Cost Transfer Request

POLICY OVERVIEW
It is University policy (HOOP 96) to assure all expenditures are accurately reflected in the accounting records. To accomplish this, cost transfers may be necessary to move expenses to or from any account.

NIH Cost Overruns Policy
Cost transfers to NIH grants by recipients, consortium participants, or contractors under grants that represent corrections of clerical or bookkeeping errors should be accomplished within 90 days of when the error was discovered. The transfers must be supported by documentation that fully explains how the error occurred and a certification of the correctness of the new charge by a responsible organizational official of the recipient, consortium participant, or contractor. An explanation merely stating that the transfer was made "to correct error" or "to transfer to correct project" is not sufficient. Transfers of costs from one project to another or from one competitive segment to the next solely to cover cost overruns are not allowable.

Cost Overruns: Cost Overruns (deficits) can only be transferred to non-sponsored related funds.

Examples of non-sponsored accounts:

Designated accounts (Funds: 36XXX)
Contract Residual Accounts (Fund 57050)
Development Accounts (Funds 58XXX or 6XXXX) these require approval from the Development office

PROCEDURE

Once departments have identified the need for a cost transfer, the procedures below must be followed and the appropriate approvals obtained on a Cost Transfer Request.

Sponsored Project Accounts
Sponsored Project Accounts are those accounts that include grants and contracts that have an assigned PeopleSoft Project Number and are processed by Post Award Finance (PAF).

Payroll Expense – Departments must comply with the Retro PA and Effort Reporting policies and submit a PA request to the SDR team.  In addition, departments must also submit a Cost Transfer Request to PAF for approval and attach to the retro PA request in HCM.

Non-Payroll Expense – Departments must submit a cost transfer request with the required documentation to PAF.
The PAF team will review those cost transfer requests to determine if the cost transfer request is allowable with the rules and institutional policy governing the accounts.

All Other Accounts
All Other Accounts are all accounts other than those defined as Sponsored Project Accounts (e.g., state accounts, designated accounts, service department accounts, etc.) that are handled by General Accounting.

Payroll Expense – Departments must comply with the Retro PA policy and submit a PA request to the SDR team.

Non-Payroll Expense – Departments must submit the following information to General Accounting.
• Accounts affected by cost transfer
• Amount to be transferred
• Date of expense
• Expense detail from the accounting system