This is an edited recap of responses to the following note: "Our PIs receive monthly hardcopy reports (print-outs) on the financial status of their grants and contracts. Various PIs feel that the reports are not frequent enough, or are too frequent, that they contain too little information, or too much, and that they should be available on-line, or are best provided in hard copy. I imagine that others of you are responsible for providing financial information to PIs that is timely and useful (i.e., understandable by someone trained to do science rather than accounting). Seems to me it would help us get a grip on what's desirable/feasible if we knew more about the state of the art at other institutions. 1. What is the name and size ($M/yr in grants and/or contracts) of your organization? 2. How often do PI's receive financial reports? 3. Do PI's have access to financial data on their projects via computer? If so, do they see static images of reports, or do they see a database that they can query? 4. Would you describe the PI's satisfaction with the financial reports as generally high, medium or low? 5. Do you plan to change financial reports provided to PIs? If so, what changes do you hope to implement?" RESPONSES (keyed to questions above) 1. The University of Alabama- $35,000,000 2. Monthly hardcopy reports. 3. on-line access? Yes- Static image of the budget statement with expenses posted against it, up-dated as of the previous days activities. A detail of all transactions is available on a separate screen. A detail of all encumbrances is available on a separate screen. 4. PI satisfaction level: High 5. No changes are anticipated 1. Eastern Virginia Medical School 2. Monthly reports. 3. Hardcopy only. 4. Low 5. Maybe. 1. Wright State University; ca. $24 million/year (325 accounts, 150 PIs) 2. Monthly (5th day of month) 3. on-line reports 4. low 5. no time soon 1. a major north-east research hospital (from ex-employee); ca. $120 million/year 2. Monthly (about mid-month) 3. No on-line reports. 4. medium. 5. don't know; not working there now 1. University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing. 35 tenured faculty, 35 instructional faculty, $4.5 million total grants awarded - about 80 awards. 2. monthly reports from central accounting; department office provides quarterly reports on all, and monthly reports on some, accounts. 3. no on-line reports 4. very high 5. plan to do static reports in Excel; eventually move to Filemaker database system that links master grant file, personnel file, requisitions, etc. 1. Yale University School of Medicine; 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. no computer access to reports. 4. generally high 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]. 1. Health Research Inc. $108 million in grant/contract funding annually 2. Our PIs receive MONTHLY financial reports called an Account Expenditure Summary (AES). This is generated off a mainframe system which is real time, so if PIs want more specific information at any time of the month they can contact this office and get a print out of their account balances, outstanding POs etc... 3. only one area has on-line access; that is to static image (no query capability); also have SYBASE database into which download all mainframe data on a bi-weekly basis to allow greater query flexibility; with this system, create custom reports as of the latest download. 4. ? 5. ? 1. a. Medical College of Ohio - a free-standing, state supported, health science center. Almost exclusively biomedical research. b. FY93 (7/1/92-6/30/93) awards of $13.5 M 2. Monthly 3. No on-line access. 4. What is PIs satisfaction with current reports? LOW 5. Do you plan to change financial reports to PIs? YES How? We are developing a system which will provide more user friendly reports (including projections) at any time, upon request. This institution has separate (and non-integrated) accounting, payroll and purchasing systems, so data in the accounting system are not always as up-to-date as one would like. In fact, they are probably up-to-date only one day per month. The system under development will allow this office to provide reports to supplement the monthly reports sent to PIs by the accounting department, which handles grants accounting, but its utility will obviously be a function of the quality and timeliness of the data we download from the mainframe to create the report. Unfortunately, we are a long ways away from a fully electronic system where, when a PI orders a widget the cost of the widget is immediately subtracted from his "bottom line" and he is immediately able to see his new balance. 1. Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia; ca. $6 million/year in grants and contracts. 2. monthly financial reports (around the 10th of the month); reports of labor charges are available every 2 weeks. 3. no on-line access to raw data; one department has on-line access to static images of reports; some departments download ASCII files of summary project data (total budget, spent to date, balance, etc) for analysis in database software. 4. moderate to low 5. not in the foreseeable future; perceived as too costly to implement. Hope this is usefull. I've kept the original notes; if desired, I'll just post them to the list. ================================================================ Daniel H. Snyder Internet xxxxxx@say.acnatsci.org Administrative Director voice: 215-299-1065 Patrick Center for Environmental Research FAX: 215-299-1079 Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway Philadelphia, PA 19103-1195
