CohnReznick LLP is one of the top accounting, tax, and advisory firms in the United States, combining the resources and technical expertise of a national firm with the hands-on, entrepreneurial approach that today’s dynamic business environment demands. CohnReznick’ s Government and Public Sector Advisory is an experienced provider of financial management, compliance, risk, integrity monitoring, and disaster response support.
Under a contract with the United States Department of Energy (DOE), CohnReznick (CR) was responsible to not only track their employees’ time for over 100 different projects in a given year (across nearly a dozen DOE contracting offices), but also to have a system that allows its subcontractors to enter their time weekly. This is in support of properly managing budgets and preparing contractually required reports in a timely manner (by the tenth of each month.) There is a significant amount of Time and Billing and Reporting Requirements under this contract as the DOE issued Blanket Purchase Agreements (BPA) and Call Orders against this BPA.
The process that had been in place required the dual entry of timesheets and expenses for CohnReznick employees and was prone to errors, required reconciliations and created timing issues for timesheet corrections. Furthermore, the system used to track time/expense was not DCAA compliant.
The Unanet application was implemented in an effective manner, meeting DOE contractual and internal fiduciary requirements.
Both employees and subcontractors are entering time and expenses in Unanet in a compliant manner. CohnReznick takes advantage of the automated alerts to remind staff to enter time and/or expenses. Especially helpful are the alerts triggered to contact only those who have not yet submitted data. The automated review and approval process, routing through various project and management approvers, is efficient and helpful in insuring time and expenses are accurate before they move to the invoicing and reporting stage. Automated alerts are also used to inform managers when projects are at a certain percent expended as well as a certain time frame before agreed upon due dates.
Status reporting enables managers to edit their own status information, including percent complete, at the project level. Unanet is also able to add non-analytical data, individual comments and updates to provide a fuller picture.
The invoicing process is now very straight forward and cost effective. Invoices previously taking one to two days to generate are now processed in an hour. Prior to Unanet it would take more than a day to complete 15 to 18 invoices. Now CohnReznick can process these invoices in one hour.
Status reporting to DOE at the headquarters, as well as to the many contracting offices, is a major requirement of the BPA, and a requirement of the Unanet project. The Unanet reporting features enable CohnReznick to pull up exactly what is needed for specific status reporting. Both the headquarters summary reporting and the five to six status reports requested by approximately a dozen contracting officers are produced without having to manipulate data to achieve the desired formats. In the past these weekly status reports took one to one and a half days to prepare. They now can all be prepared in about two hours.
The Unanet standard reports are also very helpful and easy to use. The drill down capability assists with detailed research, allowing the user to get the information needed quickly and efficiently. The system configuration was designed so that the customer organizations and project structure supports easy reporting at various levels, including by DOE contract office, to meet internal and external reporting needs.
In addition to meeting the contractual needs precipitating the implementation of Unanet, meeting the internal CohnReznick requirements was also critical. Through the use of the bi-directional interface information is automatically transmitted between Unanet and the CohnReznick accounting systems. The transactions needed by the CohnReznick corporate accounting team to generate and maintain corporate level financials are automatically populated through the interface, avoiding the inherent risks with duplicate entry. The CohnReznick accounting team can quickly review and post these transactions to the company’s financials.
The Unanet implementation was successfully completed and CohnReznick DOE group went live at the beginning of their 2016 fiscal year.
The decision was made to implement Unanet’s web based Project Tracking software, including web based timesheets and expense reports. This would enable both CohnReznick employees and subcontractors to enter time and expenses in a manner compliant with DCAA and FAR requirements. This would also provide CohnReznick project managers the ability to review charges in a ‘real time’ environment, helping them to monitor and manage project performance and budgets. Invoicing, client and internal reporting are generated directly from Unanet.
While there are many standard reports available in Unanet Project Tracking, and all the information was readily available, the DOE BPA and several of the individual contracting offices called out specific formats for some of the reports. This requirement was met through the design of custom reports that, would be run in Unanet application.
In order to eliminate the need for a dual system entry, and all the associated difficulties, an automated, bi-directional interface was developed so that Unanet and the CohnReznick corporate accounting system could easily communicate.
“Our experience with WJ Technologies (WiJiT) was good. Everyone was very responsive, even after the implementation. As we have questions or issues, they have been very response to offer solutions and, if needed, to look into a solution. While WiJiT researches challenges, they will offer interim solutions which are nice to have as a quick fix or a plan B while the final resolution is determined. I feel very comfortable reaching out to them as we need or if we run into and issues or have questions. It’s been a great working relationship.
I feel like the system is easy to navigate and our users have caught on quickly to entering time and expenses and we haven’t had any heartburn which you can sometimes expect with a system change. All of our project management processes have run more smoothly and more efficiently using Unanet.”
Mary Michael Staples, Manager Government and Public Sector, CohnReznick Advisory
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We are delighted to announce that, as of February 1, 2023, the professionals of WJ Technologies have joined CohnReznick, one of the leading advisory, assurance, and tax firms in the United States – a move that catapults our ability to serve our clients, our people, and our communities well into the future.
