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$0.00-Funded BEARs (Form 472s) or Never-Filed BEARs and What To Do
Message Posted December 9, 2008
Did you receive a BEAR (Form 472) Notification Letter and the amount of reimbursement approved was $0.00? Or did you forget to file a 2007 BEAR entirely? If you are in either of these situations, please read this message carefully. If you received your BEAR Letter and did not review it detail, doublecheck to see if you, too, received the $0.00 amount. I've attached a list of everyone that appears to have either forgotten to file a BEAR or who filed and was $0.00-funded (and who's invoice deadline has passed).
The $0.00 approved amount does not mean that your E-rate funding has been denied. It typically means that there was a simple clerical error made on your BEAR and you need to submit a corrected BEAR.
What should you do if you were $0.00-funded or forgot to file a BEAR? ... Follow these steps:
1) Because the deadline for filing Funding Year 10 (2007-2008) BEARs was October 28, 2008, you first must request an invoice deadline extension in order to submit or resubmit your BEAR. It's very simple to do and requests submitted in the few weeks following the deadline are typically approved. Simply follow these steps:
1. Go to “Submit a Question” feature on the SLD Web Site: http://www.slforms.universalservice.org/EMailResponse/EMail_Intro.aspx
2. Click “Continue” button.
3. Under “Topic Inquiry,” (the second box), select “Invoice Deadline Extension Request” and click “Go.”
4. Select “Other” and click “Continue.”
5. Complete the next screen, by providing your contact information as requested on the screen. Click “Continue.”
6. In the text box, provide the following information:
-- Entity Name
-- Billed Entity Number
-- Contact Name
-- Contact e-mail, phone, fax
-- Form 471 Application Number
-- Funding Request Number (FRN)
-- Service Provider Name and SPIN
-- Amount of BEAR (if known)
-- Reason for Invoice Deadline Extension request: "My FY 2006 BEAR was $0.00-funded and I need additional time to resubmit" or "I was recently notified that I forgot to file a BEAR and need additional time to submit."
-- Hit SUBMIT and wait until you receive your confirmation screen that your request was submitted. Sometimes it takes 20-30 seconds for this to happen.
2) The next immediate step is to determine what the error was on your BEAR (if you submitted one). Sometimes the BEAR letter provides the reason for the $0.00 funding. If it doesn't, the most common denial reasons are: incorrect 471 or FRN numbers, customer billed date issues (listing 07/2008 instead of 07/2007) or math/discount errors.
If your BEAR letter doesn't provide the reason and you can't determine what it is yourself, call the SLD at 888-203-8100 and ask them to research it for you.
3) After your BEAR invoice deadline extension is approved (hopefully within 15-30 days), you can submit or resubmit your BEAR for approval. Doing so before the invoice deadline extension has been approved will simply result in another rejection of the BEAR.
4) Correcting a BEAR: There's no way to correct an Online BEAR, so you'll need to start over. But if you filed a paper BEAR, you can simply correct the error on the original paper BEAR and resubmit.
5) If you forgot to submit a BEAR and are unsure how to do so, please review this message as it contains detailed information on submitting the BEAR: http://www.e-ratepa.org/Listserve-Archive/2008/10-27-08.htm.
If you have any questions about this message, please don't hesitate to email me at jtschell@comcast.net.
Julie Tritt Schell
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