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SEFA Audit

Short answer

The SEFA, the Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards, is the schedule your organization prepares listing every federal dollar it spent in the year. The auditor reports on it as part of your Single Audit.
It is your responsibility, not the auditor’s. 2 CFR 200.510(b) requires the auditee to prepare it..
The total on it decides whether you need a Single Audit at all and which programs get tested as major, so an error in the SEFA reaches the whole audit.

When people say “SEFA audit,” they usually mean the role the SEFA plays inside a Single Audit. The schedule itself is not a separate audit; it is the document the rest of the Single Audit is built on, and the auditor reports on it in relation to your financial statements.

Get the SEFA right and the audit runs smoothly. Get it wrong and you invite re-work, re-selected programs, and a longer, costlier engagement.

Why SEFA carries so much weight

The total expended on the SEFA is the number that decides whether you cross the $1,000,000 audit threshold, and the basis the auditor uses to sort your programs into Type A and Type B and choose which ones get tested as major.

That is why an inaccurate SEFA is expensive. If it is wrong, major programs can be mis-selected, the audit may have to be re-done in part, and findings or a restatement can follow.

Who prepares a SEFA

Preparing the SEFA is the auditee’s job, not the auditor’s. Auditor independence rules mean the firm that audits you cannot also build your SEFA from scratch. We can review it, reconcile it, and help you get it right, but ownership stays with management.

What a SEFA must include

2 CFR 200.510(b) sets out what the schedule must contain:

Individual federal programs listed by federal agency, with the applicable Assistance Listing numbers.
Total federal awards expended for each program, and a total for each cluster of programs.
The total amount passed through to subrecipients from each program.
Notes describing the significant accounting policies, and whether you elected the de minimis indirect cost rate of up to 15 percent.
For loan or loan guarantee programs, the balances outstanding at the end of the audit period.

Where SEFAs go wrong

Most SEFA problems are a handful of recurring mistakes:

Reporting awards received rather than awards expended. The schedule is about what you spent.
Leaving off pass-through funding because it came from a state or another nonprofit, not directly from a federal agency.
Using a wrong or retired Assistance Listing number.
Omitting amounts passed to subrecipients.
Forgetting non-cash awards such as donated commodities, vaccines, or equipment.

How we help with your SEFA

We build a complete SEFA from your grant list and general ledger, or review the one you have, checking that it:

Reconciles to your GL

Every number ties back to the general ledger.

Uses the right Assistance Listing numbers

No retired or wrong codes.

Captures subrecipient totals

Every pass-through amount is accounted for.

Ties to the audit

It lines up with the rest of the Single Audit, so nothing surprises you at fieldwork.

The audit itself is covered on our A-133 audit requirements page.

The SEFA is the part of a Single Audit you can get ahead of. A clean, reconciled schedule before fieldwork is the difference between a smooth audit and a slow one. If you are not sure yours is complete, that is exactly what a short review settles.

What SEFA help costs

There is no flat price. SEFA work scales with how many programs you run and the state of your records. The main drivers are:

How many federal programs and funding sources the schedule has to capture.
Whether we build the SEFA from your grant list and general ledger or review a draft you already have.
How much funding you pass through to subrecipients, which has to be tracked on the schedule.
How clean your general ledger is, since the SEFA has to reconcile to it.

Why businesses trust Dimov tax

Send us your draft schedule, or your grant list and general ledger if you do not have one yet, and we will check it for completeness against the rules.

SEFA Audit

Getting the schedule right before fieldwork is part of a broader audit readiness assessment, and it ties back to the federal grant compliance behind your spending. Send us your draft or your grant list and we will give you a fixed quote before you commit.