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About PIPER

Last Updated: May 18, 2026 1:18:04 PM PDT
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PIPER (Portfolio Insights, Projections, and Expense Reconciliation) is UCSD's Anaplan-based platform for research portfolio financial reporting and forecasting. It gives Fund Managers and Principal Investigators a unified view of funding, spending, and projected balances — pulling data from Oracle, UCPath, and Kuali Research into a single interface.

What PIPER does

PIPER consolidates financial activity from three source systems into a consistent, PI-centered view:

  • Oracle — budgets, costs, award and project data
  • UCPath — payroll projections and personnel funding distributions
  • Kuali Research — proposal history and subaward invoice data

On top of actuals from these systems, Fund Managers can layer projections — for payroll, non-payroll expenses, and anticipated revenue — to produce a forward-looking picture of each PI's portfolio.

Oracle remains the system of record. Entries and overrides made in PIPER do not write back to Oracle, UCPath, or Kuali Research. Any changes that need to be reflected in the source systems must still be processed there directly.

What PIPER is not

PIPER is a read-plus-annotate tool. It is not a transaction system, a budget entry system, or a replacement for Oracle. It is designed to surface what is happening in a portfolio and help users plan for what comes next — not to initiate transactions.

User roles

PIPER has two primary user roles:

Fund Managers have full access to all sections of PIPER, including Portfolio Reports, Detail Reports, Forecasting, and Portfolio Administration. They are responsible for maintaining the accuracy of projections and configurations on behalf of their assigned PIs.

Researchers (Principal Investigators) have read-only access to Portfolio Reports, which provide a financial summary of their funding portfolio.

Sections of PIPER

PIPER is organized into four sections, each covering a different aspect of portfolio management:

  • Portfolio Reports — PI-facing financial summaries, runway analysis, and personnel effort views. 
  • Detail Reports — Transaction-level views, including subaward invoice tracking.
  • Forecasting — Tools for projecting payroll, non-payroll expenses, and cost transfers.
  • Portfolio Administration — Configuration pages for fund manager assignments, custom project groupings, task attributes, and placeholder projects.