of the Grant Agreement This Report may not be relied upon by the Beneficiary or by the REA for any other purpose, nor may it be distributed to any other parties. The REA may only disclose this Report to others who have regulatory rights of access to it, in particular the European Commission, the European Anti Fraud Office and the European Court of Auditors. This Report relates only to the Financial Statement(s) specified above and does not extend to any other financial statements of the Beneficiary. No conflict of interest4 exists between the Auditor and the Beneficiary in establishing this Report. The fee paid to the Auditor for providing the Report was € . We look forward to discussing our Report with you and would be pleased to provide any further information or assistance which may be required. [legal name of the audit firm] [[name and function of an authorised representative] <dd Month yyyy>,<Signature of the Auditor> 4 A conflict of interest arises when the auditor's objectivity to establish the certificate is compromised in fact or in appearance when the auditor for instance: - was involved in the preparation of the Financial Statements (Forms C); - stands to benefit directly should the certificate be accepted; - has a close relationship with any person representing the beneficiary; - is a director, trustee or partner of the beneficiary; - is in any other situation that compromises his or her independence or ability to establish the certificate impartially. Procedures performed by the Auditor The Auditor designs and carries out his work in accordance with the objective and scope of this engagement and the procedures to be performed as specified below. When performing these procedures the Auditor may apply techniques such as inquiry and analysis, (re)computation, comparison, other clerical accuracy checks, observation, inspection of records and documents, inspection of assets and obtaining confirmations or any others deemed necessary in carrying out these procedures. The European Commission reserves the right to issue guidance together with example definitions and findings to guide the Auditor in the nature and presentation of the facts to be ascertained. The European Commission and the REA reserve the right to vary the procedures by written notification to the Beneficiary. The procedures to be performed are listed as follows: Procedures Standard factual finding and basis for exception reporting Personnel Costs 1.Recalculate hourly personnel and overhead rates for personnel (full coverage if less than 20 employees, otherwise a sample of minimum 20, or 20% of employees, whichever is the greater), indicate the number of productive hours used and hourly rates. Where sampling is used, selection should be random with a view to producing a representative sample. 'Productive hours' represent the (average) number of hours made available by the employee in a year after the deduction of holiday, sick leave and other entitlements. The auditor obtained the calculation of the productive hours after inspecting all necessary records, national legislation, labour agreements, contracts, any other relevant documentation. The calculation should be based on the period(s) corresponding to the Financial Statement(s) or on the last closed financial year (whichever is used by the beneficiary). The auditor sampled employees out of the total of employees. For each employee in the sample of , the Auditor obtained the personnel costs (salary and employer's costs) from the payroll system together with the productive hours from the time records of each employee. For each employee selected, the Auditor recomputed the hourly rate by dividing the actual personnel costs by the actual productive hours, which was then compared to the hourly rate charged by the Beneficiary. No exceptions were noted. The average number of productive hours for the employees selected was . The productive hours calculation corresponds to the usual accounting practice of the beneficiary. If the productive hours or costs of personnel cannot be identified, they should be listed (together with the amounts) as exceptions in the main report. If the productive hours calculation does not correspond to the usual accounting practice of the beneficiary, this should be listed as an exception in the main report.
