Project Monitoring
Regular Monitoring of Expenditures
Reconciling accounts on a regular basis will help you to manage your sponsored funds to ensure that expenditures and revenues are within appropriate limits and guidelines. More information on limits and guidelines can be found on the appropriate sponsor websites and in the OMB A-21 Circular. Regular monitoring of your sponsored accounts helps to:
- Ascertain that revenues have been received.
- Confirm the availability of project funds as needed.
- Ensure that costs are consistent with the project schedule and incurred between the start and stop dates of the project.
- Discover any errors in your budget (for more information on budgeting and budget reporting,
- Avoid overspending, which may cause a deficit and limit further spending.
- Give your Principal Investigator a high degree of confidence that the project is in compliance with the sponsor's spending terms and conditions.
- Verify that cost transfers and corrections have been made or are made in a timely manner.
- Ensure any committed cost sharing has been fulfilled
- Maintain a clear audit trail for the future.
Do not wait until a problem is brought to your attention or until a project has terminated before reconciling an account.
The longer an error remains uncorrected, the harder it is to show that allowability and allocability are in compliance.
Grant Terms and Conditions
Federal Sponsor Sites - Guidelines and Forms
Certain of our sponsors have specific reporting requirements. Below are the links to our major federal sponsor sites where specific reporting requirements are typically required.
Department of Health and Human Services
National Institutes of Health
The home page of the National Institutes of Health includes these major headings: Health Information, News and Events, Scientific Resources, Institutes, Centers and Offices, About NIH, and Grants and Funding Opportunities:
- Grants news
- Applications
- Grants policy
- NIH Guide
- Award data
- Research training
- Research contracts
- CRISP database
NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts
The NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts is the official publication of NIH policies, procedures, and availability of funds.
Program Announcement (PA) announces increased priority and/or emphasizes particular funding mechanisms for a specific area of science. Applications are accepted on the standard NIH dates.
Request for Applications (RFA) identifies a more narrowly defined area for which one or more NIH institutes have set aside funds for awarding grants; receipt date is specified in the RFA.
Notices: Policy Updates and Request For Proposals (RFP)
NIH Grants Policy Statement
Provides notices and grants policy statements indicating changes and revisions to NIH policies.
National Science Foundation
Department of Defense
Department of Education Home page, with links to Grants and Contracts, including information on funding.
Department of Energy Office of Science Grant solicitation notices, grant application guides and forms.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Endowment for the Humanities Apply for a grant Guidelines, application materials, grant programs offered, and deadlines for specific programs.
No-Cost Time Extensions
Programmatic reasons may require the period of performance of a grant or contract to be extended with no additional funding from the sponsor. This action is called a No-Cost Time Extension. These time extensions must be REQUESTED of the sponsor. They do not happen automatically!
Make Request 30 days in Advance
The following federal sponsors have given authority to Stanford to approve one-time no-cost extensions.
- Army Research Office
- National Science Foundation
- National Institutes of Health
- NASA
- USDA
- Department of Energy
Requests for extensions to these particular sponsors should be directed 30 days in advance in writing to the Office of Sponsored Research (OSR), or to your RPM (Medicine) or Research Administrator (Engineering). They will handle the subsequent notification to the sponsor. |
MAJOR TOPICS 
