ECRT Training for Principal Investigators

1. ECRT Training forPrincipal Investigators Jorge Rafael ManzanoTime and Effort CoordinatorOffice of Sponsored Programs Tuesday, April 14, 2009

2. Purpose The purpose of this course is to familiarize faculty and their administrative support staff with the University’s new effort reporting system, in order to comply with Federal regulations and UTSA policies and procedures that govern effort on sponsored projects. It includes a hands-on training session following this presentation.

3. Goals • Explain the requirements for effort reporting and certification • Provide guidance on effort reporting and certification using UTSA’s effort reporting tool, ECRT • Walk through effort reporting training scenarios (hands-on lab section)

4. Outline • Effort Reporting Overview (why are we doing this?) • Responsibilities of the Principal Investigator • ECRT Timeframes • ECRT Access and Navigation • Certifying Your Effort in ECRT • Certifying Support Staff in ECRT • Monitoring Effort Using ECRT Reports (for the future)

5. Effort Reporting Overview

6. Why do we report effort? OMB Circular A-21, Section J.10 (Compensation for Personal Services) • Effort reporting requirements • After-the-fact confirmation of personnel costs charged to sponsored agreements • The system must be incorporated into the official records of the institution • Certification which encompasses all employee activities on an integrated basis (i.e. 100% effort) • Certification by an individual with suitable means of verification that the work was performed • Independent internal evaluations to ensure the system’s effectiveness and compliance

7. How often do we report effort? OMB Circular A-21, Section J.10 (Compensation for Personal Services) • Timing requirements • Annually (plan-confirmation system) • Each academic term (after-the-fact activity records - PIs and professional staff), or • Monthly (after-the-fact activity records - all other employees)

8. How do we report effort? OMB Circular A-21, Section J.10 (Compensation for Personal Services) • Reliability and Reasonableness • “…it is recognized that research, service and administration are inextricably intermingled. A precise assessment of factors that contribute to costs is not always feasible, nor is it expected. Reliance, therefore, is placed on estimates in which a degree of tolerance is appropriate.”

9. Who certifies effort? It is the responsibility of every Principal Investigator/Project Director to certify their own effort and the effort of all persons working on their sponsored programs, as they have the best firsthand knowledge of their sponsored programs.

10. Really. Who said so? • “Specifically, PIs have primary responsibility for all aspects of the sponsored projects including approval of all charges and ensuring that the research is conducted in accordance with the award terms and conditions.” (NSF Audit of Payroll Distribution System, Cal Tech, OIG 07-01-013)

11. We certify effort and salaries? • No, effort certification is not a verification of the accuracy of the payroll system. • Should changes be made to the amount of committed effort associated with an activity during the effort certification process, a corresponding change to the payroll system will also need to be made.

12. How is effort related to salaries? • The salaries paid by UTSA to its employees working on Federal grants are generally charged or allocated to those grants on the basis of effort expended • For example, if 33.3% of an employee’s total effort is expended on a Federal grant, then up to 33.3% of the employee’s salary is chargeable to that grant • A certified effort report confirms that charges are reasonable in relation to the work performed

13. Responsibilities of the Principal Investigator

14. Responsibilities of the Principal Investigator Who: • Those who are considered “Principal Investigators” (PIs), “Primary Individuals,” or “Project Directors” (PDs) on sponsored projects – may be faculty or staff. Effort Responsibilities: • Monitor and certify own effort • Monitor and certify the effort of their support staff. ECRT Tasks: • Notify Time and Effort Coordinator any time there is a significant and long term change in workload due to new or expiring grants, additional non-sponsored responsibilities (committee assignments, departmental leadership roles, additional teaching load, etc.), or other changes in sponsored effort.

15. PI ECRT Tasks Tasks to be performed twice a year (during the certification period): • Review and Certify Your Effort Card • Review and Certify Effort Cards for Your Support Staff (“Group View”) • Continue communication (initiated by OSP/Time and Effort Coordinator) if Effort Cards require further action items (e.g., cost transfers, corrections, re-certification).

