The Principal Investigator/Project Director is responsible for managing the sponsored project expenses and budget. Please review the complete Principal Investigator, Budget Manager, Sponsored Research Officer and Associate Controller Grant Accounting Roles and Responsibilities below. Use the Sponsored Projects Expenditure Guide for help with how to pay your personnel, what form you need for each expenditure, how to purchase grant-funded equipment, and many other frequently asked questions.
The OSP and Grant Accountant are available to assist throughout your project's lifecycle - please do not hesitate to contact us!
View the financial status of your project in Projects Accounting
Principal Investigator
Principal Investigators (PIs) are responsible for their sponsored awards, including the management of the day-to-day operations of their award budgets. Budgets should be reconciled on a regular basis to provide reasonable assurance that transactions are necessary, reasonable, allocable, allowable, and consistently treated. Specifically, PIs are responsible for:
Divisional Budget Manager
The budget manager is available on a limited basis to support the PI with their responsibilities in carrying out their sponsored awards as detailed above. Specifically, Budget Managers are responsible for:
Sponsored Research Officer
The Sponsored Research Officer (SRO) serves as a resource to PIs and Budget Managers throughout the administration of their award and is the primary liaison with the sponsor. Specifically, SROs are responsible for:
Associate Controller
The Associate Controller maintains the official financial records for the university, including sponsored awards. Specifically, the Associate Controller is responsible for:
Federal regulations establish four cost principles for determining costs applicable to awards. Seattle University applies these principles consistently across all sponsored projects.
All charges must be:
Costs expressly unallowable or mutually agreed to be unallowable shall be identified and excluded from any billing, claim, application, or proposal related to a sponsored projects. Sponsoring agencies use the term "allowable" to mean permitted as a cost within sponsor guidelines, the terms of a specific award, and/or the institution's policies.
A cost is allocable to a particular award if the goods or services involved are able to be directly assigned to the award based on the benefit provided. To determine if an expenditure is allocable, ask yourself the following questions:
If a cost is allocable to more than one award, please appropriately proportion costs by activity string within ProcureSU.
A cost may be considered reasonable if the nature of the goods or services, and the price paid for the goods or services, reflects the action that a prudent person would have taken given the prevailing circumstances at the time the decision to incur the cost was made.
To determine if an expenditure is reasonable, ask yourself the following questions:
All costs incurred for the same purpose, in like circumstances, must be treated uniformly either as direct costs or as indirect (F&A) costs. Since certain costs, such as salaries of administrative and clerical staff and office supplies are normally treated as F&A costs, these costs cannot be charged directly to federal Awards unless the circumstances related to a particular project are clearly different from the normal operations of the unit.
The PI/PD, with oversight by the Activity Manager, is responsible for spending the funds as proposed by the sponsor in adherence to the sponsor and university policies. All purchases within ProcureSU are also reviewed for allowability, allocability and reasonableness (as defined above) by the Grant Accountant prior to approval.
Please document the purpose of the purchase within the comments section of ProcureSU.
Please review the Procurement Thresholds in the below section for further details.
To ensure that the university continues to obtain goods and services at the best value, the following methods of competitive bidding are required for all new contracts or non-contracted purchases. If assistance is needed, it is recommended to engage the Procurement Department early in the bidding process. Note: Sponsored Project procurement thresholds are different from general SU procurement thresholds.
| Dollar Amount | Bidding Requirements | Bidding Process |
|---|---|---|
| $0 - $3,000 | verbal quote required | If pricing is considered reasonable, there is no requirement to solicit a competitive quote/proposal. |
| $3,001 - $10,000 | 1 written quote required | Obtain a quote/proposal from at least 1 qualified source for supplies or services. Include documentation from the source with the requisition. |
| $10,001 - $50,000 | 2 written quotes required (prefer 1 quote from a qualified DBE*) | Obtain a quote/proposal from at least 2 qualified sources for supplies or services. Include documentation from both sources with the requisition. |
|
$50,001 - $150,000 |
3 written quotes required (prefer 1 quote from a qualified DBE*) | Obtain a quote/proposal from at least 3 qualified sources for supplies or services. Include documentation from all sources with the requisition. |
| over $150,000 | RFP/RFQ competitive proposals (require 1 quote from a qualified DBE*) | The University will evaluate the proposals received and award the contract to the responsible firm whose proposal is most advantageous to the program, with service levels, price and other factors considered. |
| Sole Source | If only one source is qualified to provide the goods and services, it is an emergency purchase or required by a federal awarding agency, the purchase may be made without competition. The Sole Source Justification form must be completed. |
*Diverse Business Enterprise (“DBE”): “DBE” or “Diverse Business Enterprise” is a business that
identifies as and attests to being majority owned by Black, Indigenous, other POC, LGBTQIA+,
veteran, women, or socially and economically disadvantaged persons. Although the University
prefers in its contracting that such business enterprises be certified by the Washington OMWBE,
DBEs are not required to be certified by the OMWBE unless an anticipated expenditure is required to be competitively bid under the University’s Procurement Policies. In this situation, certification by entities other than OMWBE will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Cost sharing is any project cost that is not reimbursed by the sponsor to support the scope of work defined by the sponsored award. Cost sharing, also known as “matching funds” or “in-kind support”, is funded by Seattle University or a third-party, which is generally a non-federal resource.
