Finance and Administration
The purpose of this document is to establish guidelines and define roles for the tracking of anticipated funding processed as an interagency agreement in order to minimize the financial risk to the organization.
Acceptance of Funds: Is defined as the point at which NSF officially acknowledges an interagency agreement, counter signs the transfer document, and forwards a letter stipulating the conditions for transfer to the originating agency.
Amendment: A contract action, which causes the total award amount on the NSF Cooperative Agreement to be increased or decreased.
Award Change Request Form: An internal mechanism to be used to request continuation and supplemental funding on existing awards, including those provided directly to UCAR and those provided through the National Science Foundation.
Award/Decline Form: Mechanism to be used to notify the appropriate entity Budget & Planning (B&P) Office of award or decline on individual proposals.
Continuation Request (Progress Report): A request to sponsor for previously proposed continued funding on a multi-year agreement. The request may include a progress report for the past year, a budget, a statement of work for the next year, and various certifications.
Direct Agreement: Any award in the form of a grant, contract, cooperative agreement, subcontract, purchase order, memorandum of understanding (MOU), or other form of agreement that is received to support a proposed statement of work. Direct awards may be between UCAR and another party that includes government agencies, both federal and local, universities, other educational institutions, private corporations, and foreign governments and corporations.
Interagency Agreement (IA): Funding from various federal agencies issued to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and passed through a cooperative agreement to support scientific and programmatic activities within UCAR.
Intergovernmental Purchase Order: An agreement between two non Department of Defense (DoD) agencies used to transfer funds to another agency. Also referred internally by UCAR as an MOU.
(MIPR) Military Interdepartmental Purchase Request: Form DD448 used by DoD agencies to transfer funds to another agency. Also referred internally by UCAR as an MOU.
NSF Receipt: The date that NSF logs an interagency agreement into their office.
Overspending: The condition that exists when expenditures and encumbrances (legal and binding obligations) exceed awarded funding for an existing/on-going agreement. For purposes of these guidelines, salary and benefit encumbrances (and related overhead) are not considered legal and binding obligations. Thus, overspending will be determined as follows: The total funds received, less expenditures, less non-salary and benefit encumbrances, equals negative funds available to spend. Approval to overspend must be obtained from the Vice President (VP) for Finance and Administration (F&A), Treasury Office, entity B&P Office, lab/division/program directors and administrators. In addition to the approvals stated, the UCAR President approves requests over $100,000.
Prespending: The condition that exists when a program needs to begin to incur costs in order to timely accomplish its mission and it obtains approval to make expenditures in advance of receiving a final contract, grant, purchase order or cooperative agreement for the proposed work. Such approval must be obtained from the Vice President (VP) for Finance & Administration (F&A), Treasury Office, entity B&P Office, lab/division/program directors and administrators in order to have a new account opened for the purpose of charging costs. In addition to the approvals stated, the UCAR President approves requests over $100,000.
Trigger Point: Institutional prompts that result in specific actions by appropriate staff within the organization.
UCAR Contracts Management Module (CMM) - CMM provides up-to-date award information on all awards including compliance requirements, contract and funding details.
A. NSF’s Process of Accepting and Awarding Interagency Agreements
NSF establishes an annual deadline in late summer after which it will no longer accept Interagency Agreements. Receipt of funds from a sponsoring agency must occur on or prior to NSF’s established deadline. NSF will periodically notify UCAR Sponsored Agreements Office (SA) of receipt of interagency transfer documents. After NSF has reviewed, routed, and accepted the IA, they may send a copy of the IA to SA. UCAR Finance will record the funding budget, at the request of the lab/division/program, after receipt of the MOU. Finally, the funds will be awarded by NSF and placed on an amendment to the NSF/UCAR Cooperative Agreement. It is not until this final step occurs that UCAR can consider the funding as officially received.
B. Trigger Points
The following have been identified as key institutional prompts that should result in action being taken to work with the sponsoring agency in order to expedite the receipt of funding. These trigger points should be used as guidance in concurrence with the Procedures in Section IV.
- Submission of Continuation Request, Extension Request and/or Progress Report
Continuation requests, extension requests and progress reports should be submitted to the sponsoring agency by their due date (see award document or sponsor website for due dates) to help ensure that funding for the next year will be received and on time.
- Review and Completion of the Overspend Report
The overspend report should be used as a tool/reminder that further action may be required with the sponsoring agencies to track the funding. The report should also be used as a tool for determining which contracts require approval to overspend. Please refer to the overspending guidelines for additional information.
- June 1st – Date to Begin Earnestly Tracking IA Funding
As mentioned in the Special Requirements section (Part A), NSF establishes an annual deadline in late summer, after which they will no longer accept interagency agreements for processing that fiscal year. In order to comply with NSF’s deadline, labs/divisions/programs should begin rigorously tracking funding that they know will be awarded as an interagency agreement, starting June 1st.
