Procedure for Residual Balance Transfer on Fixed Price Sponsored Awards

Scope

The University’s mission is not to make profits from research projects, but to ensure consistency in estimating, reporting, and recording costs across all sponsored projects. When the University negotiates a fixed price contract with a sponsor, the costs for the project are based on true estimation of Principal Investigator (PI) and other personnel’s salary and fringe, supplies, travel, core lab usage, patient care and other costs. Thus, if costs are charged to a fixed price contract, there will be minimal unspent balance available for transferring out to PI and/or departmental accounts.

This procedure defines the process for the handling of residual balances on fixed price sponsored program awards.

Definitions

Residual balances are any remaining cash balances on fixed price or fixed rate sponsored awards that remain with the University and are not returned to the sponsors.

Note: Regular state restrictions on expenditures apply to unrestricted residual funds.

Responsibility

The PI is responsible for:

Completing and certifying the request to transfer residual cash balances from fixed price contracts with assistance from departmental Grant Managers.
Following all applicable University policies and procedures for fiscal management of the transferred funds.

By certifying the request, the PI is attesting that all fiscal and programmatic obligations to the sponsor for the sponsored award have been met.

Grant Managers are responsible for:

Ensuring that all costs related to the sponsored award have been posted, obligations are cleared, and sponsor deliverables are met.

School/Departmental Administrators are responsible for:

Reviewing and endorsing the information included the Residual Balance Transfer form.
Following all University policies and procedures for management of residual funds.
Reviewing deficits on residual awards and taking corrective action to address overdrafts by the department.

OSP is responsible for:

Confirming all costs for the sponsored award have been posted.
Processing residual balance transfer requests.

Procedure

Fixed price sponsored programs are subject to institutional review and reconciliation processes, including monthly expenditure reconciliation and semiannual salary distribution review via the Payroll Allocation Confirmation process.

Once all expenditures are charged to the fixed price sponsored award and full payment is received from the sponsor, a Residual Balance Transfer form (see Post-Award page) must be submitted to OSP as an attachment to the Award Modification Request (AMR) submitted via ResearchUVA PBH (RUVA). Residual balances less than $200 will be transferred to the OSP closeout account, and the award will be closed out by OSP Post Award.

By certifying the Residual Balance Transfer form, the PI confirms completion of all fiscal and programmatic obligations to the project and to the sponsor.

OSP Post Award reviews the form to ensure the information provided is reconciled with University records and certified by appropriate personnel. When a non-sponsored worktag to receive the residual balances is not already created in the financial system for a particular PI, the requestor must work with UVA Finance to set up the worktag before submitting the AMR for the residual transfer.

Residual balances from a fixed price sponsored award include unspent amounts from the direct cost categories and associated Facilities and Administration (F&A) costs. While the balances in the direct cost categories are transferred in their entirety as an expenditure credit (i.e., Residual Transfer) to the PI’s non-sponsored worktag, the balance in the F&A is not transferred in total to the PI. Instead, OSP calculates a fee based on the F&A rate applied to the award, using the total direct cost base, and distributes this amount to the Dean’s Office (25%), Department/Unit (25%) and OSP (50%). In cases where the award is set up with no F&A or F&A less than 10%, a minimum 10% fee based on Total Direct Cost (TDC) will be assessed.

Departmental Administrators are responsible for reviewing expenditures booked on the non-sponsored worktags to ensure they are compliant with state funding rules and take immediate actions to address any overdrafts on these worktags which should always remain in a positive cash position. Departments are responsible for closing out the non-sponsored worktags as appropriate.

Ownership

The Executive Director of the Office of Sponsored Programs is responsible for ensuring that this procedure is necessary, reflects actual practice, and supports University policy.