Cost-share requirements are determined in the proposal stage and if included in a proposal and subsequent award, cost-share will be held to the same standards as the sponsor funded award in regards to personnel, purchasing, prior approvals, tracking, reporting, and spending down. All committed cost sharing must be tracked and may require reporting.
If an error, unallowable cost, or cost overrun is discovered, the PI and Budget Manager must complete a standard Journal Entry form and an additional grant-specific Cost Transfer Justification Form to remove the unallowable cost. The unallowable cost or cost overrun should be transferred to a departmental or divisional operating or unrestricted fund account.
JEs should only be used to correct errors and not as a mechanism to regularly shift expenses from a different account on to a sponsored project account. This is a highly discouraged situation as it can raise red flags during an audit.
All costs proposed or incurred on a sponsored project must comply with the approved scope of work and budget, general sponsor terms and conditions and University policies and procedures.
The Principal Investigator of a sponsored project is required to report major deviations from budget, staffing, project timeline and project scope.
When a change is necessary, please complete the Institutional Prior Approval Form (IPAF) (IPAF) and submit the signed form to the OSP. The OSP will review and determine if sponsor prior approval is required based on sponsor policies and the award agreement. Should sponsor approval be necessary, OSP will submit the request and justification as detailed in your IPAF with the sponsor.
Seattle University’s policy is to charge the to all publicly-funded sponsored projects. Privately-funded grant indirect costs are charged at the accepted rate of the sponsor, as negotiated by the Director of the Office of Sponsored Projects at the time of the proposal submission.
Indirect costs include the facilities and administrative costs that are not easily assigned to specific projects such as physical building space, utilities, technological services, minor office supplies and printing, and administrative staff of the department and university, among other real costs. Please review the for more information. When an indirect or administrative rate are charged to a grant, the items considered indirect costs cannot be directly charged to the award.
The Grant Accountant will charge indirects, based on your expenses, to your budget at the end of each month.
Purpose: to ensure your records match with the official institutional records. By tracking expenses and reconciling on a monthly basis, you can identify mistaken charges, anticipated charges that are missing from the university’s official record, or capture charges missed from your records.
Please contact the OSP if you need assistance in setting up a budget tracking spreadsheet. The OSP can provide a budget tracking tool customized for your budget.
On going: Projects Accounting ties directly into our university accounting system but was designed specifically for projects. A key feature is that the project budget is based on the project's period, not the university's fiscal year. Use this module to check the financial health of your project(s) at any time.
Monthly: At the end of each month's financial close (approximately 2-3 weeks after the end of each month), the Controller's Office will send an email to all Activity Managers announcing the close of the month. At this time, the Activity Manager must reconcile their records with the controller's monthly financial report provided in InformSU.
Quarterly: After the end of each fiscal quarter while your sponsored project is active, the Grant Accountant will send a summary report of your financials comparing actuals to date with total budget, rate of spending, and project timeline complete (% of total award period already complete). This report must be signed by the sponsored project's PI/PD and budget manager certifying that the charges are correct.
The PI, with support from their Activity Manager, is responsible for spending their sponsored project funds and associated cost share (if applicable) at the rate proposed in the project’s plan. Good communication and timely review of financial information by both the PI and Activity Manager will help avoid spending spikes, address potential audit questions, and facilitate close-out of the award.
Activity Managers should work with their PIs to develop a spending plan for a controlled spend of the award dollars to avoid a spike of spending toward the end of the award period due to inadequate financial planning. Spending spikes not only pose an audit risk, but often result in unallowable costs that require transfer off of the award.
Most sponsors request that a financial report be submitted annually (on or after the anniversary of the project start date) and a final financial report after the project end date. This report must be completed with financial data from the Grant Accountant (and oftentimes, must be submitted by her). Please consult with the Grant Accountant to ensure accurate financial data is submitted.