Grants (post-award)

Upon receipt of awards which hold budgets for subcontractors or partners the JRO Contracts teams must be informed immediately to negotiate and create the relevant agreement.

JRO Grants teams can activate funding for a project once notification of the award has been received, and associated research funding contracts have been signed. JRO Grants teams set up the new project on ICIS.

JRO Grants handles the administration of the account during the life of the project.

• Golden Rules (post-award)
• Managing accounts
• Research assurance and audits

There are most commonly 4 types of HR forms which will be sent from the depts to the JRO for review and approved within the parameters of the award/project before being submitted by the Dept to HR for processing (excluding HR18 forms which are processed in the JRO via Labour Distribution - please see opposite in how to complete HR18s correctly)

Please click on ‌ to access and understand the different types.

To ensure ample time is given throughout the process by all parties involved, please follow the attached HR Forms Timetable PDF guidance.  Submission of HR Forms to the JRO by 15th of each month will help with this.

Please ensure all HR18s are completed properly for GL codes and POETA codes using the correct cells as indicated in the examples below:

‌HR18 Template - Example 1
HR18 Template - Example 2

Departmental administrators raise POs. 

Raising Purchase Orders

Purchase Orders for research partner collaboration agreements and sub-contract agreements on P-codes, will be rasied by the JRO Grants Team.  These are agreements which have been negotiated and executed by the JRO Contracts team.

Raising Purchase Orders for Subcontracts and Partners (pdf) within the Faculty of Medicine.

In all instances, please follow the Timesheet Guidance on the Research Office webpage.

Each month Department Admin will receive a Timesheets Due Report, as part of the Post Award Management (PAM) reports, which lists all funders who require timesheets completed.

Timesheets should be collated and sent to the JRO on a monthly basis (or at least a quarterly basis as minimum), as indicated by the guidance in the attached Timesheets Due Report.

To ensure the timesheets are completed correctly first time, please use the Timesheets Checklist (pdf) to minimise errors.

Please also view the list of Timesheet Common Errors (pdf)‌‌ received in the JRO. 

Incorrect timesheets will be returned to the department to correct and resubmit.  Please be aware of funder reporting deadlines as timesheets not submitted in time will not have staff costs claimed, which will affect department, faculty and college cashflow.

Where to send your timesheets in Faculty of Medicine

Please send all timesheets for each funder who requires them to fomtimesheets@imperial.ac.uk

Funder requirements

Please be reminded it is the funders who have applied these rules for timesheets as an auditable trail, not the College or Research Offices. 

The timesheet methodology applied to these projects is the most sustainable and risk-averse way of recording time, which will correctly charge costs to each individual project.  Therefore, failure to complete timesheets may result in the department having to cover these costs if not submitted or disallowed by the funder.

OID – Organisational Information Document
mNCA – Model Agreement for Non-Commercial Research

The Organisation Information Document is a document that provides information on participating NHS/HSC organisations in the UK. It is required as part of the UK Local Information Pack for both commercial and non-commercial research. An outline Organisational Information Document for each site type should be completed as part of your submission.

All college sponsored studies funded by a non-commercial organisation with NHS Trust costs will require a SoECAT and Organisational Information Document (OID).

For SoECAT (Schedule of Events Cost Attribution Template) – click link.

For guidance on the above and the ICHT Funding Letter / Other Trusts Funding Letter, please follow the guidance below in this order:

1. College-Sponsored Trust Emp. - Scenarios (OID, mNCA, Trust Funding Letter).pdf
2. OID and mNCA Contracts Flowchart.pdf
3. OID and mNCA Process Guidance.pdf
4. Process Map for OID and mNCA.pdf
5. ICHT Funding Letter TEMPLATE.docx
6. Other Trust Funding Letter TEMPLATE.docx

All OIDs, mNCAs and Trust funding letters must include the name and email address of the dept contact and to be sent to the ICHT mailboxes below, and must be accompanied by a Purchase Order which matches the document.  

Divisional Research Managers in Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust can be found by clicking on Clinical Divisions.

Trust JRO can be contacted via imperial.admin_trustresearchcontracts@nhs.net

Trust JRO Finance Team can be contacted via imperial.jroinvoices@nhs.net

Dashboard reporting uses Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) also known as Imperial College Analytics (ICA).

They give detailed information on awards, projects and proposals per faculty. Amongst other things they provide an easy-to-use tool to monitor expenditure against budgets.

List of Projects tab - Transaction Lists can be downloaded from the “List of Projects” report by searching for the Project Number; click on the Project Number in the returned data below and select “Project Transaction Detail”.  In the next window, click on Project Number and select “Transaction detail – line by line”.  

Exception Reports tab - There are 6 exception reports in this area each monitoring spend for a particular category -

• RCUK Starting Report
• Equipment Budget with no equipment spend
• Equipment Budget greater than £25k spend is less than £20k
• Project >3 months old with staff and/or bursary budget but no spend
• Project end date within 9 months
• Projects not closed after actual end date

Balance Management Report tab - This report shows project budgets, expenditure, commitments and remaining balance in conjunction with the remaining number of months.

Other reports are available in the drop down selections such as “Project Summary”; “Potentially Ineligible Spend”; “%Credit Project” and “Commitment Detail”.

Commitments at Final Claim (pdf) - The general rule of thumb is not to claim commitments, as claiming commitments which do not materialise is fraudulent, especially if income is received based on actual expenditure. Please view the process.

Clearing Commitments on the Legacy of Awards

Process

1. JRO will download the project & award commitments and send a spreadsheet to section admin to ask them to CANCEL the PO and/or requisition, or move to a related research project or dept code.
2. Section Admin to cancel the POs and/or requisitions which they can from this list – please refer to Purchase Order Maintenance (click “5 more child pages” for Cancelling a whole or lines of a purchase order).
3. For the older commitments which are unable to be cancelled, Section Admin should forward to Systems Accounting explaining which cannot be cancelled, cc-ing respective JRO team member who sent the request and who will then take forward for resolution.
   * Alternatively reply to the JRO team member who will take forward with Systems Accounting.
4. Systems Accounting will cancel POs and inform respective JRO administrator the PO has now been closed - the commitments will now show as zero on the award/project.
5. JRO will balance and close account – as per closing account procedure in the Operations Manual.

N.B. Commitments on old D cost centres no longer need to be cleared.

To close an award on ICIS, the Budget = Revenue = Expenditure = Income received. Also = GL List of Balances.

Before you start this process, the following must be adhered to:

• The project has finished
• All costs have been posted
• The funder has been fully invoiced
• All invoices have been paid before any closure can take place
• Where the price is not fixed, a refund will be due to the funder. The JRO will check this before the transfer of any balance.
• All main headings should balance.

Please view the 'Approach to Clearing Balances in the FoM Research Portfolio' for the faculty’s approach in reducing the overall portfolio of awards.

The JRO Grants teams will close the award/project in relation to their own internal procedures under the FEC & non-FEC guidance.

Managing Projects - Award Closure