department administrator session #9 – october 22nd 2013

Department Administrator

Session #9 – October 22nd 2013

Agenda• Introductions/Update of RFS

– Introduction of Saphron Moule• Response to commitment questions

– Payroll commitments – Larry Shuh– Purchase Order commitments

• Tri-Council updates– Activation of grants– Grant release– Grace/Extension period– CRD projects – 50/50 split of expenses– Monitoring Review – July 2014– Tri-Council Financial Administrative Guide

• Next session

04/21/23

Research Financial Services

INFRASTRUCTURE PROGRAMS•Application budget•Award Finalization•Account set up•Budget input to FRS•Compliance review•In-kind review•Financial Reports•Supporting documentation•Disbursement of funds•Faculty and Dept Administrator training

TRI-COUNCIL•Budget assistance•Budget input to FRS•Account set up•Compliance review•Financial reports•Disbursement of funds•Transfer letters•Faculty and Dept Administrator training

OTHER GOV’T AND INDUSTRY•Budget assistance•Budget input to FRS•Account set up•Compliance review•Invoicing•Deposit of cheques•Collection of aged receivables•Financial reports•Supporting documentation•Faculty and Dept Administrator training

MAJOR RESEARCH CONTRACTS•Application budget•Award Finalization•Account set up•Budget input to FRS•Compliance review•In-kind review•Financial Reports•Supporting documentation•Disbursement of funds•Audits•Faculty and Dept Administrator training

Understanding Commitments – Payroll – Process Review

1. Recalculated every two weeks with bi-weekly payroll interface from HR/Payroll

2. Uses same account code distribution for the position number as used to distribute the actual amount for the pay

3. Includes appointments where time reporting is not required


4. Estimated based on the following assumptions:– Gets “daily” rate for the appointment from HR/Payroll system– Determines commitment end-date for the appointment:

• Fiscal year end• Appointment end date• Next anniversary date if a grant• End of the current semester (only for Class M Semester

Lecturers)– Counts working days to determined commitment end date– Calculates total commitment – Adds Benefit allocation amount


5. Reverses last commitment total in FRS and replaces with new amount

6. Synchronized to actual pay posting to re-calculate remaining budget

Understanding Commitments - Payroll

• How do you end up with a credit (negative) commitment (payroll)?– This should not happen. If you have an example

please forward to Dave and I will follow up with Larry Shuh and Alexa Hinsperger


• Student labour (Object 61417, 61445, 61433) no longer shows a commitment for salaried student labour. Why can we not show the commitment?– Currently, it is not possible to differentiate between students

who work a full 35 hours and those who do not. To avoid over-committing the grant, these individuals are not committed.

– We will follow up with Human Resources to see if there is a possibility for entering the full 35 hour students as a weekly entry instead of hourly and have them appear as a commitment.


• If we can not show an accurate commitment value for hourly commitments, is it possible to show the names of the individuals that are being paid from the account?– A revision for payroll commitments is on the

systems improvement priorities list but has not been allocated resources nor a timeline. This will be a joint effort between CCS and Finance.

• Why do commitments for 35 hours appear when people who work less than a full week?

– The current process focus’ on full time hours. This is why we exclude the hourly categories.

Understanding Commitments – Purchase Orders

• How do you end up with a credit (negative) commitment (PO)?– Blanket PO’s (invoice paid in one year that

relates to a future year– Early invoice for a future dated PO– Charge applied to wrong PO line– Journal entry to clear commitment to $0.00

without closing an outstanding PO


• What is the process for clearing commitments when amount paid is less than PO? Can this be done more frequently than annually?– Currently working on some strategies to try and clean

these up more frequently– Need help from department to alert when a PO can

be closed– Working on an outstanding PO report that could be

distributed by email on a monthly basis– Investigating if a report could compare outstanding

POs to the commitment amounts in FRS


• Who should be contacted when a commitment is incorrect (PO)?– Lynne Harbin ([email protected]) ext.

58482• The normal process for dealing with commitment issues

are:– Department Administrator to send an FRS screen shot of the

commitment in question (including pennies). – If there is an open PO associated with the commitment, Lynne

will work with the buyer to have the PO closed or adjusted where appropriate. This step may involve the buyer contacting the admin to determine whether the PO is OK to close.

mailto:[email protected]


– If there is still an outstanding commitment after the PO has been adjusted or if there is no open PO associated with the commitment, it is Lynne's job to investigate and determine the cause of the issue and most likely process a journal entry to clear the balance.

– Lynne is expected to verify in FRS that issue has been resolved and then contact the admin to inform them of the resolution.

– If things aren't as expected or if there is any confusion on how to handle things the admins are encouraged to call Purchasing. If they can't get a satisfactory response, call Lisa.


• How do PO’s show up in FRS without a vendor name attached to them?– Purchasing services are currently

investigating a few of the provided examples.– If you have any other examples, please

forward them to Purchasing Services and they will glady investigate


• How do we convince researchers to use FRS when the commitments are not accurate?– FRS will accurately show revenues and expenses. – There are limitations with commitments and not every

commitment is recorded. The commitments values in FRS are meant to help with the management of the account but we must remember that it does not capture everything.

• Why do we have to keep a separate file to determine the true account balance and remaining funds?– Same as above. The commitment values in FRS are meant

to assist with the management of the account but there are limitations and we must remember that it does not capture all commitments.


• A researcher pre-approves how much a PhD student can spend annually on a particular thesis project. Is it possible to commit these funds so they appear unavailable for new spending?

– FRS will not be able to track this information. The researcher or project manager will have to keep track of this on a separate worksheet.

• Is it possible to commit indirect costs?

