Budgeting Cost Sharing Commitments

Following is a memo from the OSR Senior Director to the Research Administration Community, dated December 13, 2005:

In order to assist departmental administrators and principal investigators to monitor committed cost sharing on sponsored project awards, the Compliance Support Task Force and Internal Audit has recommended that committed cost sharing be budgeted in the Oracle financial system.
 
Effective immediately, the Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) will budget committed cost sharing at the initial PTA set-up.  If a cost sharing budget is available, please email it to your OSR setup staff member or add the information to the comments section with the Cost-Sharing E-PTA form is completed.  If no budget is available, OSR will budget the cost sharing amount in a lump sum.   In addition to budgeting cost sharing on new and renewal awards, OSR will be working in the coming months with individual departments to create appropriate cost-sharing budgets on existing awards.   
 
Departments will continue to have the same options as before relative to deciding when they will fund the cost-sharing PTA.  Departments may choose whether they wish to provide a funding source(s) at the time of initial PTA setup, during the course of the year, or at the end of each fiscal year.  When a department is ready to fund their cost-sharing, they should provide their OSR accountant with the PTA of the fund source.  OSR will then initiate the transfer journals to fund the cost-sharing PTA.  
 
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact your OSR Accountant, or the OSR Accounting Manager serving your school or lab.    I will also be happy to answer any questions you might have. 

Pamela A. Webb
Senior Director, Sponsored Research
Office of Research Administration
Stanford University
Phone:  (650) 724-6613