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