Post Award Administration: Grants and Contract Accounting Frequently Asked Questions

Answer: Grants and Contracts Accounting (GCA) is responsible for post award accounting, which includes but is not limited to the list below:

1. Establish and maintain Awards and Grants in Workday, including assigning Award and Grant numbers, after receipt of approved award documents from Research Administration Services (RAS).
2. Establish and update Plan (budget) information in Workday, based on grantor notifications and re-budget requests approved by RAS.
3. Approve all spending against Grants including Payment Request Forms (PRF), Interdepartmental charge forms (ICF), and Cost Transfers (CT)
4. Invoice (or request drawdowns) of all sponsors for approved grant spending based on the University’s accounting records.
5. Prepare all financial reports due to sponsors.
6. Prepare Final Financial Reporting for all Awards/Grants.
7. Provide Cash Management - Apply cash received from sponsors to grant outstanding balances.
8. Manage Grants and Contracts Receivables, Advancements, Schedule Payments, Deferred Revenue 
9. Manage the semi-annual Effort Certification process for federal awards.
10. Manage Closeout of Grants and Contracts
11. Manage Annual Audits, Site Visits and Agencies Inquiries
12. Responsible for the University’s Indirect Cost (F&A) and Fringe Benefits Proposals
13. Responsible for the Reporting Portfolio of Grants and Contracts Accounting

Answer:  Three (3) business days are allocated to process transactions after receipt. Processing can take longer if there are issues.

Answer:  Please always provide the grant number, PI responsible, budget information, start / end dates, etc. when making inquires to GCA, most GCA records are indexed by grant number.

Answer: Multi-year grants may vary dependent on sponsor requirements; therefore, grant years may need to be tracked and reported separately by year. (GCA) will notify you of the specific grant number assigned whenever the grant is established.

Answer: Yes, an award/grant can be modified, continued, or extended per sponsor agreements, terms and agreements, other documentation, approvals, etc.

Answer: Rebudgets are submitted by the PI / Administrator to RAS and GCA for approvals (in this order); GCA processes rebudgets in Workday typically within 3 business days.

Answer: Please see table below:

Answer: Spending initiated in Workday (such requisitions, expense reports, cost allocations, etc.) follow the Workday processing flow, which is indicated by the process history section of each transaction. 

Answer:  The object class is a budget classification; the spend category is an accounting classification used to record transactions in Howard’s financial statements.  The object class is a group of spend categories; spend categories are mapped to an object class.

Answer: The spending category is needed to correctly record the transaction in Workday and ultimately in Howard’s financial statements. Please contact your departmental research administrator for assistance in selecting spending categories.

Answer:  Spending on a grant can be found on the Workday GMR report “Grants Management Report – TMM.

Answer: All personnel costs will be charged in Workday to grants via costing allocations which the PI must initiate by working with their HR Delegate.

Answer: The personnel charges do not automatically continue as part of the extension; the PI must coordinate with their HR Delegate to ensure that costing allocations are initiated for the new budget period.  If this step is omitted, payroll expenses will cease to be posted on the grant.  Grants and Contracts Accounting (GCA) cannot extend the personnel cost allocations.

Answer: Once a grant is set up in Workday, cost allocations must be created by the HR delegate to assign personnel costs to the grant. Grants and Contracts Accounting (GCA are not able to create costing allocations.

Answer:  Costing allocations will charge in Workday after the approval date.  A labor cost transfer must be initiated by the PI, Departmental Administrator working with their Research Administrative Services (RAS) analyst, for any prior period personnel costs.

Answer: Since grants have an end date, it’s important that all employees have a cost center as their default organization assignment in Workday, and those cost allocations are set up by the grant’s HR delegate to charge staff to grants as appropriate.

Answer:  GCA financial reporting is based on Howard’s Workday financial system; only spending shown as completed in Workday is included on invoices.

Answer:  The financial report is based on Howard’s Workday financial system, as should be any financial information presented in the progress report.  Monthly monitoring should be completed and maintained to ensure the progress report financial reconciles with actual financials in Workday general ledger.

accordance with the terms and conditions of the notice of awards, contracts, cooperative agreements, subcontracts, etc.  The 30, 60, 90, 120 are based on agencies specific timeframes and not available to all grants and contracts.  The extended timeframes are allotted for report preparation, reimbursement and cash reconciliations, adjustments (if any) providing accurate financial reporting only.

Workday was designed to allow PIs and departmental research administrators to generate GMR reports on demand, so please use that self-service feature.  To generate the GMR, please enter that phrase in Workday’s search bar, then click on the link, enter the grant number, the period for reporting, then press OK.  The report should display.  The report can be downloaded into Excel using symbol in the upper right hand of the report. Details of spending for each object class can be obtained by clicking on the black upside triangle that appears when hovering over an amount and clicking on it and selecting “Export to Excel”.

Answer:  FD101 is the default fund code for sponsored funded activity.  FD102 is for cost share; when running the GMR remove FD101 and insert FD102 to obtain only the cost share amounts.  To get all grant activity, please run the GMR with the fund code blank.   Please see below example of how to input fund information when running the GMR.

Answer: Before reaching out to RAS and GCA, the PI should work with the departmental research administrator, HR delegate, etc. to identify in writing the specific issues/amounts that are causing the discrepancies.

Answer: Spending on the grant should be initiated as soon as the grant is established in Workday and monitored throughout the grant using the GMR. Sufficient time should be planned for spending transaction processing so that transactions can appear in the GMR before the end of the grant.

Answer:  Generally, for transactions to be billed to the sponsor, transactions need to appear in the GMR with an accounting date no later than the end date of the grant. Thus, it’s safest to plan for each transaction to be completed (including payment issued and reclassifications done) at least a month before the grant ends.  Since processing times vary depending upon the type of a transaction, transactions may need to be started months before the grant’s end date in order to be completed by then. One exception is personnel costs -- as long as the costing allocation is in place more than three months before the grant closes, salary/wages can continue to be charged up until the last day of the grant.

Answer: Grant transactions need to appear in the GMR with an accounting date no later than the end date of the grant; and Grants and Contracts Accounting GCA can’t backdate transactions.

Answer: Generally, interdepartmental charges are charged to the same category as the original expense, and not to the interdepartmental spending categories.