– We are currently testing to see if we can display Indirect Costs as a separate category in FRS

– We are investigating the possibility of committing indirect costs


• Does the Purchase Order include HST?– The PO does include HST in most cases.

However, if the taxes have to be self assessed (generally for items coming from outside Ontario) these taxes will not be included in the commitment as they are not calculated until the invoice is processed in A/P.

Tri-Council Awards

Activation of Grants

• Signing authority for Fund 301 Grants must be complete

• Once completed form is received, grant will be active

• Will not appear in FRS until transactions are posted– RFS will try to input budget as soon as accounts are set up so the

account will appear in FRS

• RFS will follow up to see if we can change the grant set up form to include Fund

• Fund 300 – Business and Industry and Other Government

• Fund 301 – Tri-Council, CFI, CRC

• Fund 306 – New fund specific to Named Endowed Chair. These are special gifts that come through Alumni Affairs & Development. Your College Administrator should be aware of these awards.

Grant Release

• Once protocols are in place, Office of Research will notify Research Financial Services to release funds.

• Note: Protocols must be renewed annually– If you are aware that protocols are up to date than please

notify Office of Research so they can initiate the next Grant installment release

– I will follow up with Office of Research to determine if a reminder for protocol renewal can be sent

• NSERC/SSHRC/CIHR does not provide dates as to when grant funding is released

• NSERC/SSHRC/CIHR may release instalments rather than the full award amount

Grace Periods

• Engage Grants – 1 Month Grace Period• Strategic Group Grants – 3 Month Grace Period

• Grace period is to pay outstanding invoices that were committed prior to grant end date.

• Salary expenses must end on grant end date• Salary expenses are not considered outstanding

commitments.

Extensions

• Researchers unable to complete their project by the grant end date may request an extension.

• Tri-council will determine extension

• Automatic 1 year extension - NSERC– EQPEQ – Research Tools & Instruments– RGPAS – Discovery Accelerator Supplement– RGPIN – Discovery Grants– RGPNS – Northern Research Supplement– SAPGP – Subatomic Physics

Extensions - Continue

• Automatic 1 year extension – SSHRC– Aid to Research Workshops– Aid to Scholarly Journals– Creation Grants– Insight Development– Insight Grant– Partnership Development Grant– Partnership Grants– Public Outreach– Standard Research Grant

Extensions - Continue

• Automatic extension - All CIHR Grants– Given one additional CIHR fiscal year (March 31)– Examples:

• Grant end date is Mar 31/2013 the automatic extension will be Mar 31/2014

• Grant end date is Sep 30/2013 the automatic extension will be Mar 31/2015

Collaborative Research & Development Grant (CRD)

• NSERC matches Industry partner funding • Expenses must be split 50/50• Any surplus in NSERC account must be returned

to NSERC• NSERC may return the surplus to UOG’s GRF • Industry may require funds to be returned• Essential that researchers are aware of their

contracts and the distribution of expenses– Researcher needs approval from NSERC for budget

adjustments exceeding 20%

Tri-Council Financial Monitoring Review

• Scheduled in July 2014

• In coming few weeks RFS will:• Identify high risk areas of tri-council financial administration • Propose solutions (in consultation with stakeholders) to

improve those areas

• Internal audit department is meeting with RFS at the end of the month to determine an appropriate approach (in addition to the RFS review)


• Monitoring Review History– Tri-Council reviewed UofG in 2006 and we

failed. This meant Tri-Council returned in 2009 and we passed.

– Since 2009, Tri-Council has reviewed a number of institutions across Canada and a number of failed because Tri-Council has increased its scrutiny of compliance with Tri-Council rules


• Based on our prior reviews and experiences from other institutions, we have learned that Materiality does not apply to Tri-Council. They are more focussed on process. – A transactions for $0.20 or $20,000 is viewed

the same and both are deemed non-compliant if they are missing a signature of the researcher or the authorized delegate


• Tri-Council has changed its monitoring review approach and has just finished this new approach with McMaster.– McMaster will be speaking at a conference at

the end of November to share their experience– RFS will learn from McMaster and try to

prepare for the upcoming review. You can expect more messages from RFS as we learn more and as we prepare for the review.


• RFS has reviewed the 2009 report and we have flagged some areas of focus:– Training for Faculty– Authorized approval (researcher or

delegate) for:• Journal entries• Internal charges• Internal store purchases


• Completing/delegating the Tri-Council Delegation of Authority Form– Please note that if a department wishes to impose a limit that

they are responsible for monitoring the set limit– The practice used by School of Environmental Sciences is one

that I encourage other departments to use when receiving notice of a new account:

• Print 3 copies of the form and advise Faculty it is beneficial to delegate authority to:

– Department Administrator– Department Chair– HR Clerk– And possibly others (Lab Manager, Technician, Project

Manager, etc)

2013 Tri-Agency Financial Administration Guide (TAFAG)

http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Professors-Professeurs/FinancialAdminGuide-GuideAdminFinancier/index_eng.asp

Some important information:• Roles and Responsibilities of researchers and

institution• Use of Grant Funds- Eligibility of expenses• Extension Period for Use of Funds Beyond a Grant

Period• Please review the guide and make sure you are

familiar with the rules of eligibility



Next Session

• Please note that we are making a big push to close accounts past their end date so you can expect to receive messages from Karen Lee and/or Christa Aljoe to close old accounts.

• When would you like to meet again?• We will plan next meeting for December 2013

– Please forward any agenda items that you may have– Current agenda items include:

• Freezing of accounts (can departments request this to be done)

• Inter-Departmental Transfers• Fund 306• Deposits into GPR accounts

department administrator session #9 – october 22nd 2013

Documents

commitment total

hourly commitments

accurate commitment

upbudget input

biweekly payroll interface

semester lecturerscounts

current semester

actual pay