Financial Tracking of Sponsored Research

The University of Michigan has many guidelines in place to monitor the spending of your research dollars and to make sure they are spent in compliance with the sponsors’ wishes. Every month Financial Operations generates reports based on the budget provided by the sponsor and the expenses that have been incurred. Karen reconciles the information provided by Financial Operations to the information received from your lab. For every order that has been placed you should provide some form of official documentation, (i.e., copy of order with pricing, and/or a packing slip). It is always best to supply both because then Karen can tell if you were charged correctly and prove you received your product. Please make a habit of bringing paperwork to the office once a week so documentation does not have to be tracked down in large quantities.

At the end of a sponsored project the most scrutinized issue is whether or not the A-21 guidelines have been followed. OMB circular A-21 guidelines require certain expenses to be reviewed to determine if they are allowable. These expenses include: clerical and administrative salaries, supplies (consumable and office supplies), postage, telephone line charges and local calls, memberships and dues, journals and other subscriptions, books, and hosting and food expenses. The main purpose of these federal guidelines is to confirm that all expenses charged to a research project have a "Direct Benefit" and should be charged as "Direct Costs" to the project.

While some expenses may have a "Direct Benefit," they may be more appropriate as charges on a discretionary ChartField combination. Some of these expenses may already be included in the indirect cost recovery under federal guidelines and therefore, are not appropriate to the federal project. For example, general postage and telephone charges are included in the indirect cost recovery calculations and should not be charged as direct costs to a federal project, unless specifically requested and approved in the proposed budget submitted to the sponsor.

In general, if you have an expense considered A-21 regulated we will need to submit an FDP form (http://ftp.research.umich.edu/fdp.doc) to request approval. In your justification it is very important to be specific on which category you wish the funds to be redistributed from, if you wish to have this expense covered for the life of the project or for a brief period of the project, and the dollar amount you are anticipating the use of (either a lump sum or a per month sum). This form needs to be processed through the CDB admin office. It will need to be signed by you (the PI); the chair of the department; and Jim Randolph of DRDA.

Financial Reports and Monthly Reconciliations

The CDB office is responsible for reconciling the statement of accounts for each sponsored project, discretionary monies and general funds. Karen is responsible for all sponsored projects and for some departmental funds, Linda is responsible for some departmental funds and the Stem Cell Core, and both are responsible for various discretionary monies.

They will provide you with a reconciliation of each your chartfields and will provide you with a hard copy in your mailbox. They will also meet with you on a quarterly basis along with Karen Lang (more often if you like) to go over expenses, problems, questions. They will also make the reconciliation available to you for read only access on the server:

Faculty and laboratory staff must provide the following to aid in reconciliation:

Without the above information, there is no way to tell if an expense is legitimate or not. This is very important.