Government contract work can be lucrative and fascinating work. Navigating the government contract process can be very tricky. It's important to stay up to date on Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) compliance regulations. It's also critical to ensure you meet DCAA timekeeping requirements if you want to work with any federal government organization. Hour Timesheet does our best to explain DCAA compliance and we offer a product that is always up to date with regulations. The DCAA will run a pre-award audit in order to award any government contracts. You should prepare for this audit and create a list of compliance regulations for the DCAA.

What is DCAA compliance?

The DCAA was established in the 1960s to normalize the government’s contract auditing process, and to ensure the American taxpayer was getting good value for its money.

Initially, the DCAA was originally overseeing military and intelligence contracts for the U.S. Department of Defense. Later, it oversaw many other kinds of labor and service contracts that the federal government signs with commercial suppliers.

If and when you win a government contract, the DCAA timesheet compliance rules will apply to everyone in your company. Regardless of the size of your organization, this can be a big task with many training implications. It's worth your while to make DCAA compliant time tracking as straightforward as possible. Do your research ahead of time, and try to create a DCAA compliance checklist.

Suppose the DCAA were ever to audit you. In that case, they would check three main areas to see if you comply: how accounts are established, the flow of transactions in accounting systems, and the computations derived from them.

Ready to try out Hour Timesheet's DCAA compliant timesheet software?

1. How Accounts are Established

A DCAA Compliant Chart of Accounts

You will need to separate which financial transactions are direct, indirect, and unallowable. The DCAA will also examine your Chart of Accounts to ensure you're adhering to the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Having Accounts Payable, Prepaid Expenses, and Unearned Revenue will indicate that you're accounting for cost and revenue on an accrual basis.

2. The Flow of Transactions in Accounting System

Trial Balance Hour Timesheet will allow you to print a Trial Balance that summarizes your accounts' debits and credit balances. The latter will reveal details such as the opening balance, transactions, transfers, and closing balance. The former will summarize the debits and credit balances on each of your accounts.

General Ledger Detail  The general ledger detail within the Hour Timesheet software will be able to provide you with the beginning balances for each government contract over a limited period.

3. Cost & Reporting

The DCAA will audit processes used for allocating revenue and costs to projects, in addition to the way you calculate indirect rates. Many companies use QuickBooks for most of their accounting, and Hour Timesheet makes sure this doesn't have to change. We can help make your QuickBooks DCAA complaint, ensuring it follows the rules laid out so far, and the following rules about computing revenue and expenses.

Loss & Profit by Job An essential requirement highlighted in the pre-award survey is your accounting system's ability to accumulate costs by project. Loss & Profit by Job reports gives assurance that this can be done accurately when they agree with the standard Profit & Loss statements. Hour Timesheet also integrates directly with ADP and QuickBooks. This will help lessen manual data entry across platforms.

Labor Distribution Report Labor distribution is the process of allocating and measuring labor costs both direct and indirect to the total time recorded on timesheets. Hour Timesheet allows you to directly tie both direct and indirect hours to the accounts within your accounting system. DCAA needs to see that labor costs are equally distributed among customers, both government and commercial. They want to know that no one is favored or has received a cost subsidy.

Contract Backlog Report This type of summary allows you to see the percentage of work completed. It also shows the remaining cost to complete each job in your backlog. This type of report indicates how much money is left on a contract, as well as potential contract overrun. It also shows if there are corrective actions required as a result.

Direct Vs Indirect Labor Tracking Contract employees must consistently track both direct and indirect costs. A direct cost is identifiable to one and only one cost objective. It is normally required or necessary for contract performance. Cost objective is a regulatory term that can include a contract, a project, a task, a contract line item.

To be compliant, government contractors must accumulate costs into indirect cost pools. This can be things such as a bid and proposal or an independent research and development project. Hour Timesheet allows a contractor to track time and keep track of all accumulated costs. This is all costs related to hours worked, such as direct costs, any unallowable costs, or indirect costs. Indirect costs are all costs that are not identifiable or incurred for the benefit of one cost objective.

There are many tasks involved in preparing for DCAA auditors to analyze your accounting functions. It can be helpful to create a compliance checklist for government contracting work. Especially if you're business is receiving government funding, such as through the SBIR and STTR programs. It's vital that the companies participating remain DCAA compliant in order to receive their funding.

Overall, it's important to maintain audit trails and detailed reports for all employee timesheets and time accounting. Also, make sure to always use a DCAA compliant time entry.

Hour Timesheet and DCAA Compliance Resources

Achieving DCAA audit compliance takes effort, time, and specialist knowledge. Even if you understand the regulations, you'll also need to arrange your Chart of Accounts and configure Hour Timesheet accordingly. Having a DCAA timecard audit checklist can help you achieve DCAA compliant timekeeping, without all of the confusion. Even better, choosing a timekeeping system with DCAA-compliant features will help you in the long run.

Contact us today for a free, no commitment, 30-day trial of our software. With our years of experience, we can help you avoid potential DCAA compliance issues before an audit begins.