Sponsored Awards - Transfers and Adjustments
REG 10.05.14
Contract and Grants
Authority:
Vice Chancellor for Finance and Business
History:
First Issued: July 1, 2002.
Contact Info:
Assistant Director, Systems and Compliance (919) 515-8018 Office of Contracts and Grants .
1. Introduction
Adjustments to sponsored project expenditures may be required to correct
entry or coding errors. This statement provides the guidelines which Colleges/Schools/Departments/Units
should follow regarding transfers and adjustments to expenditures on sponsored
awards.
2. Rule
2.1. Federal, State and private sponsors do not permit the transfer of costs
to other sponsored awards for the purpose of:
2.1.1. Eliminating overdrafts caused by expenditure overruns,
2.1.2. Avoiding restrictions, OR
2.1.3. Other reasons of convenience
3. Guidelines for completing transfers or adjustments
3.1. It is the responsibility of the colleges or persons designated the "preaudit
review function" to review monthly expenditures for sponsored projects
to ensure that errors are detected on a timely basis and corrected within
the time period allowed.
3.1.1. Internal procedures provide 120 days after a non-salary cost was initially
incurred to transfer that cost to or from sponsored awards to its final
cost objective.
3.1.2. Internal procedures provide 120 days after the end of the applicable
academic period for monthly employees and 120 days after the incurrence
of the charge for biweekly employees period to adjust salary charges to
sponsored awards (90-day deadline to correct TEARS effort report).
3.1.3. Failure to adjust costs affecting sponsored projects within the 120
day time frame is considered non-compliant and can result in auditors
determining that a late adjustment is unallowable.
3.2. All adjustments, whether moving costs to or from a sponsored project,
must be appropriate, adequately justified, and sufficiently documented .
Should a Principal Investigator determine that a sponsored project requires
adjustment, it is important that a complete and accurate explanation be
provided.
3.2.1. If pertinent correspondence is on hand detailing the need for an adjustment,
the correspondence may be attached to the PeopleSoft journal documentation.
3.2.2. Adjustments made to correct errors must be supported by a full explanation
of how the error occurred. The adjustment must be approved by the college
office responsible for "preaudit" and compliance reviews. Explanations
which merely state that the adjustment is being made "to correct
error" or "to transfer to correct project" are not sufficient
and will not be accepted by Contracts and Grants or external auditors.
3.3.3. If a transfer or adjustment is necessary during sponsored project closeout,
the resulting transaction should be included as a reconciling item on
the Notice of Closeout form and adequately supported by backup documentation.
This support documentation should be forwarded to Contracts and Grants
along with the Notice of Closeout.
