Effort Reporting
Post Award Fiscal Compliance (PAFC) supports the University's Effort Reporting process and the implementation of the University's effort reporting system, Employee Compensation Compliance (ECC).
The Administrative Support Team (AST) monitors effort reporting and provides support for units who do not have a department effort coordinator. AST is available to all units to answer questions and assist with the ECC process.
Award Close
AST identifies awards closing within the next 30 days and contacts the department offering a closing checklist and support. As the grant award enters close out, AST ensures any Award Portal tickets are resolved in a timely manner.
On this Page...
- Resources
- Award Close Separation of Duties
- Duties of Departments with Grants
- Duties of AST
- Duties of Central Offices
- AST Responsibilities for Effort Reporting and Closeout of Award
- Effort Reporting
- Closeout of Award
- Other Applicable Support
- ECC Statement Cycles
- Award Closeout Checklist
- Award Close Separation of Duties
- Workflows
- Effort Reporting Processing Time and Workflow
- No workflow
- Award Close Processing Time and Workflow
- No workflow
- Effort Reporting Processing Time and Workflow
- Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the difference between a budget date and accounting date?
- How to find effort and project reports in ECC?
- What is the AST schedule around closeout reviews?
- How to locate the journal lines?
- There are incorrect payroll charges that are reflected on my effort or project statement in ECC. How do I correct these incorrect payroll charges?
- Who is responsible for completing the ECC if the grant is cross-unit?
- What is the University policy for effort reporting?
- What additional resources are available to me? Who else can I contact for help?
Resources
Back to TopTasks associated with the award close process are distributed between the unit, AST, and central offices. The following outline details the separation of duties at each of these levels.
Duties of Departments with Grants
- Proposal and Budget Development
- Effort Certification
- Analysis/Review of Grant Reports/Forecast
- Analysis and Reporting
- Clinical Trial Invoicing
Duties of AST
- Perform Journal Entries
- Award Closeout Guidance
- Effort Reporting Review (both faculty and non-faculty reporting)
Duties of Central Offices
- Pre-Award Administration
- Post Award Set-up
- Manage Sponsored Program Spend and Billing
- Manage Sponsored Program Reporting and Compliance
Effort Reporting
For both Faculty Effort Reporting and Non-Faculty Effort Reporting:
- Ensure certifications are completed in a timely manner
- If re-certifications occur, ensure proper documentation regarding the circumstances and cause of re-certification is in place.
- Review for any salary transfers on certified effort reporting.
- Ensure committed cost share and effort is accounted for and certified.
- Ensure online salary expense transfers (OSETs) are properly documented per GIM 15
- If K award, ensure PI has at least 75% effort for the period, and cost share requirements are met
Closeout of Award
- Coordinate with department to ensure closeout requirements are met.
- Review award terms and conditions for final documentation requirements and deadlines and incorporate into checklist
- Review award expenditures and ensure allowability
- Ensure allowable project costs have posted to the grant, including any subaward invoices
- Ensure open balances and encumbrances are cleared
- Ensure all reoccurring recharges have, or will, cease at or before award end date
- Track status of final progress report and/or proof of submission for when it is sent to closeout@uw.edu.
Other Applicable Support
- Ensure cost share commitments are met and posted, interim cost share reports if gap in effort reporting cycle and the program income is spent in full.
- Work with department to report Intellectual Property to UW CoMotion
- Review and confirm equipment inventory and any related journal entries are submitted
- Ensure subaward closeouts occur within the appropriate time period, including closeout of any associated blank purchase orders (BPOs) and confirm final invoices has been received and paid.
ECC has two statements types which follows the following periods:
- Effort reporting: completed every six months
- January 1 - June 30
- July 1 - December 31
- Project reporting: completed every three months
- January 1 - March 31
- April 1 - June 30
- July 1 - September 30
- October 1 - December 31
Prior to the grant closing, complete the following analysis and steps:
- Verify all expected invoices from vendors have been received and paid out. This includes invoices for internal and external charges.
- Identify any final invoices anticipated at end of an award and coordinate with the vendor to ensure it is received in time to pay out prior to the grant end date. Units need to actively track and monitor these invoices to ensure payment is made prior to the grant end date. If received after the grant end date, submit a correcting entry request to move the expense to another funding source.
- Identify any recurring or automatic charges and redirect to another funding source. This includes internal charges, such as Internal Sales Documents (ISDs).
- Identify any expenses and reimbursements pending processing. Submit requests immediately to ensure the charges occur during the grant period.
