Cost Sharing Team Provides Information, Saves Time
by Suzette Ashby-Larrabee

The cost sharing team in Grant and Contract Accounting (GCA) was originally formed in the fall of 2001 to develop a measurement for the strategic plan. The team subsequently took on responsibility for several other cost share projects.

The team is currently composed of Suzette Ashby-Larrabee and Cecilia Pittman, co-leaders, Brenda Grayson, Lauren Collins, Joe Nguyen and Lily Gebrenegus.

The team has four major accomplishments that are either completed or nearing completion.

• The first project was the development of a measurement for the strategic plan. Since there was a significant number of expired budgets with cost share that had not been documented, the team decided to measure the percent of budgets expired more than 90 days that had unmet cost share. From March 2002, when the first measurement was taken, to March 2003, the number of expired budgets with unmet cost share decreased from 40% to 13%.

• In part, this decrease was due to another improvement made by the cost share team with the help of Sam Senturia. An unmet cost share database was developed in Access. This database enables individuals working on cost sharing to create reports on demand and to add progress notes to document communication with departments. This database is being tested and the team will soon offer training to areas of GCA that would benefit from access to this data, primarily those concerned with closing grants. In addition, quarterly letters will be generated from this database to inform department administrators and principal investigators of the status of all their cost sharing commitments.

The database has also been helpful in providing the team with information about the problems encountered when cost share is found to be unmet on expired budgets. The team has compiled a detailed list of these problems and has developed possible solutions. Some of these have already been implemented, increasing the ability to close budgets in a timely manner.

• The team has completed writing comprehensive cost share articles for publication on the web. These pages provide departments with detailed information and instructions regarding setting up and reporting cost sharing. The web pages can be located at the following web site, http://www.washington.edu/research/gca/webpage/spend.html.

• The last major project that the team is completing is a manual of cost sharing policies and procedures. This manual will contain both general policy and information about cost sharing, as well as detailed instructions for GCA and Management Accounting and Analysis on how to set up and document cost sharing.

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