Manage Your Budget
Monitoring Expenditures
Reconciling accounts on a regular basis will help you to manage your sponsored funds to ensure that expenditures and revenues are within appropriate limits and guidelines.
Financial & Business Services (FBS) sends PI's monthly emails reminding them to monitor their accounts through the Evidence of Review (EOR) application. Monthly review and approval of EOR monthly reports is a key element in the University's system of internal controls, and is further explained in University Policy 3-003, Authorizations and Approvals Required for Financial Transactions.
Complete financial data on your project is available in the Financial Information Library. A good starting point for budget management is the simplified financial report for faculty. This link includes information on personnel and other expenses on the project by month for any 12 month period, total amount spent to date on the project, total amounts received to date, and the available funds.
To find the FACULTY link:
- Log-in to Campus Information Systems (CIS)
- Find the Financial & Business Services box
- Under "Reports", click on the "Financial Information Library (FIL)"
- Find the FACULTY link, and click on it
- Three options come up:
- Monthly Expense by Project (total expenses for each month and also project to date)
- Monthly Personnel Earns by Project (payments made to each individual for each month)
- Project Attributes (start and end date, award no., etc.)
Other tools available to help manage the budget aspects of your project include:
For more information and details on financial aspects of grants and grants management, please contact Financial & Business Services.
Re-budgeting
After a grant or contract has been awarded, the PI may determine that the approved budget allocations are not consistent with actual project needs. S/he may request the formal reallocation of funds from one spending category to another category that better reflects the project requirements. This process is called rebudgeting or budget revision.
All re-budgeting that requires prior approval should be reviewed by OSP. GCA can process re-budget changes independently of OSP only when the requested rebudget is not moving funds into a restricted category or a new category not previously established.
Under expanded authorities rebudgeting may or may not require formal approval from the sponsor. To initiate a rebudget, please complete a Re-budget Worksheet (XLS) or a Re-budget Worksheet for Companion Projects (XLS) and forward it to your Sponsored Projects Officer for review.
Once a rebudget request has been approved by the sponsor, the department will need to submit the approval to OSP via eAward. Please see the Award Modification Request tab in the eAward FAQ for guidance.
Carryover Process
In many instances, an unobligated blance on a grant may be carried over into the next budget period without sponsor approval. If this is permitted, it will be indicated as such in the notice of award (NOA).
- NIH prior approval is required for carryover of unobligated balances on the following awards:
- All P mechanisms except P01's
- Cooperative agreements (U mechanism)
- National Research Service Awards (T and F mechanisms)
- Phase I SBIR and SSTR (R43 and R41 mechanisms)
- Clinical trials (regardless of mechanism)
- Awards to individuals
Where carryover requires sponsor approval and/or when it exceeds 25% of the award, or when it exceeds $250,000, the request should be mentioned by the PI in the progress report. In the justification section, and in the progress report itself, the PI should mention that a formal request will be submitted under separate cover.
