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
Research Financial Services
Director Research Financial
Services
(Dave Reinhart) –
0595-001
Manager, Infrastructure
Programs
(Lee Bennard) –
0595-002
Financial Officer,
Infrastructure Programs
(Linda Hoffman) –
0595-003
Administrative Support,
Infrastructure Programs – 24
hours per week – (Christa
Aljoe)
Tri-Council Awards
Accountant (Karen Lee) –
0595-010
INFRASTRUCTURE PROGRAMS
TRI-COUNCIL
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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
Manager, Research Grants
and Contracts (Other
Government and Industry)
(Eric Hinse) –
0595-011
Manager, Tri Council
(Asif Momin) –
0595-009
•
•
Budget assistance
Budget input to FRS
Account set up
Compliance review
Financial reports
Disbursement of
funds
Transfer letters
Faculty and Dept
Administrator training
Financial Officer, Research
Trust Accounts
(Susan Ferguson) –
0595-007
Financial Officer, Research
Trust Accounts
(Saphron Moule) –
0595-005
OTHER GOV’T AND
INDUSTRY
MAJOR RESEARCH
CONTRACTS
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
3/15/2016
Manager, Major Research
Contracts
(Shaun Wilson) –
0595-004
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
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 biweekly 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
Understanding Commitments –
Payroll – Process Review
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
Understanding Commitments –
Payroll – Process Review
5. Reverses last commitment total in FRS
and replaces with new amount
6. Synchronized to actual pay posting to recalculate 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
Understanding Commitments Payroll
• 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.
Understanding Commitments Payroll
• 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
Understanding Commitments –
Purchase Orders
• 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
Understanding Commitments –
Purchase Orders
• Who should be contacted when a
commitment is incorrect (PO)?
– Lynne Harbin (lharbin@uoguelph.ca)
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.
Understanding Commitments –
Purchase Orders
– 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.
Understanding Commitments –
Purchase Orders
• 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
Understanding Commitments –
Purchase Orders
• 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.
Understanding Commitments –
Purchase Orders
• 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
Understanding Commitments –
Purchase Orders
• 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)
Tri-Council Financial
Monitoring 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 TriCouncil rules
Tri-Council Financial
Monitoring Review
• 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 Financial
Monitoring Review
• 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.
Tri-Council Financial
Monitoring 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
Tri-Council Financial
Monitoring Review
• 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/ProfessorsProfesseurs/FinancialAdminGuideGuideAdminFinancier/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