Budget and Expense Review
According to the GW Policy on Cost Transfers on Sponsored Agreements, “Errors in charging costs to a sponsored agreement should be identified and correction should be initiated within sixty (60) days after posting of the original transaction in order to allow for timely completion of the review process (normally ninety (90) days after posting).” Responsibility for identifying these transactions lies with “Principal Investigators, department chairs and departmental/school fiscal personnel.”
To that end, we recommend reviewing the Detailed Report of Budget Performance (or GM-139, sometimes referred to as the “BPR”) for each award under your responsibility on a minimum of a monthly basis.
The GM-139 should be reviewed carefully for the following:
- Costs that should not have been allocated to the award (for example: a regular salary charge where the effort has changed; invoices distributed in error; charges not allowable under the sponsored agreement)
- Costs that should have posted to the award that have not appeared.
- Credits that are expected from prior cost transfers or refunds
- Encumbrances that need to be paid or liquidated
- Appropriateness of the account charged/refunded (for example: capitalized expenses, subcontracts, foreign vs. domestic travel)
- Budget changes/appropriateness – has a line of the budget been overspent? Does the budget need to be revised? Is effort for salaries on target for what was proposed?
How to Run the GM-139
- Log into the EAS (Oracle) application under your “GA” responsibility (ex: GW GA Project Staff, GW GA PI/Co-PI) and select: Requests: Submit, or Other: Requests: Run, and select “Single Request”.
- Select the GM-139 from the list of Values in the “Name” box: Note: access to reports varies by responsibility, if you do not have a report available, contact your manager to see if you should have a different responsibility in EAS.
- In the “Parameters” box, enter the desired parameters for your request. Yellow highlighted fields are required parameters. Others are optional parameters. Assuming a monthly review, this request is being submitted for the prior month’s expenses.
Date From and To: The “dates” here actually refer to a period, so 31-Jan-2011 through 31-Jan2011 would run the report for the entire month of January.
Data Selection Level: The “Data Selection Level” should equal the parameters you plan to enter for Award, Project, or Task. So Data Selection Level = Award, the award number should be entered. For Data selection level = Project, be sure to enter the Project number. This will not affect the expenditures on the report, but will affect the “funding summary” at the bottom of the report.
Award Status, Organization, Role, and Person: can be left blank unless you are running for all of your awards, or if an administrative person with more access is running the report for someone else.
Award Number, Project Number, Task Number: The report can be run for an entire project, or for a single award or task. If nothing is entered here, the report will return all awards that you have access to.
Expanded Detail: Some AP invoices contain more data than the “short description” can hold. We recommend running for “yes.”
Display Net Zero Transactions: We recommend running for “yes” so you don’t miss any credits posted to the award.
Click “OK” on the parameter page when finished.
- In the “Parameters” box, enter the desired parameters for your request. Yellow highlighted fields are required parameters. Others are optional parameters. Assuming a monthly review, this request is being submitted for the prior month’s expenses.
Under “Template Name” ,select the list of values and select the template that says “EXCEL” at the end of the name.
Click OK and back to the Submit Request form.
- Click the “Submit” button at the bottom of the page.
- Click the “Refresh Data” Button at the top of the page until the request reads: Completed.
- Click the “View Output” Button to view your report.
Note: Depending on your computer setup and your version of Excel, you may need to say OK or “Yes” to some questions to open the excel version of the report, for example:
Click “Yes” This is just telling you that it is an XML report with an Excel Template.
Reviewing the GM-139
The GM-139 report shows budget, actuals (expenditures), encumbrance (Requisitions and POs), and the Balance/Deficit (Budget minus actuals and encumbrances) by Expenditure Category, divided by expenditure type.
Below the “Opening Balance” line will be the detailed expenditures for the time period in the report parameters.
A Note about Dates: the PA Date is the date/period that the transaction was posted to the Grants system. This is the date that will be used to determine the “90 days” for cost transfers. The Expenditure Item Date is the date the transaction was incurred (so for salaries, the payroll date, for Travel, the date of the trip.)
- Review your budget amounts and the “Balance Available” column.
Is your budget appropriate?
Has new funding been allocated properly?
Do you have a deficit in any expenditure type?
Do you need a rebudget?
- Review your payroll detailed expenditures.
Are each of these employees providing effort toward your award?
Has anyone’s effort changed and is an ePAF or redistribution needed?
Has effort or salary changed since your proposed effort – is a rebudget needed?
- Review other expenditures on your report.
Are the costs reasonable and allocable to the award?
Are they charged to the correct expenditure types? (special attention to be paid to capitalized/non-capitalized expenditures, subcontracts, and foreign vs. domestic expenses)?
Are there any charges you don’t recognize?
Are there charges you were expecting that are not on the report? These charges may be in suspense or in funds check failure – check with your SPA if you do not see a charge you were expecting.
Are there credits you are expecting to see from a redistribution, or refund?
Reading Expenses
Payroll (most other Interfaces are similar)
AP Invoices
P Card Charges
Fringe and Reimbursed Indirect Costs
These calculate based upon expenditures according to your award setup. You should not have to worry about the charges unless you are going over budget for these items. If you have a question about your Fringe or Indirect Costs, contact your OVPR representative for assistance.
Additional References and Support
The Cost Transfer Policy and other policies relating to Sponsored Research and allocation of costs can be found on the GW compliance website.
Lists of expenditure types that are valid for grants and a copy of the chart of accounts descriptions can be found on the Financial Systems & Solutions forms page (along with the access request form for EAS).
Information on other reports available to you, as well as how to run XML reports, is available on the EAS webpage.