NCAA Agreed-Upon Procedures: What’s New in 2019?

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has issued its 2019 Agreed-Upon Procedures guide, and it remains relatively intact compared to the 2018 version. While some changes are fixes for spelling errors, clarifications and other minor issues, there are some new items you should know about.

A New Category for Conference Distribution of Bowl Generated Revenue

The NCAA has created Expense Category 13A, Conference Distributions of Bowl Generated Revenue. Use this category to report separately the money your athletic department gets from postseason bowl revenue distributions to conference members. The section header has been expanded to reflect this change.

Clarification Regarding Student Athletic Aid

A bullet point has been added to Category 20 to clarify that student athletic aid includes, “Other expenses related to attendance.” Schools should already be reporting cost of attendance amounts this way; the addition of this language simply reaffirms the proper procedure.

Additional Minimum Procedures Changes

There are three new variance-related procedures added to the additional minimum procedures required for NCAA revenue distribution.

• For grants-in-aid: “Compare current year Grants-in-Aid revenue distribution equivalencies to prior year reported equivalencies per the Membership Financial Report Submission. Inquire and document an explanation for any variance greater than +/- 4%.”
• For sports sponsorship: “Compare current year number of Sports Sponsored to prior year reported total per the Membership Financial Report submission. Inquire and document an explanation for any variance.”
• For Pell Grants: “Compare current year Pell Grants total to prior year reported total per the Membership Financial Report submission. Inquire and document an explanation for any variance greater than +/- 20 grants.”

All other edits to the additional minimum procedures section of the agreed-upon procedures apply only to wording; the procedures themselves remain unchanged.

It’s best to contact your collegiate athletics CPA firm to make sure that you fully understand (and are compliant with) this year’s changes. You can also download the NCAA’s complete 2019 agreed-upon procedures guide here. Learn more about our NCAA Agreed-Upon Procedures service and experience.

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