16. PI ECRT Tasks Tasks to be performed throughout the year: • Review own Effort and Effort for your support staff • Promptly report and regularly communicate with departments and OSP/Time and Effort Coordinator to ensure that salary is charged correctly • Promptly inform Time and Effort Coordinator if card does not accurately reflect all activities • For PIs and project directors, contact OSP/Time and Effort Coordinator if actual effort will be significantly reduced (i.e. 25% or more) from effort committed in proposal • Work with Time and Effort Coordinator to verify accuracy of cost sharing information reflected on Effort Card

17. ECRT Timeframes

18. ECRT Activities Schedule

19. ECRT Access and Navigation

20. ECRT Navigation – Login Screens To enter the ECRT system, please go to the T/E section of the OSP website.

21. ECRT Navigation – Login Screens Since the ECRT system is Shibboleth-enabled, this login page will be displayed. Make sure to select our university.

22. ECRT Navigation – Login Screens Enter your network login (abc123) and password to log in.

23. ECRT Navigation – Login Screens Check for important information here Check this area for useful links to reference guides, videos and external links Click here to enter ECRT

24. Certification – Certifier Actions Certifiers have a limited number of links on the Welcome screen when logged into ECRT. In general, they can certify their effort and the effort of research assistants that work for them. They can also see reports related to their projects. Start the effort certification process by clicking on the link to Certify My Effort.

25. Certifying Your Effort

26. Certifying Your Effort • The Certification Payroll report link will show the dollars paid the researcher and how the percentages on this screen were calculated. The certifier is brought to the Effort Certification screen. The screen must be reviewed by the certifier and then approved to move to the “certification statement”. The Sponsored activity appears in the top part of the card and the Non Sponsored activity appears in the bottom part of the card. There are subtotals for each award as well as the Sponsored and Non Sponsored areas. • The top of the effort card shows basic information for the faculty member (name, department, office location, etc.) • Click here if you want to download a PDF version of your effort card. • Check the view period to make sure you are looking at the right six-month certification period. • Sponsored information will appear at the top of the effort card. • Non-sponsored information will appear at the bottom of the effort card.

27. Certifying Your Effort This is the bottom of the certification screen. The total may add to more than 100% because of rounding. This will have no adverse effect on the certification process or statement. The text box at the bottom allows certifiers to enter comments and notes.

28. Certifying Your Effort The effort card will compute effort for the six-month certification period based on the following formula: PAYROLL (PAID EFFORT) + COST SHARED EFFORT = COMPUTED EFFORT During the six month reporting period and/or the pre-review period prior to certification, faculty will be encouraged to monitor their effort and notify OSP of any adjustments if necessary. The Cost Share section columns shows your CONTRIBUTED EFFORT  if your effort on sponsored activities that was indirectly charged or cost-shared, the percentages shown in the sponsored section would be positive, and the corresponding percentages in the non-sponsored section would be negative. The Payroll section columns shows your PAID EFFORT  your effort on these activities that was directly charged. For sponsored activities, your effort is charged to the grant accounts. For non-sponsored activities, your department or institutional accounts are charged. NOTE: The revised columns allow for on-the-fly updates should the information in the Payroll and Cost Share columns need adjusting. OSP will follow up on any revisions (that may need cost transfers, for instance) before final certification processing.

29. Certifying Your Effort • To complete an effort certification, a PI will enter percentages of effort for each of his/her listed activities, both sponsored and non-sponsored. • A PI enters the percentage of effort in the CERTIFIED EFFORT column, based on the information at his/her disposal as s/he has the best first-hand knowledge and suitable means to verify his/her effort: • Computed Effort • Revisions • Additional info • When all effort has been accounted for, the researcher clicks the “Certify” button below the totals. NOTE: The certifier will see an error message if the total certified effort is either less than or greater than 100%.

30. Certifying Your Effort The PI is then presented with a certification message reminding them what they certifying to. After a final review of the information on the page and the certification statement at the top, the certifier will click the “I Agree” button under the message. After this, the user is returned to the Home Page. The effort card is sent on to the EC for processing, along with any entered notes.

