After an award is granted it needs to be set up on the University of Manchester's financial system, Oracle.  This will be done by Research Finance upon being notified of the grant by Research Support.  This step is taken after Research Support have received all the necessary award documentation.

When set up you will be issued with a project account code which must be used in all purchasing, orders, recruitment and travel bookings to ensure that the cost is charged to the correct account.

Please note that where a grant involves partners from other institutions or a sub-contract, this can on some occassions take a little while to set up and is reliant on other organisations completing certain tasks.

See also:

Managing Budgets

It is important that Principal Investigators PIs manage and monitor the current and predicated expenditure on their award(s). The Senior Research Finance Officers and Research Finance Officers in each Hub support them in this task by providing up to date management reports on research grants. Each of them is responsible for a set of live awards.

RSS aim to provide timely reports directly to colleagues throughout the project, and can also generate reports on request. The PI can also access information directly from Project Finance, and are encouraged to review and seek advice or clarification about their budgets and expenditure throughout the project.

See also:

Managing Budgets

Research Finance website

End of Award requirements including financial reporting

At the end of the award, Research Finance will prepare a financial expenditure statement/report for submission to the funder.  The report is used to reconcile the actual expenditure with the payments made and ensure that all spend complied with the funders requirements.

If the financial expenditure statement is not submitted within a specified period at the end of the grant, the funder may recover a proportion of the expenditure incurred on the grant.

Research Finance will prepare the financial statement, but are likely to require input from the PI and SoSS Research Operations team to ensure that funds spent have been allocated to the correct Task Codes and deal with any queries as to what funds have been spent on what items.

The financial statement must be approved by the PI prior to submission.

It is vital that all spending is in full compliance with the funder's General Terms and Conditions as well as any special Terms and Conditions contained within the offer letter.  PIs have overall responsibility for ensuring expenditure on the grant is compliant.  Ineligible expenditure can lead to audit failure, which carries significant reputational and financial risk and can impact on the ability to secure future awards.  The University has prepared a guide to grant eligible costs.