Reminder

Compliance protocols MUST be approved and linked in SeRA to a SPO project record prior to award acceptance. 

See ORA's Award Acceptance Resources for additional information.
Stanford
Office of Research Administration

Budgets and Budget Justifications

Proposal budgets and budget justifications are the financial road maps of sponsored projects.  When thoughtfully and strategically built they become an indispensable key to effective post-award management.  Below are templates and resource links to help you build successful budgets and budget justifications. 

Questions?  Concerns? Contact the Client Advocacy & Education team.  We're here to help!

Templates

Budget Template with FY24 Fringe and FY24 IDC Rates (78.88 KB)
  • Effective 9/1/23, the University contribution of tuition allowance granted to non-SoM funded Research Assistants increases to 55%, and 45% will be charged to the source funding on sponsored awards that pay Stanford's full facilities & administrative (F&A) cost rates.
  • Travel Budgeting Note: Individuals can either utilize the detailed domestic and foreign travel tabs to develop line level travel budgets within the budget template or they can enter / "hard code" budget period travel total amounts on the Detailed Budget tab.

Budget Template Demonstration Video

Budget Justification Template

Within the budget and budget justification template an annual cost-of-living increase of 3% is assumed for salaries and a 3% escalation rate is assumed for all other categories except where noted.  These increases have been projected into all years of the budget template and are standard budgeting practice for Stanford sponsored projects.  Users may amend the pre-programmed escalation rate(s) to coincide with current Stanford University Budget Office planning assumptions and/or to reflect recent historical growth in costs.  Please note, the UBO's planning assumptions are used by the University Budget Office for planning purposes only and are subject to change. What may be appropriate at the university level may not be applicable at the school or department levels.

Helpful Links for Common Budget Categories

Personnel Costs

PI Effort

Stanford requires a commitment of effort on the part of the PI on all sponsored projects with the following exceptions. This requirement applies even if a sponsor does not require a commitment of effort on the part of the PI and/or does not allow the direct charging of PI salary. PI effort may be expended during the academic year, summer quarter only, or both. 

Note: If a sponsor does not allow the direct charging of PI salary and the project does not meet one of the 3 below PI effort exceptions, PI effort must be cost shared. 

Stanford tracks and manages effort primarily through direct salary charges to sponsored projects, cost sharing salary charges, or a combination of direct charging and cost sharing.

The requirement of PI effort does not extend to:

  1. Equipment grants
  2. Seed grants for students/postdocs where the faculty mentor is named as PI, dissertation support, training grants, or other awards intended as "student augmentation “
  3. Limited-purpose awards characterized by Stanford as Other Sponsored Activities, including travel grants, conference support, etc.

See DoResearch Faculty Effort Topic page  for more information.

Fringe Benefits

Supplies

Travel

Equipment

California affords partial exemption from sales and use taxes at the rate of 3.9375 percent from January 1, 2017, to June 30, 2022 for research and development equipment purchases.  Qualifying purchases must pay the remaining state tax and local and district taxes.  Thus, the current (FY22) tax rate for research and development equipment purchases is 5.0625% in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

Facilities & Administrative Cost Rates