Research Grants & Contracts Office

1. Research Grants & Contracts Office Post Award Research Administration briefing (Managing active research awards) April 2014

2. http://www.bbk.ac.uk/rgco/

3. Contact Page

4. Setting up successful Awards • If you are notified directly of the outcome of an application, please notify RGCO • Details of all application outcomes kept on RGCO database • Successful applications – an announcement letter is issued by RGCO giving details of the account code and budget • All awards checked against the original application • Contracts must be signed by a legal signatory

6. Staff appointments (1) • Recruitment of staff • All staff appointments on external funded research awards need to be approved by the RGCO before they are appointed. The request for appointments to research grants should be initiated by the School as early as possible to avoid delays to the start of the award. Delays to the start date of a grant will increase the cost of the post being requested. • Staff authorisation forms • To advertise and then appoint someone to a grant, ASMs need to submit Staff authorisation forms to RGCO. RGCO will then confirm and authorise and pass it to HR.

7. Staff appointments (2) • Who is appointed on a research grant (1)? Principal Investigators (PI) and Co-Investigators (Co-PI) On a research council grant generally (exception is Fellowships please see slide below) the PI will generally not be appointed to the grant, rather the funder will give monies to BBK to cover their time. These monies are passed directly onto the School as a Directly Allocated (DA) cost. On most other types of grants the funder. gives the College replacement teaching costs to cover the PIs time. These replacement teaching appointments need to go through RGCO before they can start.

8. Staff appointments (3) • Who is appointed on a research grant (2)? • Non PIs and Co-PIs Other than PI and Co-PIs on a research council grant, generally all other appointments that arise out of a successful research grant application are directly charged to the research grant. This includes costs like researchers, administrative assistance, replacement teaching and Fellowships (including PIs on research council grants) etc. These are appointed by requesting their advertisement and appointment through a staff authorisation form that goes via RGCO to HR. If you have any queries about appointing someone on a grant, please contact RGCO.

9. Staff appointments (4) • Advertising and Appointing There are 2 stages, Advertising and then Appointment. Often we authorise an advertisement but we are then not asked to confirm the appointment. This represents a financial risk. Therefore it is important that Schools liaise with RGCO during both the advertising and appointment stage of a staff appointment.

10. Staff appointments (5) • Change to appointments on a grant. RGCO should be notified in advance of changes to appointments on a grant This includes things like maternity leave, resignations, promotions and extended periods of sick leave as the funder will have to be notified of these changes (and whether it will allow them e.g. promotions) and RGCO will need to recalculate the projected cost of the appointments and ensure they are still within the budget of a grant.

11. Staff appointments (6) • Retrospective Staff Approvals (to be avoided) RGCO often sees people retrospectively charged to a grant i.e. they have been charged to a School code and the moved over to a research grant code. This is not good practice. Please ensure that staff appointments are made prior to the commencement of work on the award

12. Project Accounting • Award holders are responsible for day-to-day management of award • School Administrators should provide award holders with web reports on a regular basis in order for award holders to monitor their awards • School Administrators and Award holders code and approve expenditure, supplier invoices and expense claims, expenses should be crossed referenced against announcement letter, award letter or web reports to ensure that they are eligible costs. Claim forms can be found at the following link Birkbeck staff: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/fin/services/payroll/expenses Non-staff: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/fin/services/payments/non_staff

13. Project Accounting • Expenditure must relate to the award and should be incurred within the award period to avoid the expense being transferred back to the school, exceptions to this rule would be equipment or travel booked in advance • Please ask RGCO to amend analysis codes if they are unavailable i.e. consumables (C00) charged to travel (T10) if a T10 code is not available • If internal catering etc. is required on an award please request for A codes (internal transfers) to be set-up otherwise delays may occur in orders being processed

16. Project Accounting • Reconciliation of expenditure on all awards and journals transferring directly allocated charges to school/departments are processed quarterly • Raising invoices and processing of statements as required by sponsors • Replies to queries about project finances • Correction journals as requested by ASMs and award holders • Annual and Final statements to funders • Closing accounts

17. Project Accounting • Reminders are sent out to award holders and copied to ASM in terms of balances on award 6 months prior to the end of the award and also 3 months later to avoid large under spend and if necessary to facilitate requests for extensions to the end date of the award. • Awards made in foreign currencies will be set-up using the original rate it was originally costed, however this will be reviewed in the final 12 months of the award to take in to account currency fluctuations.

18. End of Award Procedures • All expenses should be charged as soon as possible to avoid delays in reporting, please note payments need at least week (weekly cut off is Tuesday) and payroll deadline is the generally second week of each month • ASM and award holders should look through the detail web report to ensure that expenditure is coded under the correct analysis codes and if not request RGCO to amend the record using a journal • Please avoid coding research award expenditure to school codes temporarily as you may forget to request a journal transfer.

19. End of Award Procedures • Most funding bodies require award holders to submit final reports for their research awards, detailing both the outcomes of the research and a justification of expenditure. RGCO will email the award holder towards the end of the award reminding them of their reporting commitments, and a copy of this email will be sent to ASMs. • Award holders should be urged to meet deadlines for reporting as often there are financial penalties for late or missing reports which will have to be borne by the school/department.

20. End of Award Procedures What happens if an award is under spent? • Any funds remaining on the grant/contract at the end of the award will usually be returned to the funding body by RGCO unless the award is fixed priced contract or if the terms and conditions of the funding body permit under spends to be retained for future activities. • If funds can be retained the RGCO will request a school/department code from the ASM to process the journal transfer.

21. End of Award Procedures What happens if an award is over spent? • Expenditure in excess of awarded budget or ineligible costs should not be charged research account codes. At the end of the award balances not covered by sponsor will be covered by school/department. RGCO will request a code to process such journals, this also applies to expenditure incurred outside the period of award. • Please help us by responding promptly to requests for department codes, especially towards the end of the financial year.