In response to my recent posting in response to Dan Synder's survey
of financial reporting to PI's I received the following, which
I believe is important to share with the group, along with my
answer to it...

 Here are some answers I sent Dan.  How did you address  your response? ( to
 the entire list or just to Dan)  I gather you do not want people to respond
 to their E-mail by just sending a reply back to the original message but to
 direct it to a specific individual
 ----------
 From: Naegel, Gary P.
 To: Snyder, Daniel
 Subject: PI Financial Reports
 Date: Wednesday, June 22, 1994 10:30AM
 Priority: High

 I am writing in response to your E-mail request of several weeks ago.

 1. Yale University School of Medicine (June 30, 1993)
 Sponsored Research, teaching, grants, & contracts = $181.3 million
 1a  Yale University (June 30, 1993)
 Sponsored Research, teaching, grants, & contracts = 253.9 million
 2.   The School of Medicine has individual department business offices
 operating the fiscal and administrative responsibilities for their units.
 In the Department of Pharmacology, our PI's receive financial monthly
 reports
 3.   Our PI's do not have computer access to their projects.    Reason is
 complex due to various systems used to generate the financial reports.
 4.   PI's satisfaction is generally high with the quality of the reports
 given to them
 5.   Our department utilizes a commitment accounting system to produce the
 monthly financial reports.   This application was written to download all of
 the general accounting payments made in a given month, which match to the
 University's   monthly general ledger statements.  In addition, this system
 allows business offices to set up commitments for requisitions and to get
 automatic relief to the paid section when appropriate.  In addition, the
 personal costs for salary and fringe benefits are entered when the account
 is set-up (or modified) and will automatically relieve monthly payments from
 the commitment column to the payment column.    All purchase requisitions
 that are entered into the system, are automatically entered into the
 commitment system.   Any other orders, transfers, costs,  etc., that are not
 currently "in the system" can be entered manually as commitments, to reflect
 the most up to date knowledge of expenses.   These monthly reports generate
 a front summary page, along with the list of current commitments and current
 payments for each account that is set up.   Faculty and staff have asked for
 the creation of a consolidated summary sheet that would list all of the
 sources of support, personnel commitments, etc. for each faculty member.
 This project is still in  design formulation :unfortunately:.

My response to Gary's query regarding WHO to repond to is as follows

 In general, it is best to post answers to inquiries on RESADM-L
 back to the list -- this way everyone who saw the original
 question gets to see the answer(s).  In some cases, however,
 a user will post a question for some survey-type info and will
 offer to compile the responses (which can get numerous) and then
 post the compilation to the list -- such as I did with my recent
 query regarding grants management software. In a case where the poster
 offers to compile responses, you should respond directly to the
 poster at their individual e-mail address. Also, in cases where you
 want to share information confidentially, you should write back to the
 person directly.

 However, in most cases it is best to post back to the list - that
 is the whole point of the discussion group--everyone benefits
 from the question asked and answered.

* Elizabeth (Liz) Mazzella             xxxxxx@ALBNYDH2.BITNET  *
* Asst. Dir. Technology Transfer & Sponsored Pgms.            *
* Health Research, Inc. (A Non-Profit Corp.) Albany NY 12209  *
* Voice: (518) 431-1200                    Fax: (518)431-1234 *