Post Award Management

You have your award signed and delivered.  Now what?

The Office of Post-Award Management (OPM) receives the executed contract or awarded grant from the Office of Sponsored Projects (OSP) after the specialist has entered the information into PeopleSoft.  OPM verifies the information then generates it as an award which creates an Award Profile and Project Budget.

Before the OPM specialist can submit a request for a cost center to the Office of Finance through SciQuest, they have to verify more information with the respective school fiscal officer:

• Department number
• Cost center alternate
• Specific admins who need access

They must also submit to Finance:

• The title of the award
• Whether it contains cost share or not
• The verified department number
• The function (whether the award is for instruction, research, public service)
• Fund group (Gift or sponsored project)
• The correct fund code (Federal, federal pass-through, state, state pass-through, local, private)
• Project ID
• Cost center owner and manager (PI) and verified cost center alternate

Once the form has been submitted in SciQuest, the Office of Finance will generate the cost center and send it back to OPM.

When the cost center is received, OPM posts the Project Budget to Budget Overview and checks the bill plan.  If the bill plan is reimbursable, no changes are needed and the contract is changed from “pending” to “active.”  If the project has an invoicing schedule, the bill plan is changed to fixed, and the Billing Office manages the revenue plan.  When that switch has been made, the contract is changed from “pending” to “active.”

Pre-Award Spending

When an award is submitted as a pre-award, the proposal is verified and submitted just like a full award, but it is generated under pre-sales spending.  A cost center is requested and received, but under pre-sales spending, there is no Award Profile and no Project Budget generated in the system.  The department can spend against the generated cost center, but no budget will appear in Budget Overview.

Once the full award is signed and received from the sponsor, OPM will generate the proposal again, this time without the pre-sales spending criteria, and a full Award Profile will be generated and the Project Budget can be posted to Budget Overview.

OPM sends all new awards and pre-awards to the Office of Finance with the bill plans for each one.  All active awards are billed for by the Billing Office.