All,

At Arkansas Children's Hospital Research Institute we 'annualize' the
funding based on the budget period on the award notice. We feel that
counting 12 months or more funding as FY 1999-2000 just because the budget
period happened to start on 5/1/2000 is not as accurate as we need.
Therefore we have built an algorithm that apportions the funding based on
the number of months of the budget period that fall within the period we are
looking at. Although this requires that we assume that funding is spent
evenly over all months in the budget period, it does let us get an accurate
picture of just how much funding we had/have for any year, month or even
day. As our facility is funded by f&a revenue, this is critical in budgeting
the amount of direct costs (and hence f&a cost) that will be spent in the
next budget year.

With this method we are closer to 'funding received' because it is a similar
figure  to what will be drawn down monthly as reimbursement for research
expenses as they are spent.

Of course, no method is more 'correct' than the other - it's just what works
for your institution.

-David
David A Higginson, ACMA
VP for Information Systems
Arkansas Children's Hospital
1200 Marshall Street
Little Rock, AR 72202
tel: (501)320-3757
email: xxxxxx@exchange.ach.uams.edu
web: http://achri.ach.uams.edu

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