Not so fast!
Federal funding agencies require research organizations to complete certain activities within 90 days of finishing a research project. It’s kind of like filing your taxes: everyone’s ready to move on, but you have to make sure everything is in order first.
Here’s what Uniform Guidance, Section 200.343 says federally funded research teams have to do within 90 days:
- Submit all financial, performance and other reports
- Liquidate all outstanding obligations on the project
- Pay the institution allowable reimbursable costs
- Refund unobligated cash balances, if they haven’t been authorized to be retained for use in other projects
- Review and adjust cost share obligations for grant closeouts
- Account for any real and personal property acquired with federal funds or received from the federal government
What does this mean for Sponsored Programs Offices?
There’s a tight timeline and a lot to monitor, from ensuring the principal investigator (PI) files their final programmatic report and getting the final reports from subrecipients to ensuring all costs that are charged to the project are paid and allowable.
How do research administrators manage multiple projects and ensure projects are closed within the required timeframe?
They start planning for grant closeouts when the award is received. Don’t wait til research wraps up! Here are 6 steps to ensure your grant closeout goes smoothly, starting at the beginning of the award lifecycle.
Step 1: Involve and inform–tear down silos/barriers
Work with and keep informed all units involved in managing sponsored programs: pre- and post-award, finance, departmental, PI and team, regulatory compliance, purchasing, and accounts receivable. Understand the varying roles in each of these areas and how they are interdependent.
Step 2: Communicate frequently
Involve everyone in the lifecycle of a project, with each partner understanding their roles and responsibilities. If a PI understands the needs of the Accounting/Finance Office, compliance is usually stronger. Likewise, if accounting understands the objectives driving the PI, then their role takes on a broader focus as they provide support for the PI.
Use grants management software for notices, messages, and sharing of information. That way, everyone is on the same page, and collaboration is easier!
Step 3: Define timelines
Lay out a timeline and ensure all team members understand and monitor it.
Automate reminders with forms (housed within grants management software). This helps keep the team on schedule.
Develop specific reports from your software to provide on-demand and/or scheduled reports such as: all projects closing within a specified number of days, or any project that includes subrecipients. This will make it easier to monitor the critical dates for grant closeouts.
Step 4: Communicate with subrecipients
Ensure deadlines are clear and understood, including programmatic reporting coordination across PIs. (Our free tool subawards.com can help with this.)
Step 5: Monitor and review budget and expenditures
Regularly monitor, review, and discuss award spending with the PI so there are no surprises. Cayuse’s Fund Manager app makes it easy to create what-if scenarios and projections so you can see the potential impact of award purchases before anyone actually spends a dollar.
Ensure only allowable charges hit the grant account. This can greatly streamline the closing of a project as you will be confident that all charges are allowable, allocable, and reasonable.
Discuss with the PI any financial adjustments that might need to be made – budget revisions, journal entry corrections, or salary allocations.
Step 6: Cost sharing commitments/requirements
Make sure you include committed cost share in your grants management system.
Periodically run reports to make sure the obligation is being met.
Don’t wait until it’s time for the grant closeouts before identifying and monitoring cost share commitments. This can be expensive! No organization wants to return money to a sponsor because the required cost sharing wasn’t met.
Establish a record of cost share activities/expenditures and review it on a regular basis to prevent coming to the end of a project and not meeting the commitment. Some institutions create a separate “companion” account/fund in their grants software to charge cost share committed expenditures; others monitor manually. Manual tracking and monitoring can be cumbersome and error prone.
Where to find help
In the end, creating a team environment and using grants management software can contribute to easier and faster grant closeouts. Also, special reports and the ability to monitor activities are useful tools in meeting required closeout timeframes.
Our solutions for your grant management needs are innovative, easy to use, and constantly evolving. These solutions are diverse in report selection, well-supported by an implementation staff with research administration experience, and competitively priced. Reach out to learn more today!
