Susan,

Our office restructured our filing system recently.  We are a pre-award and
post-award office.  The system we came up with is pretty simple once you
get used to it.  Our labels look like this and contain the following
information:

PI Last Name, First Initial                     Internal Accounting #
Sponsor                                 Sponsor PO #
Project Dates                                   OSP Internal Tracking Number

We also have our system color coded.  Manilla folders are for proposals.
Red folders are for funded projects.  Green folders are for sub-contracts.
Blue folders are for other items that may come up.

Every single piece of paper related to a certain project is held in these
folders.

Hope this helps.

-Jim Maddison
Research Administrator
RIT Research Corporation

At 08:05 AM 7/13/98 -0400, you wrote:
>hi folks-
>i have just started a new job in the school-level osr office at
>gw.  the office is responsible for both pre- and post-award
>activities.  in the past, the only structured filing system has
>been for the post-award fiscal activities-primarily the requests
>for payment, payroll actions, etc.  consequently, all the files
>are arranged by university account number.
>
>since i come from a pre-award background, i want to maintain
>files that contain submission materials, award documents, and
>post-award PAS-type actions.  AND, i want to file by PI name.
>
>since i don't want to upset the accounting person's system, i've
>been thinking about maintaining a dual system - one pre- and
>post-award "documents" (by PI) and the other for accounting
>purposes (by account #).
>
>any suggestions, comments?
>
>also (and i think we've talked about this before, just can't
>remember when), can anyone recommend an off-the-shelf grants
>accounting package suitable for the school-level office?  does
>anyone have a home-grown pet they'd be willing to discuss?
>
>thanks for your help....
>
>susan
>
>--
>Susan Burke
>Sponsored Programs Specialist
>School of Engineering and Applied Science
>The George Washington University
>725 23rd Street NW, Suite 109
>Washington, DC 20052
>Telephone: 202/944-1805
>Fax: 202/994-0092
>
>