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End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

  • 1.  End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    STAR CONTRIBUTOR
    Posted 08-16-2021 14:41
    Edited by Simon Helton 08-20-2021 13:28

    Hi, everyone!

     

    I'd love to hear how you handle proposals (and awards, too!) near the end of the fiscal year.  We always have some proposals that come in in June, but don't go out until July (beginning of our FY).  Don't get excited.... We generally don't get that much notice!  It usually means we've had challenges with something in the proposal and fortunately there wasn't a hard deadline!

     

    If you think a proposal won't go out before the end of the FY, do you assign it to the upcoming year?  Or do you move proposals if they don't go out before the end of the year?   I'm thinking of making some changes to make reconciling some of our reports easier, so I would love to hear what others are doing.

     

    And of course, there are similar challenges with awards, so any thoughts there are welcome, too!

     

    Pam

     

    Pamela A. (Krauser) Vargas
    Director
    Office of Research and Sponsored Programs

    Southeast Missouri State University

    One University Plaza, MS0125

    Cape Girardeau, MO 63701

    573.651.2196
    pvargas@semo.edu

     



  • 2.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    Posted 08-17-2021 04:00

    'Date proposal submitted' is my preferred milestone point for capturing proposal count/activity in a period. If a proposal hasn't been submitted before June 30, I would bump it to the new FY because that's where my data point will land ultimately. I'm sure others have different approaches, like 'Sponsor Due Date' or 'Proposal record initiated' for different reasons. Any of those points are probably fine to use as your guidepost, so long as it is applied consistently across your colleges and across fiscal periods so that you get a real 'apples to apples' look at the resulting data. As for awards, same principles apply: the data point can be different from place to place (e.g.: day the award notice is rec'd; date award is fully executed; project start date) ...but as long as you track your preferred point consistently, you're good. I personally prefer the 'date executed/active' as my measure for contracts/grants in post. 



    ------------------------------
    Cira Mathis, CRA, PMP
    Manager, Internal Programs
    University Sponsored Research
    Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    STAR CONTRIBUTOR
    Posted 08-17-2021 06:39

    Thanks, Cira!  And yes, on the award side, we've often counted them based on the award date/date fully executed, but accounting uses the project start date, so we are thinking it may be better to align with them....

     

    Pam

     

    Pamela A. (Krauser) Vargas
    Director
    Office of Research and Sponsored Programs

    Southeast Missouri State University

    One University Plaza, MS0125

    Cape Girardeau, MO 63701

    573.651.2196
    pvargas@semo.edu

     






  • 4.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    RISING STAR CONTRIBUTOR
    Posted 08-18-2021 04:42
    This exactly how I capture proposals and awards:  Date Submitted for proposals, and NOA received date for awards.

    ------------------------------
    Kris A. Monahan, Ph.D.
    Director Sponsored Projects and Research Compliance
    Providence College
    Providence, RI
    ------------------------------



  • 5.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    Posted 08-18-2021 05:40

    Kris,

     

    How do you pull these reports? Are you using Data Connect/Cayuse reports?

     

    Caroyn

     






  • 6.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    SUPERSTAR CONTRIBUTOR
    Posted 08-17-2021 04:44
    Personally, I would prefer to keep things in the year they happened.  If we send out a proposal or get an award on June 30, then it's recorded in the FY that's within minutes of ending.  Similarly, if it happens on July 1, even though we did most of our work earlier, I would like to account for it in the FY that just started.  Then dates match and things feel tidier - to me.

    There can be reasons for doing it some other way, though.  (Seriously, is there a single rule that's true every single time?)  It has been known to happen, for instance, that funding comes in very late for work that's already happened; State funding is a particular mess that way.  We would probably count that in the year when the work happened and likely the agreement is dated that way, anyway.

    If a particularly large award comes in right at the cusp of the year, my boss always wants to look at which FY "needs it" the most - so that the years look good funding-wise.  THAT, I discourage, and so far I've won.

    A

    ------------------------------
    Andrea Buford
    Director, Office of Sponsored Programs
    Oakland University
    ------------------------------



  • 7.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    STAR CONTRIBUTOR
    Posted 08-17-2021 06:03

    Thank you, Andrea.  You've pretty much echoed my thoughts, and it is always good to confirm those things!

     

    I'm trying to come up with a plan for assigning proposal numbers near the end of the year, but of course there is always uncertainty on when things will go out.  But this year we had several that were in progress in our office for longer than normal periods.  I am not sure why....

     

    Pam

     

    Pamela A. (Krauser) Vargas
    Director
    Office of Research and Sponsored Programs

    Southeast Missouri State University

    One University Plaza, MS0125

    Cape Girardeau, MO 63701

    573.651.2196
    pvargas@semo.edu

     






  • 8.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    SUPERSTAR CONTRIBUTOR
    Posted 08-17-2021 06:19
    We have a strong Research Development function, and they tend to start records as soon as a funding mechanism has been identified.  It's our "heads-up," and it could occur a full year prior to deadline.  So, having proposals and awards with "off" Cayuse record-numbers doesn't worry me.

