Finalize a Budget

Once ORSP receives the notice of award (NOA) or fully executed contract from the sponsoring agency, clearance is finalized, and the new Fund/Project number has been requested and is active in CFS, the Grants & Contracts Administrator (GCA) assigned to your project will set up a budget. If there are discrepancies between the proposal budget submitted by the PI and the awarded budget, the GCA will contact you to provide a revised budget.

After the required documents noted above are received, the GCA will:

• Establish a budget in the accounting system that mirrors the awarded budget.
• Create the Delegation of Authority (DOA) form for the new chart-field string.
  • The GCA will request the names of additional individuals such as co-PIs or key personnel who the PI would like to be included on the DOA.

A subrecipient agreement is required when a PI has identified a collaborator at another institution, who will conduct some of the research or contracted work, on a sponsored project. For example, a subrecipient agreement would be set up if a $100,000 award from NSF was awarded to Professor Stevens (CSULB), and $37,000 was needed to pay for work to be conducted by Professor Abel at CSU Fullerton. In almost all cases, subrecipient arrangements are planned well in advance and are written into proposals and would be approved by the sponsor upon award. In the event that a subrecipient agreement is not pre-approved by the sponsor, immediately consult your GCA in ORSP to ascertain what steps may be needed to secure sponsoring agency approval.

When the need for a subrecipient agreement has been identified on an award, the GCA will discuss the subrecipient agreement with the PI to assure that the nothing has changed and that a subrecipient agreement can be issued. It is the policy at CSULB that subrecipient agreements be included at the time of proposal. The proposal should have included an approved proposal from the subrecipient institution, which includes at the minimum: a statement of work to be performed, a budget and budget justification, a signed letter of commitment from an authorized institutional official at the collaborating institution, and the completed Subrecipient Commitment Form and Audit Compliance Certification.

The GCA prepares the subrecipient agreement, in accordance with Uniform Guidance and the sponsor's regulations and sends the agreement to the sponsored programs office at the subrecipient PI's institution for review and execution.

The CSULB PI will typically have little involvement in the preparation and negotiation of the subrecipient agreement after this point, as most contact will take place between the GCA and the subrecipient's office of sponsored programs. (The PI does, however, play an important role in the Subrecipient Monitoring Process.)

The CSULB PI and the subrecipient PI will collaborate on the work for the project, as outlined in the Scope of Work that was approved by the sponsor.

Note:

• Transactions subject to this process are for activities where the subrecipient is performing a “substantive portion of the programmatic work” awarded to CSULB. There are monitoring requirements for subrecipients that the PI must be familiar with.
• If the entity is solely providing a service to your project (regardless of the cost) acquisition of the service will be requested on a purchase requisition not via a subrecipient agreement. This service provider would be considered a vendor and not a subrecipient.
• If the CSULB PI is the subrecipient to collaborate on research by a colleague at another institution, this is viewed as a regular award by ORSP and is set up in a similar fashion to regular awards granted to ORSP.

Periodically, a project may have to acquire the services of an independent contractor when required tasks/services cannot be performed by an employee. An Independent Contractor (also called a consultant) is normally an individual, who is in business for him/herself, and provides technical or professional services or advice. They are not employees of the University or the Research Foundation; in fact, campus employees are not able to be retained or paid as independent contractors. Employees are paid wages and appropriate fringe benefits for performing work or services.

The Independent Contractor Policy and Procedure provides guidance on how to determine if a service provider can be retained as an independent contractor and the steps to follow to engage an independent contractor.

Independent contractors may not begin providing services until an Independent Contractor Agreement has been officially executed by the Research Foundation and the Independent Contractor.

The fields and values that provide a common language for classifying an organization’s business transactions are called the Chart of Accounts. The components that make up the Chart of Accounts and provide it with an overall structure are called ‘Chart-fields’ in PeopleSoft.

Fund

• The Fund chart-field is a five-character alphanumeric value which is used to account for specific activities or obligations.
• Identifies the “Where”. Where is the funding source?
• This is a required field on all transactions.

Account Code

• The Account Code portion of the chart-field is composed of six digits.
• Used to identify the type of activity by classifying them into Assets, Liabilities, Fund Equities, Revenues, and Expenses.
• Identifies the “What”. What is the nature of the transaction?
• This is a required field on all transactions.

Dept ID

• The Department ID portion of the chart-field is a five-digit value.
• Represents the detailed breakdown of campus organization structures.
• Identifies the “Who”. Who is the department being charged or responsible for the transaction?
• This is a required field on all revenue and expenditure transactions.

Project

• The Project portion of the chart-field is a 10-character alphanumeric value.
• May be used to identify a discrete set of activities that occurs within a finite time period, though it may span more than one fiscal year.
• This is a required field on all G Fund transactions.

Additional Reporting Chart-fields: Program and Class are not currently used.