Introduction
This guide was created by TruCentive for University of Chicago administrators who manage multiple studies within a department and need a clear, compliant workflow for setting up projects, configuring them for specific studies, onboarding study team members, initiating funding, and returning any remaining funds at project close. It walks you through the full lifecycle—from first set up to final reconciliation—using the University-approved incentive and disbursement platform (e.g., TruCentive) in alignment with departmental policies, IRB requirements, and institutional financial controls.
What you’ll accomplish
By the end of this guide, you will be able to:
- Set up a department project: establish the project framework, link it to the appropriate funding source (cost center/grant), and apply department defaults (branding, compliance, approvals).
- Configure the project for a specific study: record the study title and identifiers (e.g., IRB/protocol), define budgets and spend caps, choose allowed payment methods, set geographic and tax rules, and enable audit reporting.
- Invite and permission team members: add the PI, study coordinators, finance approvers, and auditors with role-appropriate access and notifications.
- Initiate and manage funding: pre-fund or draw down per policy, request approvals, disburse incentives, track balances in real time, and maintain a complete audit trail.
- Close out and return funds: freeze new disbursements, reconcile activity, export reports for recordkeeping, and transfer any unspent balance back to the original source.
Who should use this guide
- Department administrators and research program managers overseeing multiple studies
- Finance/operations staff responsible for budgets, approvals, and reconciliations
Prerequisites
Before you begin, have the following ready:
- You should have been invited to an account via email
- Examples:
- Medicine – Oncology
- Medicine – General Research (covers all non-Onc Medicine sections)
- Psychiatry
- Neurosurgery
- Examples:
- Funding source information (grant/cost center and spending authority)
- Oracle funding process and limits documentation
- Any required University training or attestations related to payments and PHI
How this guide is organized
The guide starts with an overview for perspective including Navigation, Account Participation, and then follows the project lifecycle in five sections: Create Project → Configure for Study → Invite Members → Initiate & Monitor Funding → Closeout & Return Funds. Each section includes step-by-step instructions, screenshots/tips, required fields, common pitfalls, and compliance checkpoints to ensure your studies run smoothly and meet University standards.
Overview
The overview section is designed to provide a high-level view of a TruCentive account including navigation for account switching, reporting options, and basic functionality.
Navigation
As an account administrator you have access to all studies in your account. You may choose to invite other members to the account, see account participation, and may also have access to other accounts or studies in other accounts if invited.
Home Screen Information Detail
Main menu selection detail
Account Participation
Account participation allows Administrators to invite colleagues to an account to participate with different capabilities depending on their role. Members may be invited using the main menu Account > Members>
Members can be added accounts or projects which will be discussed in the invite project members section.
Roles can be assigned at the account or project level. Account-level roles apply to the entire account and all current/future projects. Project-level roles apply only to the specific projects or studies a user can access. A user with access to multiple studies may hold different roles in each.
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Role Definitions
Administrator - The most powerful role in a Project or Account. At the account level, can manage users that are invited to the account or any project in the account; can examine all Project activity, view message deliveries for any project. Can create/edit/delete any Project in the account. Can perform all operations envelopes. Can access any level of reporting. A Project Administrator can invite others to a project (but not to any other project, or an account). A Project Administrator can view reports, message deliveries, etc. related to the project.
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Access to an account or a user’s role may be changed at any time.
Reporting
TruCentive has three types of reports:
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- Project Reports – Delivery Fees
This report provides details on one or more selected projects including every delivery its sender, recipient, claim status, timing, and financial metrics. The Delivery fee report can be set for a specific date range.
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- Project Reports – Envelope Opens
Envelope Opens is a graphical depiction of payment counts and their status over a time period. Stats include Totals on: Created, Sent, Viewed, and Claimed in counts and percentage.
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- Statements
Statements are detailed accounting of the entire account or a specific project showing all transactions during the selected period including debits, credits and transfers. It is provided in a dual entry accounting format and may be exported to a CSV file.
Study Lifecycle
A study lifecycle consists of five sections: Create Project → Configure for Study → Invite Members → Initiate & Monitor Funding → Closeout & Return Funds
Create Project
Creating a project in TruCentive for University studies is accomplished by using the universities master template rather than using the “create project” menu options.
