Award Management

Cost Overruns

A cost overrun occurs when direct costs charged to a grant, cooperative agreement, or contract are in excess of the awarded amount. Deficit spending on these funds is inappropriate and should rarely occur. When such an occurrence exists, the deficit must be moved from the grant, cooperative agreement, or contract to a departmental account.

The departmental account to which the charges are being transferred should have the same function as the grant, cooperative agreement, or contract. Specifically, if the deficit fund has a function of research, the departmental fund should have a function of research. The same would follow if the function was instruction or other sponsored.

If the deficit is incurred in anticipation of additional funding, a memo should be prepared by the department accepting the responsibility for the cost overrun should the funding not be forthcoming. See Pre-Award Cost for criteria.

Purchasing Card (P-Card)

P-Card purchases for sponsored projects may be charged directly to the grant fund.

When charging directly to the sponsored project in PaymentNet, the following additional chartfields must be completed:

Project No.: UND00xxxxx
PC Bus Unit: UND01
Activity: 1-Activity

Reallocation

P-card purchases reallocated to sponsored funding require the P-Card Justification Form. The completed form must be attached to the Journal Voucher Form.

Statements

P-card Statements will continue to flow through Perceptive Content and will need to be reconciled in PaymentNet. In the event an unallowable expense is charged to a sponsored project, the expense will need to be moved to a departmental fund.

Salary Corrections

The function of the Grants & Contracts Accounting (G&C) is to properly administer sponsor funding. After the fact salary adjustments are always carefully monitored due to sponsor requirements. If an adjustment is necessary, the correction should be done in a timely manner (within 90 days). No corrections should be requested after salary has been certified in the UND Compensation Compliance (UNDCC) System.

In order to be consistent with Appointment Revision Forms and have an accurate audit trail for both internal and external auditors, a UND Retroactive Distribution Request and a Partial Salary Correction Form have been developed to assist in submitting the necessary information and can be found on the Payroll website. The form should be used for all Salary Corrections and will require the signature of the Principal Investigator.

Summer Salary

Summer Salary with Grant, Cooperative Agreement or Contract Funding

The following is being provided for faculty with nine-month appointments and being paid on grant, cooperative agreement, or contract during the summer.

Faculty having nine-month contracts may be employed for up to three full months' salary on research grants or other sponsored program activities provided the sponsoring agency's rules do not prohibit such salary payments and the total cumulative salary being paid to the faculty member from all University sources does not exceed the equivalent of three months salary. Section III Part 5.1.2 of the Faculty Handbook
This includes salary from grants, cooperative agreements, contracts, teaching responsibilities, and summer graduate research professorships.
Summer salary of nine-month faculty should be charged to federal grants at a rate no greater than 100% of the base salary for compliance with Federal OMB Circular A-21, Principles for Determining Costs Applicable to Grants, Contracts, and Other Agreements with Education Institutions.
Base salary for computing summer salary will be the base salary of the faculty member's current academic year appointment (that ends May 15th) divided by the number of months in their academic year constract. This amount would be the monthly salary rate and would be used to calculate the summer salary for the period of May 16th through August 15th. For example, a nine-month faculty member with a base salary of $90,000 for the current academic year ending May 15th would have a summer salary rate of $10,000 per month ($90,000/9 months = $10,000).
The annual increase in base salary, for nine-month faculty, is not effective until August 16th of each year.
Normal research assignments are not considered overload.
If you are paying yourself a full summer salary (three full months), your time commitments should reflect a full-time work schedule.

Tuition Remission

When a department funds a graduate assistantship from a grant or contract and pays tuition remission for the student, both the assistantship and tuition remission must be paid from the same grant or contract project number. Graduate Assistant salaries are paid semi-monthly through Payroll and tuition remission is processed through Student Financial Aid at the beginning of the academic term. When the funding source changes for the graduate assistantship for one or more pay periods the department MUST PROCESS a journal voucher to correct the funding source of the tuition remission so it agrees with the salary funding source.

Tuition remission for graduate assistantships on grant or contract funding covers the amount of tuition only. Fees, including continuing enrollment, are normally not an allowable cost on a grant or contract.