ANNUAL REPORT Update: Recent Change Affects Form 4

Check the ‘Review’ tab of each of your three annual reports. Do they show an error involving ‘Expended Funds’ reported on Form 4? If so, this may be the result of an update Florida Housing has made to the web annual report.

For each SHIP distribution, you must report details about all program funds that have been expended, including the name and address of each assisted household. The strategy that was used to provide assistance is listed alongside the name of each recipient. Florida Housing has now programmed the web system to total up the expended funds for each strategy. Now, a “Summary by Strategy” total appears at the end of the list of expended funds you have added to Form 4.

There’s a good reason for the change; it allows Florida Housing to review the amount expended per strategy and compare this with what is reported on each strategy line of Form 1. If the expended fund figures do not match, this new improvement may make it easier to identify specifically where the error occurs. For example, consider a jurisdiction that has expended funds on three strategies. The ‘Summary by Strategy’ totals show that the funds expended on Strategies A and B exactly match the figures on the top of Form 1. The total expended for Strategy C, conversely, does not match Form 1, so it is the source of the error. Correcting this report will go quickly since one is able to focus attention on only a portion of the data provided.

A Related Question:
On Form 4, I added an amount of expended funds per strategy that exactly matches the figures reported on Form 1. Yet the Review Tab still shows an error. Specifically, it indicates:
“There are no "Expended Funds" records for the "Homebuyer Assistance" strategy listed under the Distributed Funds' "Home Ownership" section on Form 1.”
Please provide guidance.

Answer:
The error in this case is caused by the fact that this jurisdiction labeled a strategy “Homebuyer Assistance” on Form 1, but called it “Purchase Assistance” next to the name of each buyer listed on Form 4. In order for Florida Housing’s new programming to work properly, the name of each strategy must be identical on Forms 1 and 4. Pay attention to capitalization, since this also makes a difference. In this case, the jurisdiction decided to change the strategy name on Form 1 to “Purchase Assistance” and the error message disappeared.



THE DEADLINE IS APPROACHING
Every jurisdiction must submit their reports by September 15th. The Coalition is available to help you ‘cross the finish line’ and submit your annual reports. This year, the Coalition is available on Tuesdays and Thursdays to provide this assistance through its technical assistance line: 800 677-4548. In addition, a full and updated collection of frequently asked questions about annual reports is available at http://faqannualreports.blogspot.com/.