The 1Grant report, generated by Cardinal Financials, provides financial information for gauging the remainder of award dollars to accomplish project goals.  Your grant budget is very much like a traditional checking account where money is “deposited” upon your notice of grant award (NOGA) or funding increment and is withdrawn when your expenses (salary, travel reimbursements, purchase requisitions, pcard charges, etc.) post to or “clear” your account.  The Cardinal Financials system is the central ledger (or holding account) for several feeder systems (e.g., HR/Payroll, Suntrust ESP/pcard, Accounts Payable payments) and just like your checking account may receive deposits or withdrawals from several sources and needs to be monitored and tracked.

The report includes the following:

  • Payroll cycles that have been paid and posted from the payroll system to the financial system.
  • Procurement card charges that have been downloaded from the SunTrust system to the financial system. General Accounting downloads 1-2 times per week but only finalized transactions (approved and reclassified) are downloaded at that point. All remaining charges are only downloaded once a month. The faster you finalize your transactions, the faster those charges will appear in your 1Grant report.
  • Travel expense reports and other expense vouchers that been paid.
  • Indirect cost is only calculated periodically, usually once per month.

Specific Sections of the Report

  • Account Chartfield Information

    Org/Department - 6 digit number beginning 362xxx or 363xxx for Physics

    Fund - Always 26 or 27; 26 represents research projects

    Class - Also called "subclass"; This code specifies type of sponsor and research/non-research

    Project# - Alpha-numeric code up to 15 characters; Usually a combination of sponsor name and part of sponsor contract It

    Program - Unless your department uses specific program codes, always use "GEN"

  • Column A - (Requisitions) Pre-Encumbrance

    This column includes purchase requisitions that have not been fully approved and converted into a purchase order yet.

    The column indicates that this money has been "encumbered" or set aside for a specific purpose so that it is not spent on something else. The user can see a detail of these amounts by running a drilldown.

  • Column 2 - (Purchase Orders) Encumbrance

    This column contains the following. The user can see a detail of some of these amounts by running a drilldown.

    Salaries and Benefits section -The amounts in this column are called "encumbrances" and are calculated by our Salaries and Benefits section -The amounts in this column are called "encumbrances" and are calculated by our HR/Payroll system and periodically downloaded into the financial system for this report. For employees on appointments, the amount should represent the amount remaining on their current appointment until the end of the fiscal year (April 30). For full-time staff, the amount is his/her salary until the end of the fiscal year (April 30). For part-time staff and students and other variable pay arrangements, the system makes assumptions that may or may not be correct but that also cannot be changed. For this reason and due to the fact that this report only shows data through April 30 of each year, we recommend that the Pl track his/her payroll obligations under the grant separately. Running a drilldown will not show you detail by person, as that data is housed in another system.
    General Expense section -This column includes purchase order amounts that have not yet been paid. As they are paid, the payment amount will move out of this column into the Actual Expended Amount column. The column
    indicates that this money has been "encumbered" or set aside for a specific purpose so that it is not spent on
    something else.

  • Column 3 - Actual Expended Amount

    This column includes amounts spent for payroll or general expenses. For General Expenses, the user can see a detail of these amounts by running a drilldown.

  • Column 4 - Total Pre Enc, Enc and Expended

    This column is the total of the Requisitions, Purchase Order/Encumbrances and Actuals columns. It is compared to the Budget column to determine whether the grant is above or below budget.

  • Column 5 - Budget

    This column shows the budget breakdown for the grant. Based upon the budget approved by the sponsor, the budget is entered into the CUA financial system in the following categories:

    Salaries and wages -Z100
    Fringe benefits -Z101
    Scholarships -Z301
    Supplies and general -Z401
    Travel and entertainment -Z402 (there should be no entertainment expense in a sponsored project) Contractual expenses -Z403 (includes subcontractor and professional service expenses)
    Equipment -Z007
    Indirect costs -Z601

  • Column 6 - Available (overspent) Funds

    This column is the difference between budget and actual costs (see Column 4 and 5 above). Actual costs are split into more detail than the budget, but you only need to monitor the bolded sub-totals of each section in this column. Positive numbers mean the project is under budget in that area. Negative numbers mean the project is above budget in that area. As a general rule, the grant should never be above budget in any category. Unless your grant allows otherwise, when a
    category is above budget, one of two things must occur:

    1) The Pl can request a transfer of budget funds from another category, if allowed by the grant sponsor.

    2) Costs in the over-budget section should be transferred to a non-grant org.

    Any transfer of budgeted funds into salary expense will also cause more fringe expense and more indirect cost expense.

  • Fringe Benefits

    Fringe benefits are always charged to the grant based upon the actual benefits of each employee charging the grant. Budgets are usually submitted using the university's average fringe rates, which are used throughout the university every year for the operating budget. If the Pl wants to create a budget based more specifically upon the expenses or his/her team, he/she can do that, but the Office of Sponsored Accounting cannot provide any support due to limited resources and transfers will need to be made if actual costs exceed the budgeted fringe amounts.

  • Indirect Cost

    Indirect cost is calculated automatically based upon the terms of your grant. In most cases, the indirect cost is a federally­ approved percentage of labor costs. Remember that any transfer of budgeted funds into salary expense will also cause more fringe expense and more indirect cost expense.

  • Total Expense Line

    This number on the Total Expense line in the Available Funds column represents whether your grant overall is over/under budget. The numbers are based upon the information posted into the financial system as of that time, so recently processed expense items may or may not be included in this total. To know what's included, run drill downs on the Actual Expense column.

  • Summary Section of 1Grant Report

    This section is used only by the Office of Sponsored Accounting. The section represents the billing status on the grant and not whether the grant is above or below budget.