Thanks Greg, we really appreciate your comments.  We're not sure where
this will go, but we're still trying to steer it in a sensible
direction.

________________________________

From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@HRINET.ORG] On
Behalf Of Greg Schmidt
Sent: Friday, March 31, 2006 8:51 AM
To: xxxxxx@HRINET.ORG
Subject: Re: [RESADM-L] Federal financial assistance rules

Fixed Price Awards are supposed to be used where there is a definitive
deliverable to which a specific cost can be assigned.  Consider any
service or product you purchase in a store.  The vendor has identified
the costs to provide that service to include the labor, benes and
overhead plus other costs, and has given you their rate per unit.  In
private business, that rate includes a mark-up for profit.

What your illustrious lawmakers have forgotten is that the FL-SUS is a
non-profit group of entities, and there is no "profit" to revert back to
the state.  Also, universities as a group don't normally price services
as a general rule for sale to outside entities, so we miss the estimates
quite frequently in both directions.  Those times when we miss in the
wrong direction are hopefully made up on the ones we do later.

You may also want to ask them if they will be asking their other vendors
to do the same.  Do you think that FPL will "refund" payments made that
don't cover costs?  I rather doubt it.

As for A133.  A133 is all about policies and procedures of the
institution, and ensuring that you've followed them in your normal
activities whether for organizational, instructional, or research
purposes.  They want to know that you've consistently followed your
pricing procedures and that you handle any cost overruns and underages
regardless of the sources of funds in a uniform manner.  A133 does not
begrudge an institution from recovering more than their costs so long as
you are not charging more for the same services to the Fed.

Greg

Gregory K. Schmidt
Lead Consultant
Financial and Institutional Advancement Solutions
Datatel, Inc.
How higher education does business.

Voice:  703.227.1136
Fax:      703.802.3984
xxxxxx@datatel.com
http://www.datatel.com

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