Financial Compliance
Financial Compliance ensures the PI's and all involved with the award complies with federal, state, city, and University regulations, requirements, and guidelines, along with information, resources, and educational opportunities to support UNF' s research community.
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Facilities & Administrative Agreement
The Facilities and Administrative (F&A) Rate Agreement is the process of recovering the portion of costs that support sponsored projects, but are not directly charged to sponsored funds. The fringe benefit rates are included in the current agreement.
The 2CFR200 establishes principles for determining costs applicable to grants, contracts, and other agreements with educational institutions. The principles are designed to provide that the federal government bear its fair share of total cost, determined in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. The Uniform Guidance details cost principles, describes costing methodologies, and defines allowable versus unallowable costs.
Direct/Indirect (Facilities & Administrative) Costs
Direct costs (2CFR200.413) are those that can be identified specifically with a particular final cost objective or that can be directly assigned to such activities relatively easily with a high degree of accuracy.
Indirect costs (2CR200.414) are also called facilities and administrative costs and are those incurred for a common or joint purpose benefitting more than one cost objective. These costs are not readily assignable to the cost objectives specifically benefitted. Costs incurred for the same purpose in like circumstances must be treated consistently as either direct or indirect costs.
Cost share
Cost share is the portion of project expenditures related to a sponsored project that is contributed by the University, but not directly charged to the sponsored project. It is representative of real costs to the University (2CFR200.306).
Cost share represents a redirection of University resources from instruction or other activities to support a sponsored project. The cost-effectiveness and the expected benefits of cost sharing should be carefully weighed by the PI, department chair, college dean or director, and other administrators prior to committing to cost share in a proposal.
Effort committed as cost share may not exceed that allowed by the faculty or staff member's appointment.
Types of cost share include:
- Mandatory - required by the sponsor as a condition of receiving an award.
- Voluntary committed - offered by the PI by including it in the proposal budget and budget narrative.
- Voluntary uncommitted - faculty or senior research effort that is over and above that which is committed and budgeted.
The Office of Management and Budget Uniform Guidance (2CFR200.430.), requires universities to certify employee effort expended on sponsored contracts and grants. 2CFR200 requires that each institution maintain an accurate system for reporting the percentage of time that employees devote to sponsored projects as a condition to receive sponsored activity funding.
UNF has adopted the "after-the-fact" activity reporting and uses Faculty Activity Reports (FARs) to document and certify the distribution of personnel effort expended on sponsored contracts and grants. FARs constitutes the University's official record of a faculty member's activities for each academic term. As the official record, the University uses these reports in a number of different ways. Internally, the University uses FARs in calculating data for program reviews and for making cross-college and interdepartmental comparisons.
In addition to using the data internally, the University submits the data from FARs to the State as documentation of faculty productivity in the areas of teaching, research, and service. The data also provides the State with a record of our academic advising efforts and are used to calculate our administrative costs. FARs serve as the official record of faculty effort devoted to externally funded contracts and grants and provide a key source of documentation of how this effort is compensated. This record becomes extremely important when such projects undergo audits by funding agencies.
For additional information and instructions on completing your FAR, please refer to the Institutional Research webpage.