The clock on a Single Audit response starts the moment the auditee receives the auditor's report, not when the institution decides it is ready. The reporting package, including the corrective action plan, is due within 30 days of that report or nine months after the fiscal year end, whichever comes first.
A corrective action plan is not a paragraph promising to do better. It has to name the responsible contact, describe the specific corrective action, and give an anticipated completion date, for every single finding in the auditor's report.
The audit does not end at submission. The awarding agency has up to six months to issue a management decision on each finding, and an institution that stops tracking the finding once the reporting package is filed is missing the second half of the process.
A Single Audit or a sponsor program review is not a surprise inspection in the way a fire marshal visit is. An institution generally knows well in advance whether it will cross the federal expenditure threshold that triggers one, and the auditor's fieldwork itself takes weeks. What actually catches institutions unprepared is not the audit starting. It is the 30-day clock that starts the moment the auditor's report lands, a window that is not long enough to build a corrective action process from a standing start, find the responsible owner for each finding, and get institutional sign-off, all for the first time. The same internal control expectation under 2 CFR 200.303 that governs day-to-day financial management is exactly what an auditor is testing when the fieldwork begins.
Many institutions still refer to their audit process by its old name. OMB Circular A-133 governed Single Audits before the Uniform Guidance consolidated federal grant requirements into 2 CFR Part 200 in 2014, and institutional policy documents, procurement contracts for audit software, and even job titles sometimes still carry the A-133 name years later. The substance is the same regulatory obligation under a different citation. An institution searching for "A-133 audit compliance software" today is looking for a tool built around 2 CFR 200 Subpart F, whether the vendor markets it under the old name or the current one.
Under 2 CFR 200.512, the audit, the data collection form, and the full reporting package must be submitted to the Federal Audit Clearinghouse within 30 calendar days after the auditee receives the auditor's report, or nine months after the end of the audit period, whichever is earlier. If that deadline lands on a weekend or a federal holiday, it moves to the next business day, not the other direction. A cognizant or oversight agency can grant an extension when the nine-month timeframe would create an undue burden, but that extension has to be requested, not assumed. An institution that treats the nine-month outer limit as its planning deadline, without accounting for the 30-day clock that can trigger much earlier if the auditor's report comes back quickly, is planning against the wrong number.
At the completion of the audit, 2 CFR 200.511 requires the auditee to prepare a corrective action plan addressing every finding in the auditor's current-year report, and the plan has specific required content: the name of the person responsible for the corrective action, a description of the action itself, and the anticipated completion date. A generic institutional response promising improved oversight does not satisfy this requirement finding by finding. Each finding needs its own named owner and its own dated commitment, which means the corrective action plan cannot be finalized until someone has actually gone to each responsible office and gotten a specific answer, not a general one.
Submission is not the end of the process. The federal awarding agency, or the pass-through entity for a subaward, has up to six months after the Federal Audit Clearinghouse accepts the audit report to issue a management decision on each finding, determining whether the institution's corrective action is accepted or whether further action is required. The Federal Audit Clearinghouse's submission guide walks through what a complete reporting package has to include before it will be accepted, and a rejected or incomplete submission does not stop the original clock from running. Institutions must also retain the data collection form and reporting package for three years from the date of submission, a retention obligation separate from, and in addition to, whatever the underlying award's own records retention requirement already specifies.
|
Milestone |
Deadline |
What has to be ready |
|
Reporting package submission |
30 days after receiving the auditor's report, or 9 months after fiscal year end, whichever is earlier |
Data collection form, financial statements, and corrective action plan |
|
Corrective action plan |
Included with the reporting package submission |
Named responsible contact, described action, and completion date per finding |
|
Management decision |
Up to 6 months after the Federal Audit Clearinghouse accepts the audit report |
Agency determination on whether corrective action is accepted per finding |
|
Records retention |
3 years from the date of submission to the FAC |
Data collection form and full reporting package on file |
Documentation an auditor will likely request, procurement records under 2 CFR 200.318, approval trails, subrecipient monitoring records under 2 CFR 200.332, is retrievable on demand year-round, not reconstructed under a 30-day clock.
Each finding in the auditor's report is assigned to the office actually responsible for the underlying process the moment the report is received.
Responsible contact, described action, and completion date are captured as structured data for every finding, not written as a single narrative response.
The workflow calculates both the 30-day and nine-month deadlines and flags whichever comes first, rather than defaulting to the longer window by assumption.
Each finding stays open in the system until the awarding agency's management decision is recorded, closing the loop the audit itself does not close at submission.
The submitted package and supporting evidence are retained for the three-year period the requirement specifies, retrievable without depending on whoever handled the original submission still being at the institution.
Kissflow is the governed execution layer at the edges of the Single Audit and sponsor review response stack. It does not replace the external auditor, the institution's own audit committee, or the judgment behind how a finding gets corrected. It replaces the scramble to assemble evidence, draft a corrective action plan, and track submission deadlines from scratch each audit cycle, often by the same overworked office that is also trying to keep the institution's day-to-day grant administration running.
If your institution runs Banner, Workday, or a dedicated grants management system, Kissflow does not compete with any of them for the underlying transaction records. It sits alongside them as the layer that routes findings to responsible owners, structures the corrective action plan to the format 2 CFR 200.511 requires, and tracks both the submission deadline and the management decision that follows it.
The differentiation that matters to a CFO: when a new type of finding appears, or the institution's cognizant agency changes its extension practices, the finance office updates the response workflow directly, instead of rebuilding the same evidence-gathering process from memory the next time an audit lands, consistent with the same Single Audit threshold that determined the institution needed this workflow in the first place.
Thirty calendar days after the auditee receives the auditor's report, or nine months after the end of the audit period, whichever is earlier. If that date falls on a weekend or federal holiday, it moves to the next business day.
A response to every finding in the auditor's current-year report, each one naming the person responsible for the corrective action, describing the action itself, and giving an anticipated completion date. A general institutional statement does not satisfy this finding by finding.
No. The awarding agency or pass-through entity has up to six months after the Federal Audit Clearinghouse accepts the report to issue a management decision on each finding, determining whether the corrective action is accepted.
Yes. OMB Circular A-133 was the governing framework before the Uniform Guidance consolidated federal grant requirements into 2 CFR Part 200 in 2014. Institutions and vendors sometimes still use the older name for the same current requirement.
The data collection form and the full reporting package must be kept on file for three years from the date of submission to the Federal Audit Clearinghouse, separate from any retention period the underlying award itself specifies.
No. Kissflow is the workflow layer that routes findings, structures the corrective action plan, and tracks submission and management decision deadlines. The external audit itself and the underlying grants management system remain exactly where they are.
Request a 30-minute walkthrough to see how Kissflow assembles Single Audit evidence and tracks corrective action deadlines from the report date to the management decision. Book a demo today.