COERA Post-Award Process

At this time, the Post-Award Specialist, Pre-Award Specialist, and Principal Investigator will review the award budget and project immediate potential spending needs and communicate any proposal plans or award changes for future planning understanding. For most budgets, the Specialists will ask to meet with you in person to collaborate on budget projection for a project kick-off meeting. For small, simple budgets, email or phone correspondence with the Post-Award Specialist may suffice.  Using this information, the Post-Award Specialist will complete an initial COERA Project Reporting Template, which includes projected project spending and send it to you for review.

In order for the Post-Award Specialist to correctly identify immediate budget spending, please provide the following information at award time (if changed since submission of proposal and applicable to your project):

1. List of UT Personnel who will be appointed for the upcoming semester on the project, the salary of each, and the number of months/percent effort per employee:

It’s important to review this information and project any potential appointments that will change the overall spending pattern of your budget. Please be aware of and discuss possible changes with the Post-Award Specialist.

1. Materials and Supplies (itemized with exact prices), including software and software licenses. 
2. Consultants you expect to hire immediately at the rate provided for in the proposal. If you are waiting to hire consultants, this process can be delayed until that time.
3. Travel Expenses for each anticipated trip.
4. Other Costs that don’t fit into the above categories

Once you have specified the projected needs for the upcoming semesters, the Post-Award Specialist will coordinate with you to finalize the anticipated expenditures.

Once a subaward has been established, subrecipient monitoring is necessary to maintain federal audit compliance. During contracting, the Post-Award Specialist is added as the financial contact to the subaward, while the PI maintains technical contact status. The PI is responsible for collaborating with the Post-Award Specialist for subrecipient monitoring duties throughout the duration of the contract.

Subrecipient monitoring consists of:

1. Acknowledging receipt of subaward technical and financial reports
2. Reviewing and approving subaward invoice expenditures
3. Monitoring work progress with Milestones and deliverables
4. Coordinating with the subaward for any requested materials from the prime sponsor

The Post-Award Specialist will assist you with all of these items.

The Post-Award Specialist will provide faculty with quarterly or monthly financial reports for each sponsored research account (see Templates & Examples) that includes:

• Prior expenditures, current expenditures, and cost encumbrances.
• Current account budget and account free balances.
• Projected spending for the remainder of the project.

University guidelines require sponsored project effort certification to be completed every six months.  PIs will receive multiple email reminders regarding this certification prior to and during the certification period. Please consult the Post-Award Specialist before effort certification begins if you have any changes that need to be made to appointments for you or anyone on your project. During effort certification, the Post-Award Specialist will be your contact and will send extremely detailed emails with instructions on how to complete the effort certification appropriately and timely. Please contact the Post-Award Specialist should you require assistance.