Monthly Archives: September 2021

2 New FAQs

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FAQ 1: What is the process for managing overspent awards in iO?

Once the award has ended, any expenses that are in excess of the award budget are transferred to a Deficit project. RCA will create the Deficit project as needed and move the total deficit amount there.  Please create a help desk ticket for this request.

FAQ 2: What is the process in iO to manage the residual balances of fixed price awards?

  1. Research and Cost Accounting (RCA) will confirm the final expenditure amounts with the PI / department administrator (DA). The DA will alert RCA when the sponsor confirms satisfactory completion of all deliverables.
  2. Full Facilities and Administrative costs (F&A) will be applied to the award prior to transferring the residual funds in order to ensure all F&A costs associated with the award are fully funded.
  3. The award project end date will be extended by 1 year to allow time for the funding to be spent by the department. F&A charging will also be turned off by RCA to ensure new expenses do not incur F&A.
  4. The funding remainder may be moved to the faculty’s faculty fund research task if there are no further expenses related to the project’s scope of work.

The procedure for residual funds has been updated on the RCA website. https://controller.rice.edu/rca-fixed-price-funds

These FAQs, and others, can be found at https://controller.rice.edu/rca-faqs

Nick

POETAF vs COA

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Many of you have reached out to RCA with questions about what COA information you should enter when charging expenses to a project.  We discussed it with the experts, and we have an easy answer for you: the COA information is there as a pass-through only, so you don’t need to worry about it.

While the current Procurement: Order by Quantity or Amount job aid does indicate that a COA string is required to be entered for every purchase, including project-funded purchases, it fails to mention that the COA information will be overridden by any POETAF information entered.  P2P will work on getting the job aid updated to explain this aspect of the process.

So if you enter POET information for your purchases and a COA pops up, please leave it with whatever information defaults in there.  If you edit the COA information for any reason afterwards, it will override the POET information and your charge will not post to PPM.

University Award Procedure

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University Awards

Rice‐funded awards that are made to faculty or staff through a competitive process (such as: Faculty Initiative Fund; Enhancing Rice Through Information Technology program; Shell Center; and similar seed funding programs managed by different units) will be established in iO as University Awards.

Each Rice‐funded award will have a unique Award number and be established in iO in the organization of the recipient. RCA establishes the award in iO. The recipient of the Award is responsible for ensuring the funding is transferred to their Org’s funding source. At the closing of the award, unspent funds will need to be returned to the funder of the award.

Setup of University Awards

For RCA to establish the University Award in iO, please provide the following information in a helpdesk ticket in iO:

  • PI Name
  • Project Manager
  • Award Participants
  • Award Title
  • Award Amount
  • Award Org
  • Start and End Date
  • Award Purpose (Research or Instruction)
  • Award Category (Basic, Applied, or Experimental research)
  • Field of Study
  • Award Agreement

https://controller.rice.edu/rca-university-awards