Labs/Divisions/Programs should also assume any funding sent via interagency transfer to NSF will expire, i.e. no longer available for transfer to UCAR, on September 30th. Funds received after NSF’s annual deadline date may not be available for award after October 1. If a lab/division/program is aware that a transfer has been or may be made after NSF’s established deadline, contact the Sponsored Agreements Office immediately.
- Sponsor Notification of Intention to Fund Proposal
When the sponsor has notified the PI or the administrator that they intend to award a proposal, the administrator should update their records/database and keep this item in a tickler file. The administrator should ensure that either they or the PI contacts the program manager to discuss the anticipated start date of the project and whether the funds will be awarded as a Direct Agreement or an Interagency Agreement, if these details are not specified in the notification. The administrator will use this information to determine when and which steps should take place to track the funding. It is the lab/division/program’s responsibility to make sure the sponsor sends the IA transfer document to NSF prior to NSF’s annual deadline.
- Sponsor Notification that Funds have been sent to NSF
When UCAR has received a copy of a MIPR or Intergovernmental Purchase Order from the sponsor and forwarded to SA, SA is responsible for tracking the interagency funds. SA will work with NSF on a regular basis throughout the year, and more often prior to established deadlines, to help ensure that NSF accepts the funds, provides UCAR a copy of the MOU, and ultimately awards the funds on amendment.
- NSF’s Acceptance of Funds
SA will update CMM with the MOU information and continue to monitor the funding process within NSF until it has been placed on amendment. Upon receipt of an MOU, but prior to receipt of an amendment, the lab/division/program determines whether or not they would like to begin spending.
Note: The lab/division/program accepts the risk and takes full responsibility for any loss of funding when a decision is made to spend on the project at the time of the MOU but prior to receipt of the NSF amendment.
A. Budgeting
Please refer to the entity B&P Office website to view the full guidelines for budgeting instructions at:
NCAR: http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/bnp/nonspc/internal/propguidelines.html
UOP: http://www.uop.ucar.edu/budget_office.shtmlB. Tracking Proposals (Lab/Division/Program Database)
Each lab/division/program should have a process in place to track their proposals, in addition to awards, progress reports, continuation funding, etc. The administrator should communicate with the PIs regarding the status of proposals that are still pending outcome of award or decline and awards that are anticipating continuation funds.
C. Checking on Status of Award
The PI should contact the agency’s program manager within a reasonable time frame from proposal submission. The administrator may contact the program manager at the PI’s request. The administrator is responsible for ensuring that a status check is done, regardless of who takes action. If a request for continuation funding was sent to the sponsoring agency, the agency’s program manager should be contacted prior to the end date of the current year funding.
If the proposal has been declined an Award/Decline Form should be submitted to the entity B&P Office and the lab/division/program records/database updated.
If the proposal is to be awarded, SA and B&P should be notified and the funding information should be added to the IA Spreadsheet and the lab/division/program records/database updated.
Once notification has been received from the sponsor that they plan to award the proposal as an interagency agreement, the steps below should be followed to help ensure funds are received.
D. Updating the IA Spreadsheet
As soon as the lab/division/program administrator is aware that funding is to be received through an IA, SA should be contacted via e-mail so that funding information can be added to the IA Spreadsheet under the category of “Funding Tracked by Lab/Division/Program”.
For continuation funds, the administrator should notify SA between 60 to 90 days prior to when funds are expected so that the information may be added to the IA spreadsheet.
SA will e-mail the IA spreadsheet to the labs/divisions/programs the first of every month and post the spreadsheet to their website.
http://www.fin.ucar.edu/contracts/sa/FY2005IASpreadsheet.htm
The administrators should use this opportunity to review and track their anticipated funding and also notify SA of any changes or additions that should be made to the spreadsheet.
When the award notification has been submitted to NSF and NSF has acknowledged receipt of paperwork, the funding is moved from “Funding Tracked by Labs/Divisions/Programs” to “Funding Tracked by Sponsored Agreements”.
NSF maintains an IA spreadsheet independently and emails it to SA with updates.
E. Prespending / Overspending
Please refer to the Treasury Office’s website to view the full guidelines for Prespending and Overspending.
https://www.fin.ucar.edu/treasury/internal/prespend.htm
https://www.fin.ucar.edu/treasury/internal/overspending.htmThe monitoring of Prespending and Overspending provides the institution with an additional trigger point in monitoring funding and determining the appropriate level of spending prior to receipt of funds.
