These kinds of transactions are not approved by anyone else at our
institution.   We don't have the staff, nor does the Controller's
office, to do this kind of checking on every little transaction on our
grants.  We are a small institution--so there's no such thing as
departmental administration for grants and contracts here.  To compound
our problems, our fiscal system has never been programmed to flag
transactions that will push a major line item--or even the bottom
line--into the red, so these things just get entered.  The result:  We
(Sponsored Programs) end up troubleshooting lots of these cases and our
grants accountant ends up moving expenditures around -- and we have a
lot of last minute rebudgeting going on.  This situation makes me
reather nervous, especially as our volume continues to grow (we're at $4
million now), but the fiscal side of the house doesn't seem terribly
concerned.

At my previous institution, staff in the grants accounting office
checked every hire form, purchase requisition, and travel request and
signed off before final processing.  If there weren't enough funds in
the correct line, the PI would be informed and would have to rebudget
before the transaction would go through.  It took longer--some PIs got
pretty ugly about the "red tape" at times, but, of course these were the
ones who were notorious for being great researchers but poor money
managers.

IMHO, someone who understands that major line items and the bottom line
should never go significantly in the red needs to have the
responsibility for checking and approving these requests before they get
to Human Resources, Procurement, or Accounts payable.

I would be interested in a summary of responses--getting our fiscal
system to flag problem transactions is something that we eventually will
need to request, and every little bit of "ammunition" from other
institutions helps!

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Barbara H. Gray                              Telephone:  803-953-5673
Director of Sponsored Programs       Fax: 803-953-6577
College of Charleston                       email:  xxxxxx@cofc.edu
Charleston, SC  29424                     http://www.cofc.edu/~osp
(Location:  407G Bell Building)
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