Excess cost vs excess funds

[OsbornFPD]

Without going into a lot of detail, I had a GMS tell me this afternoon, that we could buy something (meaning 1 item out of sevaral on the request) that went over the the allowed AFG funds, then after that was all said and done if we had excess funds on the grant we could apply excess funds towards that cost instead of out of pocket for the dept.

If anyone needs more info to clarify the sitiation, PM me, I've received a couple of phone calls and emails from vendors over things I've posted here and would rather keep this in house until we have a better answer to this question, from what I understand from the PG and elswhere the GMS isn't right about this.

[BC79er]

No, they are correct. You can use the $5000 Excess Fund rules to cover overages in one area of the project with savings in another.

Say you got $800 for bunker pants and $900 for coats in the award as project costs. Pants come in at $700 and coats at $950. Since it's been a long day I'll use 10 to keep the math easier on me.

Now your total on pants is $7000 (instead of $8000 awarded, savings of $1000), and $9500 instead of $9000 (over by $500).

If you're 5% match then instead of $7200 fed going to pants, you're only spending $6300, creating $900 in federal excess funds.

On the coat side, you're over by $500. 95% of that is $475, so you can use the excess fed money from the pants to spend on the coat overage leaving you still with $425 in excess fed share.

Where it gets fund is if you save more than $5000 on one thing and go over by more than $5000 on another. You're still limited to $5000 in excess, so anything over that you have to pay out yourself.

[OsbornFPD]

Awesome, Thanks Brian, once again I'm reminded why you get paid the big bucks

[BC79er]

Who gets what? Boss is a tightwad, I don't get paid squat...

[tmartinwp05]

BC79er,

Maybe you can help me out with this question on running over on cost.
We were granted 10 set of new gear, Pants and jackets. We were funded for $900 for jackets and $800 for pants. Price we got for jackets was $1047.15 each and $732.45 each for pants. Totaling $1779.60 for each pants/jacket set. This meaning we are over by $79.60 per set. Are you saying this is ok to do and allowed in AFG. I have always been under the impression that we would have to pay the extra we were over on each set at the time they were purchased.

Thanks,
T. Martin

[islandfire03]

AFG will only pay what your award is funded for . Any additional overage is your responsibility.
Tell your vendors to sharpen their pencils some, we were awarded turnout gear this year also. We ended up under the AFG allowed funding on coats & pants. The only part that came in over budget was the leather boots which came in at 299 and funded at 225.

[neiowa]

What brand and materials are you bidding. You can get into great gear in Advance Ultra shell for $13-1400 a set.

[BC79er]

Correct tmartin, you can use the shortage in the pants to cover the overage in the coats, up to a total of $5000.

But it's not a per set thing, it's a line item thing. You were given $8000 to buy 10 PPE coats, and it's only costing $7234.50, leaving $765.50 in Excess Funds (95% theirs, 5% yours).

You were given $9000 to buy 10 coats, your pricing is $10,471.50. You can use the $765.50 towards that leaving $706 that you have to add to it in your money to make happen. Anything you save in the other line items for gloves, boots, helmets, or hoods you can apply against that $706 also. But the limit is $5000 in moving around between the line items.

Trust me here folks, been over this hundreds of times in just the last 6 months with 2008 closeouts and 2009 awards and no issues with DHS on any of them since this is how they calculate Excess Funds. The Excess Fund rule is there for this reason too. Got a whole spreadsheet template saved so I can run the calculations quickly on any project. Haven't missed one yet.

And beware sharpened pencils on gear bids, know quite a few that got their prices lowered by changing out liners and other such things. Under 5 years dealing with repairs on tears and other problems that shouldn't happen. No gear is infallible but old department spent $3000 for coat and pants, and it wasn't all lettering and pockets either. Matching shells and liners for your average outside temp is part of the equation. Learned a lot sitting in on some presentations from folks in the science side of gear making. Everyone can make the same stuff if asked for, but odds are the cheap stuff is the cheap stuff.

[Troyboy67]

Don't forget you can always request an amendment if the prices come in over what is allowed. Within reason....

[BC79er]

Amendments are not approved for pricing changes, the price limits are the limits. You're not getting more money out of them. Only thing that can be amended is quantities if things have changed since application submission, or asking to use money for something else because a line item isn't needed anymore for some valid reason that needs a lot of explanation.