Policies & Procedures

About Research Administration at GSU

Policies and Procedures for Research and Sponsored Programs

Policies and Procedures for Research and Sponsored Programs

Cost Sharing and Institutional Commitment

Background

Occasionally, sponsors may require that Georgia Southern share part of the costs of the proposed research. The University strictly discourages unnecessary or voluntary cost sharing and will only provide cost sharing in cases where the sponsor’s written guidelines state that cost sharing is required of all applicants.

Process

Any instances of Voluntary cost sharing must be approved in advance by the Associate Vice President for Research before applying for funding. In such cases, in-kind faculty salary time, unrecovered F&A costs and/or tuition waivers for graduate assistants working on the project will be applied toward the cost sharing requirement.

To qualify for cost sharing, matching funds, or in-kind contributions, all charges must be:

• Allowable under sponsor policies and the terms of the grant award guidelines;
• Allowable as a cost to the project;
• Reasonable and necessary for performance of the project; and
• Allowable on the source proposed to fund the cost sharing commitment

Funding agencies routinely label budgeted cost sharing amounts as being required (guaranteed) terms of the award. Thus, all proposals and award documents must be carefully reviewed and written to avoid non-essential cost sharing and any unnecessary financial repercussion to your department and the University. Be careful to include cost sharing in a proposal as the University’s contribution toward a project only when required to do so by the sponsor.

Tracking Required Cost Sharing

Cost sharing or matching must be verifiable from the recipient’s records.  It is also Georgia Southern University’s policy that cost sharing must be tracked and accounted for separately from other institution funds.  The Department of Research Accounting has developed a process to track cost sharing in PeopleSoft, the University’s accounting system. Each grant is assigned a “G” number and a corresponding “M” number.  The goal of Research Accounting is to use the “M” accounts to track cost sharing. This process simplifies the reporting process and ensures that all cost sharing is tracked and accounted for in PeopleSoft in order to comply with federal and University policies. 

The process of tracking these matching funds is fairly simple.  Each responsible Principle Investigator and the departments that have pledged matching should submit payment requests marked “matching” with the corresponding matching project number.  For any expenses to speedcharts in the 10xxx, 12xxx, 14xxx, 16xxx, and 50xxx ranges:

1. Provide that speedchart in the regular designated place on the requisition or expense form;
2. Write “matching” at the head of the form; and
3. Indicate the matching project number (Mxxx) next to the word “matching”.

Any salaries that are used as matching should be charged to the matching account by submitting a Personnel Action Form or by processing a Payroll Reallocation Form after the fact.  Use the current speedchart and add the matching project number to the speedchart.  You may view examples of documentation.

There will be some forms of matching that will not be tracked through this system.  Some common examples are tuition waivers, third party cost sharing, and forgone and lost F&A costs.  Please contact the Department of Research Accounting if an expense is cost shared that is not traceable through the matching system or if there is any uncertainty.