UAHuntsville Budget and Management Information Office

Effort Reporting Process

A proposal is submitted to the awarding agency with a committed effort of time listed. This is the amount of effort or percentage of your work week that you will devote to this award, based on the compensation you recieve. As not all proposals are awarded, you are allowed to over commit your time in the proposal process for an amount over 100%.

Example you currently have 70% of your time committed to other awards and you send out three proposals of 25% for a possible total effort of 145%.

Once the proposals are awarded total effort for all awards currently being worked on should equal 100% so the awards will need to be modified so that all of the agreements effort totals 100% and not 145%.

Once the award is received effort is put towards each of the awards and recorded though payroll charges to each account. This is the actual effort on the agreement.

At the end of each semester a report will be generated for individuals who are funded by or have charged to a research account or cost share. This report will allow an afeter the fact verification of payroll charges and effort on each award. Individuals who report their time hourly have certified their time when they turn in their BLLR and will not be required to re-certify their effort. All other employees will have the report become available for review & certify through Banner Self-Service one month following the last pay period for that semester. You will review the information and certify it with an electronic signature. If something is incorrect a retro timesheet will need to be completed in accordance with established policy. If a retro is needed a justification will be required if the change is more than 28 days old with one retro allowed per pay period being reported. Retros should be very rare as your time should be being reported correctly bi-weekly. A new report will be generated and you will be notified to review and certify the new report. You will have the ability to compare against past Effort Reports in a read-only format to assist you in ensuring the effort is correct.

There will be a 10 day window for the report to be reviewed and approved.

You should NOT delegate this responsibility to anyone else. They will not be able to know if the report is correct or not. Even if you allow someone else to certify your effort, you are still responsible to the government if something is incorrect.
If the report is not certified within the 10 day window follow-ups will be done by the Effort Reporting Office. If the report is continually ignored the University will take action to ensure the reports are completed in a timely manner due to legal implications on both the University and the individual.