Grants management can be challenging for anyone who works in a research organization, whether you’re at a university, hospital, independent research institution, pharmaceutical company, or elsewhere. So hopefully these insights will help you as you consider grant management best practices.
#1: The importance of reducing complexity
Many organizations rely on traditional spreadsheets to track grant funds.
It’s true that grant tracking spreadsheets are easy to set up and offer numerous options for maintaining information in tabular formats. They are also economical for small institutions since most users understand spreadsheets.
But it’s not effective to use spreadsheets to manage a large number of grants. They add to the complexity and inefficiency in several ways, including:
- Lack of simultaneous data entry capability
- Limited data validation
- Maintaining multiple versions to meet specialized reporting requirements
- Overcoming security issues when data is stored within a single spreadsheet
- Difficulties when non-tabular formats are needed
- Difficulties in managing multiple key personnel on the same grant
- Difficulties in managing or comparing information that spans multiple years
- Maintaining multiple sub-totals when data is re-sorted
- Maintaining consistent internal coding systems to identify information as needed for departmental management
The best way to maintain data integrity is using a grant management software solution that has features like data validation systems, options for simultaneous data access, internal security systems, and numerous report formats.
#2: The benefits of integrating with the general ledger
Many of our customers benefit from directly interfacing with the general ledger (GL) system, including payroll and purchasing. With this approach, an automated solution combines actual expenditures with projected salary encumbrances/commitments, soft encumbrances, and tracks it all in easy to interpret report formats.
Projection and commitment of HR costs is critical in award funding management, since personnel costs can account for up to 80% of a grant’s direct cost budget.
When you automate this process, it’s easy to track project personnel costs by budget period, as well as generate projection reports that provide summary information by project, monthly projected expense by project, and other HR related reports.
We’ve seen organizations significantly improve their processes when they moved from a silo approach to a more sophisticated set of solutions that interface with the organization’s general ledger.
#3: The consideration of automated effort certification systems
Many leading research organizations have started investigating automated effort certification systems. That’s because as a condition to receive federal funding, organizations must maintain an accurate system for reporting the percentage of time (effort) that employees devote to federally sponsored projects. (You could theoretically build your own effort tracking system, but here’s why we don’t advise it.)
Faculty members who serve as investigators on sponsored agreements are required to accurately track the amount of effort that they spend on sponsored activities. It’s also required to track effort spent by all associated employees who are involved with sponsored activities.
In the case of funding from federal sources, it’s critical that effort-reporting systems accurately manage the process.
This past year, we worked with research institutions to implement an automated effort certification system to streamline federal time and effort certification and reporting. As with grant management software, research teams can work smarter when they forego manual methods and turn to an automated solution.
Ready to take your award management to the next level? Learn more about Sponsored Projects here.