F. Submission of Continuation Request, Extension Request and/or Progress Report
The lab/division/program administrators should send reminders about required progress reports to their principal investigators (PI) at least thirty (30) days prior to their due date. Refer to the sponsoring agency guidelines and the award terms and conditions regarding due dates of progress reports. Reports could be due up to 90 – 120 days prior to the end of the award period.
The PI is responsible for writing the progress report for the period just completed, and drafting the budget and statement of work for the continued work being proposed. The PI should also work with their administrator on any changes to the budget.
The administrator will finalize the budget for the requested funding period and any other specific agency forms that are required by the sponsoring agency. All agency specific forms, budget, and progress report, along with an Award Change Request Form, should be submitted to SA and the appropriate B&P Office for review and approval.
The B&P Office will review and approve the budget and statement of work.
SA will submit the progress report and other required documents along with a request for continuation of funding to the sponsoring agency or return to the lab/division/program for distribution.
G. Tracking Award from Sponsoring Agency to NSF
Once the program manager notifies the PI of an award, the lab/division/program administrator is responsible for tracking the anticipated funds up to NSF’s acknowledgement of receipt of an IA transfer. Collaboratively, the PI and the administrator should actively work with the program or contract/grant officer from the agency in question to either directly acquire a copy of the IA transfer document or request that the IA transfer document be submitted to NSF as soon as possible.
If the PI or administrator is able to obtain a copy of the IA transfer document, it should be forwarded to SA. SA will fax the document to NSF. If the agency is claiming that the IA transfer document has been submitted to NSF, but NSF is not able to confirm receipt of such document, the PI or administrator should request confirmation from the agency that the document was submitted, find out who it was addressed to at NSF, whether or not they have proof of delivery and request another copy of the IA transfer document. This information should be conveyed and the IA document faxed to NSF by SA.
H. Tracking Award through NSF Process
As soon as NSF has confirmed receipt of the funding transfer from the agency, the responsibility transfers to SA to track the funds through NSF’s process.
SA will monitor the funding and work directly with NSF to make certain that: 1) NSF accepts the funds from the sponsoring agency and submits a copy of the MOU to SA; and, 2) NSF awards the funds on amendment.
1. MOU
- The information contained within the MOU is checked against the proposal for funding amount, project title, period of performance dates, etc.
- Any discrepancies are reported to the lab/division/program to determine if action needs to be taken with the agency.
- The lab/division/program is informed through an e-mail that the funding has been received.
- The MOU receipt date is added to the IA spreadsheet.
- At this time, the lab/division/program may begin spending at their own risk and assumes responsibility for any loss of funds.
2. NSF Amendments
- Amendments are distributed through the NSFCOOP e-mail alias.
- SA will compare the amendment details to the MOU document and will resolve discrepancies, as required.
- The amendment receipt date is added to the IA spreadsheet.
I. Updating CMM
For IAs, SA will update CMM after the receipt of the MOU and again after the receipt of the amendment from NSF.
If you are encountering problems with solving any of the processes within this document, please seek assistance.
- Engage your PI as much as possible in the process. PIs usually have a personal relationship with the program officers and can be an excellent resource.
- Be proactive when requesting assistance. Obtain help as soon as you come across a problem. Don’t wait until it may be too late to acquire funds.
- Notify SA at any stage in the process if having difficulty with tracking funding.
- Contact other departments within UCAR, including your B&P Office, that you feel can assist with your situation.
- Share collective wisdom with other administrators.
https://www.fin.ucar.edu/treasury/internal/storm_fund.htm
Lab, division, and program directors are responsible for making staff aware of these guidelines and ensuring lab, division and program staff compliance.
PIs are responsible for being aware of UCAR prespending and overspending guidelines and to make every reasonable effort to ensure that the level of activity and spending on the project is at a minimum prior to funding receipt. The PI should know the status of their funds and work with the administrator to make certain funding is submitted to NSF from the sponsoring agency.
Lab, division, and program administrators are responsible for coordinating the tracking of IA funding from award to receipt of funding at NSF.
The SA is responsible for maintaining the IA spreadsheet; follow-up on outstanding funding prior to acceptance by NSF, if requested by the lab/division/program; tracking funding as it is received, accepted and funded by NSF; and updating CMM and notifying the lab/division/program and budget offices when funding is received. SA also sends automated closeout/continuation notifications to the administrators at 120, 90, 60 and 30 days prior to the close of an award period. However, this process should not replace any lab/division/program tracking of these due dates.
Entity B&P Offices are responsible for coordinating the overspending reports to the UCAR Treasurer and for reviewing/approving the prespend/overspend questionnaire consistent with the related prespending and overspending guidelines. Entity B&P Offices will also review/approve any budgets.
The Treasury Office is responsible for reviewing/authorizing Prespending and Overspending requests and reviewing and consolidating Prespending and Overspending reporting from the entity B&P Offices.
Issued: December 2005