The following guide is intended for all stake holders of Sponsored Awards Process, including the Grants Account Receivables Specialist and Grants Award Administrator.  This Quick Reference Guide (QRG) includes the following processes:

• Award Closeout processes
• Generate the Final Invoice
• Small Balance Write-offs (Debit or Credit Balance)
• Update Project Status to Closed
• Update Contract Status to Closed

 

Award: An award is the umbrella record that contains comprehensive demographic and financial information for a sponsored research agreement.

Award Funding: The total anticipated funding, direct and indirect costs, per Funding Source for an award.

Award Personnel: The key members associated with an award.

Billing Events: Fixed fee monetary amounts used for billing in lieu of invoicing costs incurred.

Burdening: The process of calculating indirect expense.

Contract: A record incorporating the necessary billing attributes and revenue attributes for the generation of invoices and revenue recognition to occur for an award.

Expenditure Item: A cost transaction that includes POETAF attributes along with a transaction date and other attributes.

Funding Allocation: The proportion of total anticipated funding dedicated to a project.

Funding Sources: Funding Sources refer to the organizations or entities that provide the financial resources for a specific project(s) in an award.

Invoice Method: Billing attributes associated with one or more contract lines on a contract and used to generate sponsor invoices for the contract.

Letter of Credit (LOC): A payment method whereby the research institution is authorized to draw government funds in lieu of sending an invoice.

POETAF: POETAF is an acronym that represents the most granular level of detail of a project. It is a combination of project segments that describe an expenditure item, including Project, Expenditure Organization, Expenditure Type, Task, Award, and Funding Source.

Principal Investigator: The person leading and managing the research agreement.

Project: A primary unit of work that can be broken down into one or more tasks containing demographic and financial information at a more detailed level than an award. Multiple projects may exist to differentiate among funding years, departments, PIs, physical locations, F&A rates, or purposes such as capitalizable & non-capitalizable.

Project Budget: An estimate of planned expenses.

Revenue Method: Revenue attributes associated with one or more contract lines on a contract and used to generate revenue entries for the contract.

Revenue Recognition: The process that creates revenue entries for a contract.

Sponsor: A sponsor is an organization that provides funding for a sponsored research agreement.

Task: The lowest level of a project used to organize project work into smaller, more easily manageable/reportable, units of work such as subawards and participant support.

URA has confirmed with the Award’s department research administrator and/or PI that all transactions have posted to the award.

Below is a checklist of common Award Closeout activities that occur primarily within Oracle. Most of the processes are documented in other training materials, but they are included here as a reminder. (Note: Scenarios documented in this guide include a hyperlink to the section, in this document, that documents that process):

• Budget: Confirm that Oracle Budget total matches NGA. Adjust if necessary.
• Review Expenses: Review expenses to confirm they are allowable and fall within project dates. Trailing expenses should be adequately documented. As required, process Cost Corrections in Oracle for non-salary expense and Payroll Transfers in Workday for salary.
• Subcontracts: Confirm that final invoices are received and paid for all subcontracts on the award. Process PO reduction if not all encumbered funds will be spent.
• Non-salary encumbrances: Determine whether supplier invoices are outstanding. If yes, request or process invoice. If no, process PO reduction.
• Expense reports: Confirm that all expense reports are submitted, approved and paid.
• Balance > 0: If underspent, confirm whether there are outstanding expenditure items and process them.
• Balance < 0: If overspent, perform cost corrections to remove overdraft.
• F&A check: Confirm that F&A has been properly assessed. Process corrections for any discrepancies.
• Cost Share: Ensure that cost share expenses match award requirements. Process corrections if required.
• Program Income: Ensure that Program Income has been properly recorded.
• Interest: Ensure that Interest has been properly recorded. If applicable, return interest to Sponsor via AP transaction.
• Final Invoice Generation.
• Cash Balance > 0 (amount paid by sponsor exceeds final expenses): For cost reimbursable awards, initiate refund to sponsor.
  For fixed price awards, process transaction to transfer unexpended funds to non-sponsored "accounts" per UChicago policy.
• Confirm that Expense, Revenue and Invoiced amount match: Resolve any discrepancies via appropriate process above.
• Process Small AR Balance Write-offs.
• Final Financial Report: Prepare, gather approvals, and submit final Financial Report to sponsor.
• Budget: Reduce project budgets to final expenditure amounts.
• Change Project Status to Closed in PPM if all transactions have been processed and encumbrances cleared.
• Change Contract Status to Closed.

