Cost Sharing Terminology and eRPM Updates

A cross-campus workgroup, charged by the Research Administration Advisory Council (RAAC) Executive Committee has completed its update of Cost Sharing terminology and system recommendations. Visit ORSP Cost Sharing Requirements and Reference Sheets webpage to give you the new definitions and some context for any work you do in eRPM.On Monday, October 2, 2017, you will see the following changes in eRPM:

1. Within the Budget Components (PAF Section 3), the descriptions and Help Text throughout the Cost Share items have been refined to better differentiate resource commitments for tracking and reporting in post-award. 
2. The “Non-UM Cost Sharing and Other Commitments” component will be expanded so that it is easier to document commitments provided by external entities and to allow the addition of separate commitment lines. (Currently, there is only a single entry box.) Units can capture multiple external partners, or list quantified financial support in a different line from non-financial or non-quantified support.

1. Teams can distinguish commitments disclosed to the sponsor (tracked in the categories above) from any internal UM commitments that are not reported to the sponsor.
2. A new “Internal UM Agreements” section has been added to document agreements not conveyed to the sponsor. The new field on the PAF will provide a unique and separate documentation section for these items that are important to project execution, but are not tracked for cost accounting or required reporting to the sponsor. Adding the information on the PAF will require approval during routing so that unit(s) involved confirm their willingness.
   
3. The most common example we discussed is the contribution of Rackham for tuition shortfall.  The unit receiving them may prefer to track in a cost share account, but it is not required nor reported to the sponsor; however, it is a commitment that is important for units to monitor in post-award.   
   
   Unit Business Processes
   
   Units may wish to develop local business processes on the expected use of the “Internal U-M Agreements” field. Because the information is not required to be reported to a sponsor, central campus offices will not monitor the field and the information is collected only for the use of the units involved. Benefits of the field include the ability to store and document the agreement, carry the agreement forward to the (upcoming) Award Management system for reference in post-award, and search for these agreements by unit as fields are added to the eRPM data warehouse. 
   
   We hope that campus units find the improvements to the Cost Sharing sections useful during the life of the award.