The Schools and Libraries Division announced Dec. 7 that it will distribute a new report to E-rate applicants, indicating the payments that have been made on their behalf to their service providers for the period July 1 to November 30, 2000.
The report will cover payments authorized during that period by either a Billed Entity Applicant Reimbursement (BEAR) form or a Service Provider Invoice Form, and will indicate which funding year was covered by the payment.
Up to now, applicants had no way of tracking when the SLD was paying their vendors. In some cases, vendors and applicants both filed paperwork to cover the same bills. Starting in the third funding year, however, the SLD has decreed that once an applicant begins using a particular payment method, either BEAR or Service Provider Invoice, for a particular funding commitment, it must continue to use that method all year long.
The SLD said the notice would be sent to the Billed Entity Address on the Form 471 and addressed to the person who signed the form, that is, the authorized person, rather than the person designated as the application contact person.
