If the amount of salary charged to the grant exceeded the effort spent
during the respective time period, then the college has two choices:
correct the error on their own or wait for some federal agency to find
the error and then fix it.

If the amount of salary charged to the grant exceeds the budget, but
does not exceed the effort spent during the respective time period, then
the college only has a problem if the funding agency disallows the
costs.  The issue then becomes who funds the voluntary cost sharing
created by the diallowance.

Jason

-----Original Message-----
From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@hrinet.org] On
Behalf Of James Austin
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2008 5:07 PM
To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Subject: [RESADM-L] Accounting mistakes: How to fix and report?

Hi folks. A faculty friend of mine has a problem that his administration
doesn't seem to know how to handle, so I thought I'd try to mine some of
your expertise.

My friend is a professor at a small college and has an NIH AREA grant.
He's just discovered that the college has been making some substantial
incorrect charges to the grant via an honest (if incompetent) mistake.
Probably about $30,000 or so was incorrectly charged (to be specific,
salary was charged against the grant when it shouldn't have been). All
the financial reports that have been filed have been accurate--but they
have reflected the (lower) balance, reflecting the incorrect charges.

Presumably, the money will be paid back. The question is how that should
be done (into the NIH-grant account? Into a different account?), and how
(and if) the mistake should be reported.

Your advice is much appreciated.

Jim

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 subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available
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