BMac29 Posted March 4, 2021 Report Share Posted March 4, 2021 Hi All, I'm fairly new to the Contracts world, and currently have a situation where I'm needing to know if we can go back and invoice for costs after a Task Order has been closed. Here's a brief summary: 1. We are the Subcontractor to a Prime who has a USG contract. 2. The Task Order is a T&M Task Order and expired in January of 2016. 3. During this time frame, our F&A department's process for reconciling to ensure accurate invoicing was lacking 4. We submitted our Release of Claims form to the prime in 2017. 5. We received a deob mod for closeout shortly after. 6. The Prime recently in the last few months has started reconciling their records, and has found that our Release of Claims form does not match the invoicing records on their end and is asking us to send then a revised Release of Claims form. The discrepancy is very small and is just essentially an admin change to true up records. 7. While performing our revamped and much more accurate reconciliation process after this request was received, we found ~$3,500 in cost that we never invoiced to the Prime. My question: At this point, would we be able to go back to the Prime and invoice these costs that we missed? Or is it too late since the Task Order has been closed? TIA for any input. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ji20874 Posted March 4, 2021 Report Share Posted March 4, 2021 You can always try. But if you did, would your prime record it as a bad in a past performance evaluation such as under cost control? Is it worth the risk? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
here_2_help Posted March 4, 2021 Report Share Posted March 4, 2021 33 minutes ago, BMac29 said: 3. During this time frame, our F&A department's process for reconciling to ensure accurate invoicing was lacking 4. We submitted our Release of Claims form to the prime in 2017. 7. While performing our revamped and much more accurate reconciliation process after this request was received, we found ~$3,500 in cost that we never invoiced to the Prime. My question: At this point, would we be able to go back to the Prime and invoice these costs that we missed? Or is it too late since the Task Order has been closed? My first thought was "no." When your company executed the Release of Claims, that's exactly what you did. You released the other party from any obligations to pay you in excess of what had been previously paid. In that line of thinking, the loss of ~ $3,500 is the price the company paid for an inadequate billing process. Sure you lost $3,500 but you saved so much more by not hiring trained staff and investing in reconciliation processes! So that's where I was. But then I thought, "the prime has [implicitly] rejected the prior Release of Claims and asked for a revision. What would keep the subcontractor from revising it even more than the prime had intended by adding $3,500 or so and also sending a new invoice along with it?" I can't think of anything that would prevent the revision except customer relationships. Or your company could eat the $3,500 and call it even. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BMac29 Posted March 4, 2021 Author Report Share Posted March 4, 2021 4 hours ago, here_2_help said: My first thought was "no." When your company executed the Release of Claims, that's exactly what you did. You released the other party from any obligations to pay you in excess of what had been previously paid. In that line of thinking, the loss of ~ $3,500 is the price the company paid for an inadequate billing process. Sure you lost $3,500 but you saved so much more by not hiring trained staff and investing in reconciliation processes! So that's where I was. But then I thought, "the prime has [implicitly] rejected the prior Release of Claims and asked for a revision. What would keep the subcontractor from revising it even more than the prime had intended by adding $3,500 or so and also sending a new invoice along with it?" I can't think of anything that would prevent the revision except customer relationships. Or your company could eat the $3,500 and call it even. The later part of your response was where I was heading with my thinking. They essentially opened the door back up for the opportunity. This is a long-standing customer who we have a great relationship with, I think we could at least go back and just ask, but approach it with caution. We just want to make sure we are doing our due diligence for the company to recoup anything we can. I'll be sure to respond and let everyone here know how it went. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Constricting Officer Posted March 8, 2021 Report Share Posted March 8, 2021 On 3/4/2021 at 5:05 PM, BMac29 said: ". . . I think we could at least go back and just ask, but approach it with caution. . ." You answered your own question. You will always get 0% of anything you do not ask for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
here_2_help Posted March 8, 2021 Report Share Posted March 8, 2021 1 hour ago, Constricting Officer said: You answered your own question. You will always get 0% of anything you do not ask for. "On cross-examination, never ask a question to which you don't already know the answer." -- Harper Lee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lionel Hutz Posted March 9, 2021 Report Share Posted March 9, 2021 22 hours ago, here_2_help said: "On cross-examination, never ask a question to which you don't already know the answer." -- Harper Lee "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. - Wayne Gretsky" - Michael Scott Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.gif)
Recommended Posts