Research grants are governed primarily by the reporting requirements of the funder, not necessarily accounting periods (months). However, there are certain tasks that require action at the month end close.

It is important that grant holders are made aware of their responsibilities regarding the monthly reports. This includes ensuring expenditure has been correctly coded, aligns with the funder’s terms and conditions and that all goods and services have been provided (evidence retained).

Review of manual journals

Institutions are requested to ensure that the posting of manual journals have the required segregated duty review.  We recommend maintaining a journals log detailing the preparer, approver and the rationale for each journal. Supporting evidence is required to be retained for each journal, this is useful for query resolution or providing evidence to audit.

Grants checklist

• Clear your suspense grant to zero, when possible, by moving expenditure to the correct grant.
• Review and clear funds check failures.
• Release or clear unposted journals.
• Review and update payroll grants coding to payroll.
• Correct VAT errors as advised by the Tax Team [1].
• Check the status of all grants and, where necessary, contact Research Office to take appropriate action.
• Distribute relevant reports to grant holders, highlighting any areas that require their consideration.

The following reports give PIs an overview of their grants:

• Cognos Project/Award Status Report. This has a selection by PI field. It breaks the expenditure down by task, expenditure category and type.
• Cognos Grants: Listing and Budget V Actual Report. This shows a breakdown at expenditure category and task level and can be run for multiple or individual PIs.

For information at a transactional level, use the Cognos Grants Expenditure Enquiry Report. For detailed guidance on Cognos Grants reports, refer to the Finance Training webpage [2].

Latest version 21 December 2024