Research and Cost Accounting Blog

Overview of Changes

Effective July 1, 2025 (FY26), we’re changing how we account for certain research awards to improve tracking. Instead of using the single 012000 (Internal Projects) fund source, new projects will use specific, dedicated fund sources that better reflect their purpose.

Here are the new fund sources:

• 012100 for Cost Share projects
• 012110 for Deficit Projects
• 012120 for Salary Cap Projects
• 012130 for Interest Earned Projects

This means that a new Cost Share project, for example, will now be set up with its own fund source: 012100.

Impact on Current Projects

The new fund sources apply only to projects with a start date of July 1, 2025, or later. Projects created before this date cannot be converted.

To ensure consistency, Research and Cost Accounting will take the following steps for all 59 active awards with an existing cost share component:

1. A new project with the 012100 fund source will be created for each affected award.
2. The project number for this new project will be communicated to the Project Manager (PM) and the Principal Investigator (PI).
3. Any costs posted to the old project on or after July 1, 2025, will be transferred to the new project.
4. The old project will be closed.

It’s important to remember that for reporting purposes, you will need to consider the budgets and costs of both the old and new projects together. Both projects will be accessible within the same award for easy data retrieval.

Project Transition & Budget Management

The old “Internal” cost share project will remain open until its award closes or until September 30, 2025, whichever comes first.

• All cost transfers related to the old project must be completed and posted in iO before the project closes.
• Once the old project is closed, its budget balance will be calculated. If the balance is negative, the project will be closed, and the PI and department will need to communicate a management plan to Research and Cost Accounting before it can be reopened.
• If the balance is positive, the remaining budget will be transferred to the new “Cost Share” project.

For active labor distributions on old projects, Payroll will automatically update them to apply to the new “Cost Share” project starting July 1, 2025.

Project Managers for impacted awards have been contacted directly by e-mail with the above message. If you have any questions, please feel free to respond to that e-mail or to contact Research and Cost Accounting (rchacctg@rice.edu).

SPFF and Finance Dashboards are down and OIT are currently working on bringing them back up.

Downtime for these resources is estimated through tomorrow morning (8/19/2025)

Please be advised that Rice’s submitted Fringe rates are 25.8% for faculty and staff and 2.6% for students.

These rates are PROPOSED and may be used for FY26 grant applications (with a start date of 7/1/25 or later) but this are subject to change upon negotiation and execution of the official rates.

When more information becomes available, it will be added here.

SPFF has been restored to normal operational status.

Due to an Oracle system update, dashboard data has not refreshed since July 30th.

We’re working to resolve the issue and will restore updates ASAP.
Thanks for your patience!

Using the correct category can improve processing times for tickets because it allows us to quickly assign the ticket to the correct RCA staff member.  Please note that the “Controller’s Office Use Only” and “RCA Use Only – Cash” categories should not be used by the departments.

Whenever possible, please include an iO award or project number in the Summary field.

Below are some of the most frequently-used categories.