    ------------------------------
    Andrea Buford
    Director, Office of Sponsored Programs
    Oakland University
    ------------------------------



  • 9.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    Posted 08-17-2021 06:48
    Pam,

    I have the same issues here! I believe Data Connect tracks by submission data and not approval data and I'm looking into using that for our reporting.

    Carolyn

    ------------------------------
    CarolynElliott-Farino
    Kennesaw State University
    cellio12@kennesaw.edu
    ------------------------------



  • 10.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    Posted 08-18-2021 09:51
    Do you have Cayuse Analytics?
    https://cayuse.juiceboxdata.com/

    It's a URL outside the system, unfortunately, so often overlooked.

    If you haven't used it, reach out to Theron at Theron.Webb@cayuse.com 
    There's some simple paperwork that's needed, but then you're all set to login.

    There are some charts with trending that may be useful to your efforts.

    You can also use Data Connect, however, it's likely you'll need to pull together several of the reports to get to what you need.
    I use the free version of PowerBI to connect the data or you can use Excel's Power Pivot or Tableau.

    ------------------------------
    Terri Hall
    Director, Research Business Intelligence
    University of Notre Dame
    thall2@nd.edu
    ------------------------------



  • 11.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    STAR CONTRIBUTOR
    Posted 08-18-2021 11:45

    Terri,

     

    Do you need a separate password for the analytics?

     

    Pam

     

    Pamela A. (Krauser) Vargas
    Director
    Office of Research and Sponsored Programs

    Southeast Missouri State University

    One University Plaza, MS0125

    Cape Girardeau, MO 63701

    573.651.2196
    pvargas@semo.edu

     






  • 12.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    Posted 08-18-2021 11:54
    Yes, you need a separate login, although it can be the same you use for Cayuse Connect if you like

    ------------------------------
    Terri Hall
    Director, Research Business Intelligence
    University of Notre Dame
    thall2@nd.edu
    ------------------------------



  • 13.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    RISING STAR CONTRIBUTOR
    Posted 08-17-2021 07:08
    For reporting, we use the criteria of status = "submitted to sponsor" and the date it was submitted.  So, we only pull submitted proposals that fall within those dates of the FY we are reporting.

    ------------------------------
    Jennifer Mills
    Senior Grants and Contract Specialist/ERA Administrator
    University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa
    ------------------------------



  • 14.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    Posted 08-17-2021 07:22

    what if the status has changed to funded? How are you pulling this data, Jennifer?

    ------------------------------
    CarolynElliott-Farino
    Kennesaw State University
    cellio12@kennesaw.edu
    ------------------------------



  • 15.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    RISING STAR CONTRIBUTOR
    Posted 08-17-2021 07:40
    Yes, good point! Sometimes it is funded very quickly and then it shows up on our awards report at the funded status.  But, we could always run a report on date that it was submitted so that we could show the number of proposals that were submitted within a certain timeframe as well.

    ------------------------------
    Jennifer Mills
    Senior Grants and Contract Specialist/ERA Administrator
    University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa
    ------------------------------



  • 16.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    Posted 08-18-2021 08:34
    For proposals we use the Date Submitted to Sponsor entered by our staff in the proposal:


    For awards we use the Official Report Date, which is the date pre award sends the award to post award for account set up.


    ​Occasionally, we might "post date" to the start date it if the award doesn't start for several months and it is in another fiscal year.  It's only happened twice that I recall.

    ------------------------------
    Leslie Ingram
    Electronic Research Administrator
    University of Memphis
    ------------------------------



  • 17.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    Posted 08-18-2021 09:28
    It sounds like you are pulling the reports out of Data Connect/Cayuse Reports and into a data warehouse where you configure reports, and are not using the reporting tabs in SP. IS this correct? We've been live just over a year and are still getting a handle on the best way to report the data.

    ------------------------------
    CarolynElliott-Farino
    Kennesaw State University
    cellio12@kennesaw.edu
    ------------------------------



  • 18.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    Posted 08-18-2021 09:39
    Yes, we use Data Connect for reports (Argos).  The reports in Cayuse didn't look at the data the way we wanted so we've not used them.

    ------------------------------
    Leslie Ingram
    Electronic Research Administrator
    University of Memphis
    ------------------------------



  • 19.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    RISING STAR CONTRIBUTOR
    Posted 08-19-2021 08:56
    Similar to most in this thread, we use date submitted for proposals. For awards, we use the award start date and break each award into its subsequent years, so rather than capturing the total project dollars, we see the award spread out over the life of the grant. We feel this gives us a better understanding of dollars available each year, and that aligns more closely with dollars expended. It also helps us capture any supplemental or continuation grants that may follow.

    ------------------------------
    Sherrie Hixon
    Director, Strategic Research Initiatives & Innovation
    California State University, Northridge (CSUN)
    ------------------------------



  • 20.  RE: End of the Fiscal Year Procedures... Thoughts?

    SPEAKER
    Posted 08-20-2021 09:52
    Our process at the University of South Alabama is very similar to Sherrie's. The date a proposal is submitted remains the true date for reporting purposes.

    ------------------------------
    Gina Hedberg
    Exec Director, Office of Sponsored Projects Adm
    University of South Alabama
    Mobile, AL
    251-460-7888
    ------------------------------