Financial Improvement Plans
The Columbia Group provides expertise in support of customers operating under the Department of the Navy (DON) Financial Improvement Plan. The Financial Improvement Plan is the process that DON uses to perform business process transformation and risk mitigation activities and that allows the DON to produce timely, accurate, and reliable financial information to achieve an unqualified opinion on the DON Annual Financial Statements. We apply our expertise in Department of Defense (DOD) Financial Management Regulations (FMR), Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations (DFARS), Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circulars, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), DOD/DON and DFAS policies and procedures, Query Management Facility (QMF) knowledge, Navy Accounting systems, DFAS payment systems, and DFAS Treasury registration processes as part of these customer support efforts.
The Columbia Group also provides assistance in the review of Federal laws, regulations, policies and procedures. We have the ability to assist customers in fulfilling responsibilities associated with the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990, the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act (FMIA) of 1996, and Section 1008 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002.
Key areas of Financial Improvement Plan support The Columbia Group provides include:
Financial Statement Preparation
The Columbia Group utilizes Defense Departmental Reporting System – Budgetary (DDRS-B) to support the preparation of financial statements including the Statement of Budgetary Resources (SBR). We also compare and analyze DDRS-B data with the accounting system of record in support of review for Journal Vouchers (JVs).
DOD Accounting Execution Business Processes
The Columbia Group provides financial management and accounting support personnel with expertise in government accounting systems, regulations, and environments throughout the execution phase. We understand the numerous financial systems, including transaction-level processing, and their impacts on overall execution monitoring and reporting and on financial statements.
Customized Data Retrieval
The Columbia Group’s proprietary software applications interface with Navy accounting and payment systems to provide daily updates of financial information, so our customers waste no time researching out-of-date obligations. Our applications are able to pull financial data from MOCAS, STARS, HCM and STARS-FL. Support for NAVY-ERP is under development. The applications can be customized to accommodate other accounting systems as customers provide access to them.
Our data retrieval extends to reporting and metrics, reconciliation of problem disbursements, pre-validation reject research, and a variety of processing challenges when standard reports from the systems are insufficient.