Managing Sponsored Project Funds: Monitoring Fund Billing and Payments
If you managed sponsored project funds, find out how to keep track of billing and payments.
Although Sponsored Projects Finance (SPF) is responsible for billing and collecting payments on sponsored project awards, you should monitor this activity for your awards and communicate with SPF regarding the status of your award payments.
Reasons for monitoring
- If expenses exceed payment, it creates a negative cash flow position for the funds. Some funds will be charged interest in this situation. In contrast, a positive cash position results in interest earnings for UCSD.
- Payment can be particularly problematic for awards from private industrial and corporate sponsors. Late payment may indicate that the agency has a problem with the project or a financial problem.
How to monitor your awards
First, review your award billing and payment terms to determine how the agency will be paying UCSD for your project. Generally, agencies require that UCSD bill federal awards and private contracts and subcontracts. Grants from private sources are not billed as they are paid automatically by the agency. You can also see Billing/ Payment Methods for a description of processes.
Then, depending on your billing and payment terms, follow the appropriate monitoring method below:
- For award invoices and payments recorded in ISIS (Integrated Student Information Systems): Review the outstanding receivable balance in the Sponsored Projects AR Aging query in FinancialLink. Using this tool, you can query by fund, organization code, or principal investigator (PI).
- For awards automatically paid by the agency: Payments are recorded in the revenue account (5xxxxx). You can view payments with the Account Code Summary or Expanded Budget Report with Fund Summaries in FinancialLink.
- For federal awards billed, paid, and claimed through the letter-of-credit method of payment: Expenses posted to the operating ledger are drawn almost every day. You cannot monitor this process because it is managed by SPF and unavailable to departments.