to DHS meeting its responsibilities for a variety of federally mandated financial reports and funding restrictions.
While financial reporting requirements vary by Federal awarding agency, timely and accurate reporting to the appropriate Federal agencies is critical to maintaining Federal funding.
For example, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA), requires grants totaling $30,000 or more to be reported by the month following the month of the grant. GEARS maintains the required information allowing DHS to report into the Federally mandated system, and that information is publicly available at Government Spending Open Data | USAspending
State Reporting—GEARS allows DHS to issue a single grant agreement contract with both federal and state funding. GEARS provides the information needed for DHS to meet its responsibility to “close the books” as of June 30 while maintaining grants to local agencies on the calendar year, the Federal Fiscal year and other grant periods, and is included in the annual State Payments Register.
Auditors—GEARS information is used by CPA firms as part of their annual entity-wide audits of municipalities and other grantees.
Help keep our subscriber list current!
When managers and staff within your organization move on to other opportunities and new staff are hired, we hope you will direct new hires to our GEARS webpages Grant Enrollment, Application and Reporting System (GEARS) | Wisconsin Department of Health Services and will encourage them to subscribe to the GEARS Newsletter.
Stop by our website for more information
Visit us online anytime at Grant Enrollment, Application and Reporting System (GEARS) | Wisconsin Department of Health Services
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