Faculty & Staff

The Principal Investigator is responsible for programmatic and operational close-out of the international project activity, including submission of all technical reports required by the funding agency, closure of bank accounts and petty cash funds, reconciliation of travel advances, termination of services and contracts, and close-out of subawards.

For financial close-out, the PI must:

• Provide accurate and timely financial reconciliations on which to base the financial reports required for close-out
• Ensure that the indirect costs reported to the funding agency are calculated at the proper rate
• Make any charges and/or adjustments necessary in a timely and accurate manner to ensure that the expenditures reflected on financial reports agree with those recorded in the University's accounting records

In addition, the PI must ensure that following the end-date of the award, the account(s) in the accounting system are closed. The PI must work in concert with the Office of the Controller and, in particular, with Restricted Funds to close both advance accounts and FAS sponsored/restricted accounts.

A sponsored/restricted account may be closed out when the account is in balance, i.e., when project-to-date expenses on the University’s Financial Accounting Systems (FAS) agree with the total amount of expenditures on the Financial Status Report (FSR) submitted to the funding agency.

The Restricted Funds Division of the Office of the Controller is generally responsible for financial reporting at close-out. U.S. government regulations require that FSRs be submitted within 90 calendar days following the expiration of either the budget year of the project, or more commonly, following the expiration of a competitive segment of the award.

For other funding agencies, reporting deadlines vary and are dictated by the policies of those agencies or stated terms and conditions of the award.

For more details, see the University’s Policy on Financial Reporting and Closeout of Sponsored Projects. See also Reporting to Funders.