Single audit

An organisation-wide audit required for a year in which a non-federal entity expends federal awards above the threshold in 2 CFR 200. It is a fact about a recipient’s own fiscal year rather than about any one programme, and nothing here can compute it for you.

Part of the GrantTrove grant funding glossary — one entry for every field the catalogue stores.

Also called Uniform Guidance audit · 2 CFR 200 Subpart F audit · A-133 audit

In detail

The trigger is what an organisation expends in a fiscal year, not the size of any single award, and it counts federal money that arrived indirectly as well as directly — a state subaward of federal funds counts toward the same total. Two awards that are each comfortably under the line can cross it together.

The threshold belongs to the regulation and it has moved: 2 CFR 200 held it at $750,000 for years, and the 2024 revision raised it to $1,000,000 for fiscal years beginning on or after 1 October 2024. The regulation governs, not this page — check it rather than us.

The audit is a real cost. Where a small organisation is deciding whether to accept an award that would take it over the line, the audit fee belongs in the arithmetic beside the award amount.

Against the award ceiling

An award ceiling is the most a single project may receive. The single audit threshold is a total of everything expended in a year. They measure different things, and a record can only ever tell you the first: `amount_max` is per award, captioned “Award ceiling (per project)”, and we never sum awards on a reader’s behalf.

How GrantTrove stores it

  • We store no audit status and could not: the schema holds opportunities and funders, and this threshold is a fact about the applicant’s own year.
  • What a record does carry is the per-award figure, captioned so it cannot be mistaken for a programme total. “Award ceiling (per project)” and “Program pool (total)” are never the same row, on any page.
  • Federal money that reaches a recipient through a state counts the same way, which is why the subaward entry sits beside this one.

Common questions

Does one large grant trigger a single audit?

Only if what you expend in the fiscal year crosses the threshold. A large multi-year award may be spent across several years, and it is expenditure that counts.

Do state pass-through funds count?

Federal funds passed through a state are federal awards expended by the subrecipient. The subaward entry explains the pass-through relationship.

Can GrantTrove tell me whether I need one?

No, and it will not guess. That answer needs your fiscal year’s expenditures, which are your data and are not in this database.