Jen Regan jregan@bsd.uchicago.edu manages the master template. The master template is the basic format for a new study. It includes suggested best practices for basic setup, payout options (incentives), design, approved IRB wording, and reminders. All the study options can be modified for the specific study.
To add a study to an account:
- Log into the desired account
- Open a second browser tab and go to the following url: https://app.trucentive.com/shared_projects/shared-project-57e81749-967b-4323-a47b-114518a11acc/imports/new
- Click import and the UChicago template will be added to your account in the form of a new project/study.
Once the study has been added it may be modified to meet the specific needs of the new study.
A study doesn’t have to be static; you can update any component at any time. In TruCentive, most content is dynamic, and changes take effect immediately for all current and future recipients. The only exceptions are the format of emails that have already been sent and the contents of an issued delivery “envelope” in TruCentive terms, which do not change. For example, updating a landing page will update what both current and future recipients see.
Configure Study
To configure a study double click on the study to open it or use the action button at the bottom of the study tile. We will walk through the pertinent details of each tab. For the sake of brevity, only configuration options typical for a UChicago study workflow will be covered. For details on other options, please view the TruCentive support documentation by clicking the “?” in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
Overview
By default, when you open a project, you are on the project overview tab. Note that you have the summary statistics and the status of all envelopes sent, viewed, and claimed.
Funds available are the funds available to deliver in the study that are not committed, i.e. delivered and pending the participants’ claim or the expiration. Not shown here is the committed line which provides the amount of funds that are outstanding waiting to be claimed. And finally, spent are claimed payouts.
Settings
Name and Description
The first step in configuring a study is to rename the study and update the description. To maintain consistency the following conventions have been created:
Project Naming:
PI Name_IRB Number_Sponsor_Protocol Number/Study Nickname
Project Description:
Oracle Project Number, Oracle Project Manager, Oracle Project Start and End Dates
Naming Example:
Project Name:
Rosenberg IRB24-1137 Merus MCLA-158-CL02
Project Description:
CRS3000163 Hart, Tiffany 1/17/2025 – 12/31/2100
Test mode
All projects are in test mode to start. This allows users to send samples without using real funds. This is a great way to experiment and refine processes.
Members
The members link allows users to add participants to a project. Typically, an administrator will invite the individual with financial responsibility for the study as an Approver. Additional members may be added to the study as needed. A coordinator is often a requester which requires a project or account admin or a project Approver to approve the delivery requests of the requestor.
Sender
The sender is the name and email address the from: of an email will display. This can be an individual associated with the study or a general mailbox like studies@uchicago.edu. Note that reply’s will go to this mailbox so it should be monitored and included in HIPAA compliant workflows. Once a member accepts their invitation to the project, their email address will be available to be the sender.
Envelope Expiration
The envelope expiration sets the amount of time for a recipient to claim their payment. By default, UChicago has set reminders to 60 days. All deliveries clearly indicate the expiration date and reminders are automated in the study so there should be no concern regarding a patient’s ability to claim their payment. All unclaimed deliveries are expired, and funds are returned to the study on day 61.
Funding Settings
The Allowed Sources must be Dedicated Project Funds Only. This prevents funds from other TruCentive projects to be used for this project.
Project Dates
Project Dates do not need to be set. This limits the time frame of when people can be added to a Project. It can be left open.
Envelope Claimed Notification
This allows you to be notified when someone claims an envelope. Leave this setting as Off.
Gated Deliveries
Leave this setting as Off.
Require Envelope Approvals
Turn this setting to On. This will allow Project Admins to approve delivery of envelopes prior to being sent.
HIPAA Compliance
HIPAA Compliance is turned off by default. HIPAA compliance de-identifies email addresses in the system. If de-identification is desired, it is critical to enter a subject ID as the first or last name of a subject give the email address will be de-identified and there will be no reporting to correlate a delivery with a subject and no way to provide tax reporting.
Warning: If you turn on HIPAA compliance on you can not turn it off. This is in keeping with data integrity models.
Leave this setting as Off.
Classic Envelope Mode
Classic envelope mode allows a subject to choose a single payment method and all merchants or other costs associated with the payment, i.e. PayPal fees, Venmo fees, etc. are born by the university. This is the desired mode for studies. This setting should be On.
Text Scale Size
While the content of emails and landing pages have full html design capabilities, the content provided by merchants, banks, etc. is not. This feature allows you to increase the font size of the information provided for those who may be visually impaired.
