A US federal contract requires proof that every corrected timesheet hour keeps its original value on record, and that indirect costs are split according to precise rules. On a spreadsheet, that traceability is easily lost. This application traces every time correction and works out indirect cost pool rates for businesses subject to US federal contract oversight (DCAA, FAR).
Who the application is for
For prime contractors and subcontractors on US federal contracts, subject to the timekeeping and indirect cost rules of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and overseen by the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA). These rules are specific to US federal government contracts and change as the regulations are updated: check them with your contracting officer.
What the application does
- Records your federal contracts with their number, the agency, the contract type and your role, and decides contract by contract whether time corrections are traced.
- Traces every correction to a logged hour: the original value, the corrected value, the reason, the author and the timestamp are all kept, with nothing ever overwritten.
- Flags the employee's concurrence when a third party corrects on their behalf, taken as given when they correct it themselves.
- Locks a correction once the supervisor has approved it: it can no longer be changed or deleted.
- Keeps your indirect cost pools and their allocation base, with a provisional rate, a proposed final rate and a settled final rate coexisting for the same exercise.
- Works out a pool's real rate from logged hours, keeping unallowable costs in the allocation base even once they are excluded from the pool, as the federal rule requires.
- Tracks the cost exercise's deadlines — the final rate proposal, the closing invoice, the billing update — and extends your record retention by as many days as the proposal is late.
Day to day
- You record your federal contracts and tick, for each one, whether time corrections must be traced.
- Your teams log time as usual; any correction goes through an assistant that asks for the reason and keeps the values before and after.
- The supervisor approves each correction after reading the reason; once approved, it becomes final.
- You open a cost exercise at its close: the proposal, invoice and update deadlines are worked out on their own, with the retention extension if late.
- You work out each pool's real rate and compare it with the provisional rate already applied, pool by pool and exercise by exercise.
What the application does not do
- It never says that a timesheet is compliant, that an accounting system is acceptable, or that a business is in order: those judgements belong to your contracting officer and to the oversight body.
- It does not replace the advice of an accountant or a lawyer specialising in US federal contracts, and the rules it cites can change: check them before any decision.
- It does not verify any entity or exclusion through a proven automatic call: the reliable path remains entering by hand what you read yourself.
- It does not work out any real rate or cost exercise deadline in its free edition: that calculation belongs to the full edition.
- According to its publisher, it has not yet been tested in production, including its rate calculations and connectors.
Free and full editions
The free edition already carries the federal contract register, traced correction of logged hours, and indirect cost pools. The full edition installs on top without re-entering anything, and adds the real rate calculation, the gap against the provisional rate, the cost exercise deadlines, the accounting system self-assessment and the entity check against the federal register.
Getting started
Record your federal contracts and decide, for each one, whether corrections are traced. Name your cost pools according to your cost policy, and set out who logs time and who approves.
Going further
To find out whether this application suits your business and how to activate it, compare the plans or write to us.