31. For more information… Check out the “How to Certify Your Effort” Reference Guide, available in the “Resources” section of the OSP T/E website: http://vpr.utsa.edu/osp/te

32. Certifying for Your Support Staff

33. Certifying for Your Support Staff All PI’s also have the responsibility of certifying the effort of any non-certifiers (a.k.a. “Support Staff”) working on their awards. In this process, the PI should select “Certify My Support Staff – Group View,” which will display one continuous effort card for all support staff associated with their sponsored projects.

34. Certifying for Your Support Staff You will see the ‘Certify My Support Staff –Group View’ page. This page displays all of your support staff that work on your projects. You will certify each person’s effort on your awards since you are the Principal Investigator. This page displays 10 researchers effort cards at a time. If you have more than 10 researchers, they will be shown on additional pages. You also have the option to view an individual’s effort card in full view by selecting ‘View Effort Card’ from the top right corner .

35. The effort statement at the top shows one grayed out account. You will also see this statement: You cannot certify this portion of your staff’s effort, but you can certify your staff’s effort on your project. You can mouse over the grayed out account name to get the other PI’s contact info if you would like to coordinate with them. Certifying for Your Support Staff In Certify My Researchers-Group View, you are only able to certify for accounts for which you are listed as the PI. Accounts that are grayed out signal that the support staff also works on another PI’s sponsored project, and that PI will certify to that portion of the staff’s effort. There is an indication at the bottom of each effort card that states whether multiple PI’s are associated to this researcher or whether you are the only PI that must certify. The effort statement at the bottom shows that the support staff works solely on your sponsored projects. You will see this statement:

36. Certifying for Your Support Staff Enter whole numbers in the ‘Certified’ column for each researcher you would like to certify at this time and mark the certified checkbox. Only researchers whose checkboxes are marked will be certified. You do not need to certify every researcher on this page at one time.   If you are ready to complete the certification, select ‘Certify All’. Then select ‘OK’ to the confirmation pop-up message. After selecting ‘OK’, you will return to the ‘Certify My Researchers-Group View’ page. If you have additional researchers to certify, they will be displayed on screen. If you have completed all of your researchers’ certifications, it will indicate that you have no researchers to certify at this time.

37. For more information… Check out the “How to Certify Effort for Your Support Staff” Reference Guide, available in the “Resources” section of the OSP T/E website: http://vpr.utsa.edu/osp/te

38. Monitoring Effort Using ECRT Reports

39. Certification Payroll Report The Certification Payroll Report shows the payroll transactions for an individual within a specific date range. The user will set the following parameters: Date By: Employee Type; select ‘Annual’ from Employee Type drop down; select the appropriate period from the drop down; enter an employee’s name and then select ‘Run Report’.

40. Certification Payroll Report The CPR report is generated in HTML format. In this example, we ran the report for a researcher for the first semiannual certification period. The Default format sorts the transactions by account. It displays the account name and shows the amounts charged to each account per period, the total amount charged to each account during the period, and the percentage of the total amount charged for each account.

41. Certification Payroll Report The Alternate format sorts the transactions by pay period. It shows subtotals for each pay period and the certification period. It is useful for reconciling ECRT payroll with the DEFINE/Payroll system reports. The report is generated in HTML format but can be exported to several other formats, including Excel and PDF.

42. Certifier Salary Activity Report The Certifier Salary Activity Report shows all of the salary activity for a PI’s project staff for a given 12-month period. This report can be used to monitor the activity of the research staff over the course of the year. To run the report, the user will enter the start month and year and the name of the PI.

43. Certifier Salary Activity Report The report displays the salary charges for the selected 12-month period by person for each researcher associated with the PI. The table is a fixed size, but can be scrolled to see additional information. The highlighted accounts are the PI’s accounts.

44. For more information… • Check out our new website: http://vpr.utsa.edu/osp/teNew documentation and training materials will be added in the coming weeks • Watch for training sessions offered through UTSA/HR • Schedule an effort workshop for your department