The Office of Vice President of Research and the Controller?s Office will collaborate to ensure effort verification reports are returned no later than 30 calendar days after they have been distributed, including escalating noncompliance to appropriate University leadership. These improvements are ex...
The Office of Vice President of Research and the Controller?s Office will collaborate to ensure effort verification reports are returned no later than 30 calendar days after they have been distributed, including escalating noncompliance to appropriate University leadership. These improvements are expected to be completed by December 2023. The Controller?s Office will review its indirect costs configurations within the grants module of Workday to ensure the automated calculation of indirect costs is correct. In addition, the Sponsored Programs Accounting team will manually reconcile indirect costs periodically at the grant level. These improvements are expected to be completed by December 2023. The University continues to have cost transfers in fiscal year 2023 as it reconciles its grants. However, to limit cost transfers in the future, the Office of Vice President of Research and the Controller?s Office worked with the University?s Workday Finance team to configure its accounting system with an automated control that prevents general (non-payroll) expenditures from being charged to the grant after the period of performance end date, one root cause of cost transfers. In addition, for payroll expenditures, the above teams updated grant labor costing allocations in its accounting system to contain an end date that coincides with the period of performance end date which restricts labor costs from being charged after the period of performance. The post award specialists will begin reviewing the labor costing allocations on a periodic basis. Also implemented in fiscal year 2023, before each payroll is processed by the Director of Payroll within the accounting system, grants that have ended are identified by the Assistant Controller and Director of Sponsored Program Accounting and the payroll expenditures are removed from the feed and not charged to the grant. The University has also hired individuals whose sole responsibility is to review general (non-payroll) expenditures charged to grants. Further, the University?s post award specialists are continually trained on the importance of allowed and unallowed expenditures and are now reviewing grant level budget versus actual reporting on a periodic basis to identify noncompliance. Tara Thomason, Controller and Assistance Vice President, is responsible for addressing the above items by December 2023.