 

1. Login using Company Single Sign-On to access your Oracle account.

  

2. Navigate to Contract Management.
3. Select Invoices.

4. Select the Taskbar.
5. Select Generate Invoices.

6. Populate the invoicing process parameters as follows (and accept all other default values):
   • Business Unit: University Sponsored Awards
   • Bill Through Date: Current Date
   • Invoice Date: Current date
   • LOC Processing Option: only non-LOC
   • Contract Number: As applicable
   • Delete Approved and Approval Rejected Invoices: No
   • WARNING: Leaving the Contract Number blank will generate invoices for ALL contracts through the Bill-Through date.

7. Scroll up to the top and select Submit.
8. Select OK.

9. From the Overview screen. Select the Taskbar.
10. Select Manage Invoices.

11. Enter the Business Unit: University Sponsored Awards.
12. Enter the Contract Number associated with the invoice.
13. Select Search.
14. Select the desired invoice by selecting the Invoice Number hyperlink.

15. Under the Invoice Header section select Show More.

16. Select the icon next to the Additional Information field.
17. Select Final Invoice as Yes from the dropdown.
18. Select Save and Close.

19. On the Edit Invoice page select Submit.

Pending development: Final invoices will route for approval to a group of URA Billing Approvers. Once approved, the invoices will be integrated to the Accounts Receivable module during batch processing.

You have now completed the process to Generate the Final Invoice.

 

This scenario only applies when the University invoiced the sponsor, they over- or underpaid the invoice, and the University won’t collect the unpaid amount or return the overpayment. (An Invoice/Transaction that has a small positive or negative balance will already exist in Receivables.)

1. Login using Company Single Sign-On to access your Oracle account.

2. Navigate to Receivables.
3. Select Billing.

4. Select the Taskbar.
5. Select Manage Transaction.

6. Enter the Transaction Number.
7. Select Search.
8. From the Search Results select the Transaction Number hyperlink.

9. Select the Actions dropdown.
10. Select Manage Adjustments.

11. On the Manage Adjustments page, select Actions dropdown.
12. Select Create.

13. Enter the following information:
    • Receivables Activity: UC AR Adjustment,
    • Adjustment Type: Invoice Adjustments
    • Adjustment Amount: (auto-populated)
    • Adjustment Reason: Write-off
    • The remaining fields should be auto-populated.
14. Select Submit.

15. Select OK.

16. Select Done.

17. From the Save dropdown select Save and Close.

 

You have now completed the Small Balance Write-offs (Debit or Credit Balance) process.

 

Use this scenario after confirming that all cost transactions or corrections have been processed, burdening and revenue recognition run, encumbrances cleared, and the final invoice created.

1. Login using Company Single Sign-On to access your Oracle account.

2. Navigate to Projects.
3. Select Project Financial Management.

4. Select the chevron next to Search to expand the menu.
5. Enter the Project Name or Number you wish to close.
   • Note: depending on your search preferences you may need to clear your name out of the Team Member field and update the Project Status field to search for All statuses.
6. Select Search.

7. Select the Project Name or Number hyperlink from the Search Results.

8. Select the Taskbar.
9. Select Manage Financial Project Settings.

10. Select Change Status.

11. In the pop-up window, change the status To Closed from the dropdown.
    • Note: Add Comments if needed.
12. Select Save and Close.

13. Review the page to ensure the date is updated successfully.
    • Note: Depending on budgetary control settings, you may have to re-baseline the budget for it to accept the date changes.

You have now completed the Update Project Status to Closed process.

 

Use this scenario after confirming that all for all projects on the contract: cost transactions or corrections have been processed, burdening and revenue recognition run, and encumbrances cleared, and the final invoice created.

 

1. Navigate to Contract Management.
2. Select Contracts.

3. Enter the Contract Number.
4. Select Search.
5. Select the Contract Name or Number hyperlink from the search results.

6. Select the Actions dropdown.
7. Select Close.

8. Select a Reason from the dropdown.
9. Select Save and Close.

 

You have now completed the Update Contract Status to Closed process.