The Research and Cost Accounting (RCA) office is happy to announce an upcoming upgrade to how we manage personnel roles in sponsored awards within iO. If you’ve ever wondered why someone who left three years ago still appears to have access to your grant data, you’ll be happy to hear that we’re giving everyone a structured way to clean up!

The Old Way

When an award is first set up, we determine the key roles: the PI, Co-PI(s), Project Manager, and Award Participant(s) are all correctly added to the iO award. 

But then things change. People move, responsibilities shift, and suddenly, you need to add someone or, more importantly, remove someone. Currently, these adjustments are handled one by one via individual iO tickets (Category = Access Permissions).

This process made good award hygiene an absolute chore:

• It’s inconvenient to audit every single award regularly to see who should stay and who should go.
• Department managers responsible for oversight haven’t had an easy way to get a big-picture view of all personnel on all their awards simultaneously.

The result? We’ve sometimes been operating with a slight (or not-so-slight) disconnect between the data in iO and reality, leaving us asking, “Who exactly is supposed to be seeing this data?”

The New Way

To finally make data management manageable, RCA is implementing a new process that takes advantage of a superb FIS-developed tool that enables organizational-level batch adjustments for award personnel. Consider it your mandatory, but very helpful, data “spring cleaning” session.

How Will This Work?

1. Bi-Annual Data Drop: Twice a year, the Cost Center Manager for your department will receive a comprehensive data table from RCA. This table lists every award owned by your Organization (Cost Center).
2. Full Personnel Disclosure: For each award, the table will clearly list every person currently assigned an award role. You’ll have the option right there to change the status of existing people (i.e., remove them) or add new personnel.
3. The One-Month Window: Your department will have one month to coordinate a full review, make the necessary amendments, and return the updated table to RCA.
4. The Great Cleanup: RCA will process these Org-level batch updates, ensuring your awards are instantly populated with the correct, current personnel.

The Best Part: Pristine Data and Focused Effort

• Pristine Data: You get rid of all the ghost users and make sure everyone who should have access actually does. Your data will reflect the people currently managing the work.
• Focused Effort: By scheduling this process twice a year, we create a dedicated, focused time slot for data hygiene. While you will still be able to use the old iO ticket method for urgent, one-off changes, this mandatory schedule will keep your award personnel data accurate and compliant.

What’s Next?!

This new process is scheduled to be rolled out during Calendar Year 2025, with a likely implementation in early November. We’ll share more detailed instructions and dates as we get closer.

If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions about this upcoming process, please let us know! Email RCA directly at jth6@rice.edu.

Hello,

Below are a few things to keep in mind when managing your sponsored projects.

Close Date- iO utilizes the close dates to control spending on projects. The close dates are typically set to 45-60 days after the award ends to allow departments adequate time to post adjustments. Note that the expenditure item date of the expense must be within the project period. Expenses must be posted on or before the close date to report the expense via invoice and/or financial report to your sponsor.

Advance Spending- New advance spending awards will be setup initially in iO as an award, and not a Faculty Fund Project task anymore. Once the award has been executed, RCA will update the award budget and project end dates and allow iO to process invoicing.

Deficit/Overspent Projects- Costs in excess of the award amount will be moved to another project on the award. RCA will create the deficit project and move the expense. Essentially, the excess costs will be accounted for and reported as uncommitted cost share. Funding for these costs are managed the same way as your cost share expenses.

Project Tasks and Subtasks– For sponsored projects, all tasks are “Task 1”. For Faculty Funds, there can be multiple tasks and subtasks. Note: When you add subtasks to a task, it makes the original, primary task nonchargeable. If you have expenses, including labor distributions charging to a primary task, but you created subtasks, that expense will not be processed since the expending must occur at the subtask. A new labor distribution schedule will need to be created and sent to Payroll for processing.

Subaward Requisitions- Beginning in January, subawards requisitions are now split into two lines. One line for the amount up to $25K, and the second line for the amount over $25k. This way, when you do your receiving, you can select the first line on the requisition to be paid first, then the remainder on line 2. This will correct the F&A calculation challenges some departments were having on subawards. Correcting F&A on subawards prior to January require submission of a cost transfer form.

Communication– When contacting RCA via the helpdesk, please include the award/project number and your Org number so we can route the request to your accountant for a prompt reply.

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

Hello,

We made a few changes to the form to better explain the data needs. Also included is an example of how to enter data for the converted labor costs. Another tab was added to the spreadsheet to aid in understand where to gather the data for the spreadsheet.

Please use the new form on your next cost transfers.

Nick

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

Hello,

On the eve of iO go live, I wanted to take this opportunity to provide information regarding many changes that may impact your organization.

1. RCA accountant responsibilities are now managed by Org (Dept). Attached is the new assignment list. The new assignment list is also on our website.
2. Please use the new iO HR/Finance helpdesk for all your correspondence with RCA. Navigate to this page for instructions on how to use the helpdesk. The configured RCA categories in the helpdesk are:
   1. New Faculty Fund Projects
   2. Cash Management Questions
   3. Budget Revisions
   4. University Awards (U funds)
   5. General Questions
3. Advanced Spending procedures have been updated on RCA’s website. PLEASE READ
4. Faculty Fund procedures have been created and posted on RCA’s website. PLEASE READ
5. June activities will begin to be entered in iO on July 5^th, in this order:
   1. New Awards
   2. Date Extensions
   3. Other Amendments
   4. Budget Revisions
6. Patience- Please be patient with us as we catch up on June activities while also learning iO. We will continue to provide the same excellent customer service that you have come to expect from RCA.

Hello,

We are pleased to announce the new subaward process. RCA will now be creating requisitions (reqs) and P2P will be creating the purchase orders to manage subawards in iO. New subawards issued by SPARC after 05/31/21 will need a requisition and purchase order created, but unlike Banner, they will not be set up as separate projects in iO.

All existing subawards were converted from Banner as separate projects, and we are working diligently to create requisitions for them.  The available balance of the subaward subfund in Banner will be the new requisition budget amount in iO.  We are prioritizing the creation of reqs for invoices that are ready to be paid.  If you get a notification to approve a requisition, please do so, otherwise a purchase order will not be created, and you will not be able to pay your invoice.  Refer to this job aid on how to process your invoices.

For the approval of new subaward invoices in iO, a subaward workflow has been set up in AdobeSign to quickly route a subaward invoice from RCA to the Project Manager for review and the PI for approval.

The following steps outline the subaward process (https://controller.rice.edu/rca-faqs):

1. SPARC sends draft subaward agreement to RCA
2. If necessary, RCA requests that P2P create a new supplier
3. RCA creates and submits requisition based on draft agreement, which is routed to the Cost Center Manager. The Project Manager is entered as the requestor.
4. Cost Center Manager approves requisition
5. P2P creates PO based on approved requisition
6. RCA provides PO number to SPARC to be included in final subaward agreement
7. Subawardees are instructed to submit invoices to subinvoices@rice.edu, which is monitored by RCA
8. Invoices are logged and entered into AdobeSign by RCA, which sends the invoice to the appropriate approvers (including PI)
9. Project Managers are responsible for getting PI signature/approval on the invoice
10. Project Manager will complete receiving process in iO
11. P2P will process invoice for payment