For Research Administrators and Others Who Provide Support

Note: For info about Act-As access to the PI Dashboard, see the Act-As page.

You may want to check the following to support your faculty to use the PI Dashboard most efficiently.

Load Detailed Budgets for Each Project Account

  • By default, Sponsored Financial Services loads project budgets at the level required to invoice the sponsor. Often this is not very detailed.

  • Faculty may prefer the detailed budget from their award agreement so they can track their spending at a detailed level.

In many cases the department or the Business Service Center Staff can correct this using a budget adjustment eDoc. 

  • By default SFS loads the budget at the level required to invoice the sponsor.

  • Department or Business Service Center staff, depending on the arrangement, can use a Budget Adjustment eDoc to distribute this budget to the detailed budget on the award. Please be sure that the detailed budget does not roll up to something that conflicts with the approved sponsor budget. Specifically:

    • NIH awards modular budgets as direct/indirect line items. The unit can process a Budget Adjustment (BA) eDoc to enter the budget as proposed for the direct costs. This would be a reduction in general expense (direct costs) and budgeting for the line item categories as proposed.

    • Referencing non-modular budgets, units can re-budget to specific object codes within each line item category awarded, but re-budgeting between line item categories shouldn’t occur unless there is an agreement modification. This will ensure that the project will present the budget as awarded and the spending as incurred.

  • This eDoc routes to the account’s Fiscal Officer and SFS for approval and is then posted as part of the nightly batch processing.

Documentation on the Budget Adjustment eDoc may be found at www.dfa.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/fp-budget-adjustment.pdf.

Review / Update Account Managers

In some cases, the Account Manager for a faculty account is set to someone other than the faculty member. Accounts where the faculty member is not the account manager may not be visible to them. 

  • Check in KFS to make sure your faculty member has the account manager role on all accounts they may spend from.

  • See guidelines for who should be the account manager on an account in this DFA procedure.

  • The Account Manager can be changed by your Financial Transaction Center or your department finance staff. They will use Account Global or Account eDoc.

Here is an excerpt from the DFA procedure provides guidelines for who should be the Account Manager on an account.

  • The Account Manager field should contain the Cornell NetID of the individual who is responsible for ensuring that:

    • funds are spent and managed according to the goals, objectives, and mission of the organization;

    • funds are being spent according to a budgeted plan; and

    • the allocation of expenditures is appropriate to the function identified for the account.

  • For research accounts or faculty discretionary accounts, this is the faculty member responsible for the activity.

  • For non-sponsored / non-faculty discretionary accounts, this is the individual who is responsible for financial oversight of the account within and across the organization.

Accessibility

If you have a disability and are having trouble accessing information on this website or need materials in an alternate format, contact rais-help@cornell.edu for assistance.

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