Cost Analysis & Compliance

Cost Analysis

In collaboration with costing groups across the University, we develop, submit and negotiate the indirect costs rates used for federal agreements and the language that appears on University rate agreements. As part of this responsibility, we manage the OSP page that shows the indirect cost treatment for each object code for each indirect cost base and assign indirect cost treatment as new object codes are created by the Office of the Controller (OC). We also work with the Benefits Office to finalize the annual fringe benefits rates agreement.

Compliance

Audit support is provided university-wide. The audit team’s involvement varies by audit request type and school.  At a minimum, our team provides support by:

  • Reviewing the engagement request and audit scope documents to ensure alignment with terms and conditions of the award.
  • Ensuring Harvard’s information is protected by having auditors sign a confidentiality agreement and submitting information through secure file transfer.
  • Reviewing the auditors final report and school representation letter.

Additional resources include:

  • Review of supporting documentation,
  • Consultation on audit approach, and
  • Audit report responses

Other Compliance Activities

  • Performing quarterly monitoring of a subset of transactions on federal accounts for compliance with Harvard Policy and federal requirements (2 CFR 200.61) in the areas of:
    • Cost Sharing
    • Charging Administrative salaries
    • Cost Transfers
    • Travel and Entertainment
    • PCard Transactions with self-approval
  • Working with the University Subrecipient Monitoring Committee to support subrecipient monitoring effort
  • Reviewing, approving, and tracking cost transfer requests from schools and departments
  • Serving as a resource for schools and departments who have complex sponsored questions.

 

Reporting & Analytics

The Reporting & Analytics team supports Pre-award, Post-award and the Compliance Teams providing timely and accurate report delivery in response to recurrent and ad hoc business questions. It is responsible for University level reporting to the Federal government and many of our funding agencies. Our team also performs a central reporting and analytics function for the Schools, as well as other central offices such as the Office of the Controller, the Office of Treasury Management, Office of Institutional Research, the Office of Financial Strategy and Planning, the Office of the Vice Provost for Research,the Director of Federal Relations, Tax Reporting and Payroll , senior University leadership, and many other university departments. Drawing from a wealth of knowledge about systems and databases the Reporting Team serves in an advisory role on all sponsored data for its constituents.

Some of the reporting categories are: 

  • Support of the annual A-133 audit and financial statement audits and development of reporting for compliance monitoring and risk assessments
  • Support of the F&A rate negotiation process Ad hoc reporting of data not available through HART or other available reporting tools
  • Exception reporting for data integrity and quality assurance
  • Workflow exceptions and analysis supporting other OSP teams
  • Year over year metrics, trend analysis, and analytic projection reporting