Certification process for principal investigators suspended

BY BARBARA PALMER

The Office of Research Administration (ORA) has temporarily suspended the quarterly certification process for principal investigators (PIs) working on sponsored research projects due to the difficulty in getting complete and usable expenditure reports from financial systems that were implemented last September, said Anne Hannigan, ORA associate vice president. At the beginning of FY '04, commercial financial software replaced homegrown accounting, purchasing, reporting and other systems.

The deadline for PI certification reporting for September-December 2003 was to have been Feb. 28.

Although expenditure statements generated by the new systems have consistently improved since Sept. 1, they are still incomplete, confusing and not fully accurate, Hannigan said. Her office decided to delay the certification process until reports are clear and accurate and principal investigators feel comfortable in signing off on them.

"Many of you are rightly concerned about your ability to adequately review, understand and certify with confidence the expenditures that have been posted to our sponsored accounts since September 1, 2003," Hannigan wrote in a Jan. 30 memo sent to faculty and research administrators.

A new deadline for reinstating the quarterly certification process has not been set, Hannigan said. "It's a reasonable thing to believe that in two or three months' time, [expenditure reports] will look a lot better," she said. The May 31 deadline for the January-March reporting period has not changed, she said.

Government sponsors have agreed to the delay, she said. "Thus far, our transition experience (as difficult as it feels to each of us on a daily basis!) has not been dissimilar from that of other major research universities," Hannigan wrote in the memo. "Those universities that have moved to new systems have indicated that it can take up to 18 months until faculty and staff members express confidence in transactional systems, management information and new business processes, etc."

Although PI certification has been temporarily suspended, expenditure statements should continue to be reviewed monthly by principal investigators or research administrators, she said. "We ask each person with expenditure review responsibility to review salary and other direct expenditures and initiate corrections when obvious errors are found," she wrote. Faculty or staff with questions about how to correct errors should submit a SUHelp ticket or call the Help Line at 725-4357 (5-HELP).

Principal investigators and administrators also should look for expected charges that may be missing from expenditure statements and periodically review online statements to verify that expected expenditures have been subsequently recorded, she said.

The last few months of transition to the new systems "have been very difficult" for faculty and staff, Hannigan wrote in the memo.

"Those in schools and departments have been frustrated by new transactional systems, inadequate systems performance, and minimal and cumbersome reporting processes. Those in central offices have been overwhelmed by correction requirements, time-consuming workarounds and the inability to perform required processes. ITSS systems staff have struggled to fix bugs and achieve better, long-term solutions. The patience of all involved has been stretched, and we ask you continue to work with us over the coming months in a positive and constructive way."