When all settings are complete, remember to select Save.
Incentive
The incentive or payout settings let users curate a select set of payout options for each delivery. It is recommended but not required to keep the number to less than ten for optimal claim rates. The selected panel on the right side shows the options selected for the project. A preselected 10 options has been selected as the default options for UChicago studies.
Project Value
Setting the project value lets you set a fixed amount or variable amount to be added at the time the subject payout is added. The variable payout amount lets you set boundaries on payout values.
Design
The design tab allows access to edit the SMS message, email template, and landing page (the page where the recipient claims their payout). By default, SMS is not being used by the university. For a quick tutorial on setting up a project including design visit support: https://trucentivemail.com/Help/knowledge-base/quick-project-set-up-tutorial/
Note that every email has a link that takes the subject to the landing page to claim their payout option. At any time they can go back to their email and click the link to access their payment method of choice.
Subject Line
The subject line of the email should read, “Thank you for participating in the [Study Name] study at the University of Chicago.”
Preheader Text
This is the first line of the email. It can read, “Thank you!”
Deliveries
The deliveries tab has no setup options but provides a detailed overview of all deliveries including who sent, when, who received, when the viewed and claimed as well as what they claimed. This is a great way to understand what is popular with a specific population and can be used in future recruitment.
Envelope Groups
Envelope groups are simply batches or groups of recipients that are sent at the same time. Whether a list load or loading multiple patients at a single time they will be grouped to send. This makes it easy to identify which group were loaded at what time to help avoid potential mistakes.
Reminders
Reminders are set by default in the project template. There is no need to edit reminders unless the amount of time provided to claim was changed or if a different look or cadence is desired.
Automated Events and Integrations
These features are not used in standard university workflows.
Invite Members
Inviting members is accomplished from the Account>Members menu.
Select the project level tab and the click the Invite Project Member button and enter the user’s email, the project you are inviting them to, and set their role. An email will be sent to the invitee and if they already have access to TruCentive they will receive a notification at the top of the screen indicating that they have been invited to the project where they can choose to accept or not.
Initiate Funding
To initiate funding an invoice request may be made from the main menu Billing>Invoice Request. Fill out the invoice request and include the desired recipients. Note it is important to put the study or project id in the note box on the invoice request. The project ID can be copied from the project on any tab under actions drop down on the upper right hand side of the project.
Request Invoice
Choose the appropriate project as the Funding Source. Leave the PO Number box empty. The Payment Method is ACH.
Use the TruCentive Calculator to determine the appropriate amount.
The invoice email delivery address should be the individual who will submit the Oracle Payment Request.
Add the Project ID to the Notes section.
Please note that it can take a few hours for the invoice to be emailed.
Add Recipients
Either add recipients manually or select CSV Bulk Upload to add a recipient list. Every recipient, either added manually or though the bulk upload, must have an email address and amount.
When recipients are added, it will create an envelope group. This allows to easily group together recipients who received their communication at the same time.
If a recipient is receiving another incentive, you should follow the same process to add them again as a recipient.
Closeout & Return Funds
At the end of a study, it is likely that funds will be left over due to returned unclaimed funds. Under the main menu Billing>Overview the display of available fund and the return funds button is viewable.
Select Return Funds and the dialog below will allow you to select the project and the amount you would like returned. Funds are removed instantly and transferred back to the university Treasury department with the corresponding study ID which allows funds to be returned to the appropriate funding source.
To ensure a smooth process for returning TruCentive funds to the University, please adhere to the following steps:
- Initiate the return request in the TruCentive portal demonstrated above.
- Send an email to Central A/R at accountsreceivable@uchicago.edu with the below information:
- Email Subject Line: “TruCentive Funds Return”
- Date of the return
- Exact return amount
- Complete 41-digit Chart of Accounts string to which the funds should be allocated
- After you receive a receipt for the return from Central A/R, your team is responsible for recording the entry in Oracle and assigning the funds to the appropriate Project.
By following these steps, you can ensure that the returned funds are processed efficiently.
You can email accountsreceivable@uchicago.edu with questions.
Support
For questions or comments please reach out to our support team:
- 415-386-8600 Ext 2
- Support Email: support@trucentive.com
- Help Center / Documentation: https://trucentivemail.com/Help/?
- Login Portal: https://app.trucentive.com/users/sign_in