Market Development Cooperator Program

"Excessive Cash on Hand" Message from GrantsOnline

Reason 1. for Receiving Message: Award Advance Remainder After 30 Days

As an award recipient, if you receive your MDCP award funds as an advance, you must spend such funds and claim the federal and non-federal share in GrantsOnline within 30 days. If you ever have over $5,000 of federal award funds after 30 days, GrantsOnline will send you this message to remind you that this is not permitted. This rule prevents recipients of federal financial assistance from earning substantial interest on federal award dollars.

If this accurately describes your situation, contact your grants specialist to learn what action to take. It will probably include providing a written explanation on line 12 of your quarterly financial report.

Reason 2. for Receiving Message: Slow Draw-Down of Award Funds

Even if you draw down your award funds by reimbursement rather than by advance, you still may receive an "excessive cash on hand" message. GrantsOnline automatically checks to see how long it has been since the end of the last quarter that you have requested reimbursement for project activity expenses. If it has been more than several weeks, GrantsOnline with generate an "excessive cash on hand" message. bout your MDCP project should always be directed first to your ITA-MDCP team leader.

In such case, you can address the situation by emailing an explanation to your grants specialist and copying the federal program officer. One or a combination of explanations below are likely to suffice for most MDCP projects. "Our draw-down of award funds has been delayed because..."

The [name of event] listed in our work plan was postponed

A staffing change temporarily interrupted personnel expense that we planned to charge as we had anticipated in our project budget

A change in contractor temporarily interrupted contractual expense that we planned to charge as we had anticipated in our project budget

The ITA-approved MDCP project work plan includes periods of time like the one at issue during which project expenses are too low to warrant a request for reimbursement or advance

ITA has agreed that it would be better to participate in the [name of recurring event] during the next cycle [year, quarter, etc.] rather than the current cycle

A less timely alternative than the email suggested above will be to include an explanation such as one or more of those listed above on line 12 of your quarterly financial report.

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