We convene a group of equipment managers from across the University to consider policies which govern equipment and capital asset management; to provide a forum to resolve issue arising from the transactional database where asset information is housed; and, to reinforce best practices related to tagging, transfer, through retirement, disposal and reporting.
We manage the University’s effort reporting system known as ecrt. Using ecrt, principal investigators certify quarterly that the charges appearing on their federal awards reasonably reflect the cost of the work performed on the award. Further, principal investigators certify annually that the allocation of their own salary reasonably reflects the work performed over the year. Our support includes responding to help desk tickets, providing guidance about unusual circumstances, approving delegations of certification authority, monitoring completion compliance, and investigating and resolving issues that arise from the interface between the general ledger and ecrt. Our responsibilities also include effort concerns more broadly, such as the use of certified object codes by certain types of students and staff or the allowable methods of certifications outside of ecrt.
We participate in the University program for tax exempt debt compliance in cooperation with the Office of Technology Development (OTD), the Office of Treasury Management (OTM) and departments across the University whose investigators engage in specific types of agreements with industry sponsors.
We are developing a process for recording and monitoring committed effort for Harvard faculty on sponsored awards that involves using GMAS to capture commitments made to sponsors, a method of reporting those commitments, and, eventually, monitoring both the commitments themselves and the meeting of those commitments. Our reporting and monitoring also includes the actual salary distribution of faculty salary.
As required, we develop, write and submit for approval policies related to the management of sponsored awards across the University
