The approval flow is a sequential list of all UW individuals, divisions, departments, deans, and/or compliance offices (including OSP), who must review and sign off on a proposal before it is submitted to the sponsor. The system automatically routes the proposal to the individuals and units in the approval flow.
Approvers prior to OSP are notified of pending proposals via e-mail notification. OSP is manages proposals needing approval via their tasklist in SPAERC.
Reviewers may have the option to:
- approve a proposal
- return it to the preparer for changes
- add a comment which becomes part of the permanent record of the proposal
- mark it as watched
- add an additional reviewer or watcher to the approval flow
You can view a graphical and a text representation of the approval flow for each application from within SPAERC. You can access both versions from links in the left navigation menu of an open application.
Use a Funding Action (FA) to transmit award information to Grant and Contract Accounting (GCA) when the sponsor funds a proposal. GCA uses the information provided in the FA for account setup and award distribution.
The Funding Action includes general information about the project, account setup, and budget details, among other details.
When GCA completes setting up the account, the system sends an email notification, with a PDF of the FA, to the PI, eGC1 Preparer and Contacts, and select reviewers. This notification lets the research team know they can now submit charges against the account.
SPAERC organizes items into tasklists to help you manage your work. Each tasklist displays all items of a specific type.
Following articles describe how to navigate, sort, and personalize your takslists and how to create custom tasklists.
SPAERC includes five standard tasklists. Click on any item type to see a list of all possible columns for that tasklist.
- Applications: lists all existing items in any status other than Composing.
- Funding Actions: lists all existing items, in any status. You create a Funding Action (FA) after the sponsor awards an application. The FA provides information to Grant and Contract Accounting (GCA) so they can set up a budget.
- Subawards: lists all existing items, in any status. The Subcontracts group within OSP manages subawards. The research team creates subaward requests using SAGE.
- Cycles: lists all existing items. Cycles group together related applications, funding actions, subcontracts, admin actions, and advance budget number requests.
- Admin Actions: lists all existing items, in any status. There are several types of Admin Actions: unidentified (AA), Pre-Award Notification (PAN), Post-Award Change (PAC), Non-Award Agreement (NAA), and Close Out (CO).
You can view, add, update, or delete documents associated with an item. You will use a slightly different process for uploading and attaching documents to Applications compared to Funding Actions and Admin Actions.
The following sections describe the types of documents you might find in the system, how to open them, and how to add documents to Applications, Funding Actions and Administrative Actions, and Subcontracts in SPAERC.
The research team and the central offices use the SAGE Suite electronic research administration system to manage the proposal lifecycle. The system is comprised of three components, that access the shared SAGE Suite database.
- SAGE: System to Administer Grants Electronically – used by researchers and administrators to enter their proposal information.
- SPAERC: Sponsored Projects Administration & Electronic Research Compliance – used by the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) to access the proposal application, and to create additional, related items.
- SERA: System for Electronic Research Accounting – used by Grants and Contract Accounting (GCA) to process Funding Actions (FA), Post-Award Changes (PAC), Advance Budget Number Requests (ADV), and view the application information.
All research proposals submitted to sponsors external to the university go through the following process:
Application Creation
When a principal investigator (PI) at the UW decides to solicit funding for a research project from a sponsor, he or she identifies an appropriate funding opportunity and then, often with the assistance of a research administrator, puts together a research proposal according to the sponsor’s instructions. From the proposal information, the PI and/or research administrator create an online application—called an “eGC1”—in SAGE. The application provides the means to route the proposal information around campus and to OSP for approval, before OSP submits the proposal to the sponsor.
The application includes the proposal components for submission to the sponsor and provides the university answers and explanations to compliance questions. The application includes:
- Information about the PI and other research personnel
- The funding agency (sponsor) and its submission deadline
- The timeframe and details of the research
- A brief description of the project (abstract)
- The budget and any cost sharing information
- The attached proposal documents that OSP will submit to the sponsor
- Attachments of any other relevant documents needed by reviewers.
When the research team first creates the application, it has a status of Composing. Once the application has all but the final version of the scope of work for the sponsor, the preparer routes it to reviewers. The status of the application changes to Routing and it moves into the campus approval phase.
Preparers have the option to “withdraw” the application from routing to make adjustments, which changes its status to Withdrawn, and then re-complete it so that it resumes routing, resetting its status to Routing.
Tip: The name “eGC1” comes from the original paper form which was the GC-1 (Grant and Contracts form 1). The “e” indicates the electronic version of this form.
Campus Review and Approval
Each school or college at the UW defines its own approval “routing rules” to use with SAGE approvals. The rules indicate which unit levels (division, department, dean, etc.) will need to review an application based on:
- The unit of the PI and other research personnel
- The organization receiving the funding
- Any cost sharing
- The answers to certain compliance questions
When the research team routes the application for the first time, SAGE sends an automatic email notification to the first reviewer(s). This is usually just the PI. If the PI is the person who completes the eGC1, then SAGE automatically marks it as approved by the PI. In that case, SAGE notifies the next set of reviewers. As each group of reviewers approves the eGC1, the system notifies the next group.
Note: Generally, each unit designates several reviewers, but only one reviewer needs to approve the application.
When a specific unit approves the application, information is added to the eGC1’s approval history, which can be viewed on the History & Comments page.
Approvers have the option to “return” the application to the preparers for any needed revisions. This changes the application’s status to Returned, and automatically sends an email to the PI, eGC1 Preparer, Administrative Contract, and Pre-Award Budget Contract, notifying them of the change in status. Once the revisions are made, the preparer would re-route the eGC1 to the remaining approvers.
Once all the required campus units have indicated their approval of an application, the application changes to a status of In OSP, indicating it is now ready for review by OSP.
OSP Review and Approval
OSP staff review the application and proposal documents to verify compliance with research regulations and the sponsor’s requirements. If OSP determines that the application needs some revisions, they will return it to the preparer. The preparer, PI and Contacts receive an email notifying them of the return, which contains the comments OSP staff must include as part of the return process. The comments can also be viewed from the History & Comments page of the eGC1 in SAGE.
When OSP determines that the application is ready, they submit it to the sponsor, and mark it as “approved.” The application status changes to Approved, and the application’s data at that point in time becomes a permanent record of the submission.
An application can be submitted to a sponsor in multiple ways. OSP staff usually submit all federal and electronic applications.
Sponsor Funding
When a sponsor funds a proposal, OSP uses SPAERC to manage that information by creating a Funding Action (FA). When OSP sends the FA to Grant and Contract Accounting (GCA) for processing, the system automatically changes the application’s status from Approved to Awarded. GCA will process the FA and set up a budget for the research project in the financial system. The preparers will receive an email notification with the budget number information.
If the sponsor does not fund the proposal, OSP staff can change the status of the application to Denied by Sponsor.