- Review Encumbrance and Pre-Encumbrance ledgers and close any encumbrances that are no longer active.
- Review payroll costing allocations and update so charges after the award end date are not charged to the grant. Payroll cost overruns to the grant will require correction through processing Payroll Accounting Adjustments
- Identify any Payroll Accounting Adjustments, Accounting adjustments and Correcting Journal Entries pending processing. Submit requests immediately to ensure the correcting entries occur during the grant period.
- Review the grant award in Award Portal and respond to any outstanding award portal tickets. If a discrepancy has been identified, create a ticket alerting UW’s Grants & Contact Accounting (GCA) of the issue so it can be resolved prior to the end of the grand period.
GCA’s webpage Closing Checklist for Campus provides additional guidance which includes helpful reports and resources. One report in particular may be especially helpful: the Workday Cost Reimbursable Line Status Report. This report can be used to identify expenditures that are "pending award line date review" and may fall outside of the award time frame.
Workflows
Back to TopEffort Reporting Processing Time and Workflow
The turnaround time for effort reporting is 1-3 business days.
No workflow at this time, keep an eye out for website updates via AST’s Newsletter.
Award Close Processing Time and Workflow
The turnaround time for award close guidance is 1-3 business days.
No workflow at this time, keep an eye out for website updates via AST’s Newsletter.
Frequently Asked Questions
Back to Top- Budget Date: the date the transaction occurred.
- Accounting Date: the date the transaction or adjustment is processed. It controls the accounting period and fiscal year in which the transaction is recorded in the general ledger.
For departments who have the Requisition Requestor security role (and other finance security roles), it is very important to have the budget date reflect the date of expense.
This distinction is especially important for sponsored grants as the budget date in the transaction should be within the time frame of the award line. Further, the budget and accounting dates need to accurately reflect the transaction to meet sponsored awards allocable expenses, to determine if the expense is billable to the sponsor, and to determine the billable F&A rate. Finally, the accounting date impacts when a transaction appears in the R1234 report. For more information view Grant & Contract Accounting's page, Budget and Accounting Dates on Sponsored Program Awards.
View our steps to running departmental reports to monitor ECC tasks.
AST's standard is usually 2-3 weeks prior to final reporting to allow for UW’s Grants & Contact Accounting (GCA)/Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) review.
For a visual of this step-by-step guide please refer to the Finding Transaction IDs page.
In Workday search Find Journal Lines, this will open the report parameters. Input the following fields:
- Company: Input UW1861
- Year: Select FY2024 from dropdown
- Period: Select Period (by month), then select the actual month of the transaction
- Other additional fields, although not required, will be instrumental in narrowing down your search:
- Accounting Date On or After and Accounting Date On or Before: If you have the exact date input in both of these fields or if possible narrow down the time frame.
- Worktags: Input the driver or other identifying worktags. Note: Directly input worktags instead of selecting from the dropdown menu.
- Amount Equal To, Greater Than or Less Than: If possible input the exact transaction amount or the approximate amount. ProTip: Save frequently used parameters by entering a Filter Name, then saving before you run the report.
Select OK to run the report. If the results are unsuccessful you can edit your filter parameters by selecting the change selection button on the upper left side of the screen (e.g. filtering the Source by Expense Report). After you have located the desired transaction, locate the Action menu action for the transaction, it typically is in the first column on the right side of the magnifying glass. Select the "..." to open the Actions sub-menu, there you will see the journal information. Selecting the magnifying glass will open to the journal with all identifying information. Note: You are able to download this report or journal as a excel file or pdf.
ProTip: We recommend saving a department copy of journals after running reports or reconciling, or completing transactions, to refer to when needed later on.
Payroll Accounting Adjustments (PAAs) are used to adjust worktags for historical salary expenses, and adjust direct charges reflected on an effort or project statement. PAAs are completed in Workday, and ECC is integrated with Workday to receive all PAAs the Monday after they are posted. If a PAA is needed:
- AST HR/payroll supported departments: Submit your PAA request to our HR/Payroll team.
- Non-AST HR/Payroll supported departments: Please submit your PAA requests to the individual in your department with that role.
In general, it is typically recommended the department where the payroll resides should complete the pre review. However, in cases where the grant is in another CAS department or another university department, there may be a need to communicate and coordinate about the cross-unit grant.
Since the faculty is certifying in the end, that is the main action under scrutiny in the case of an audit, so the pre review step is more so to avoid any obvious inaccuracies or identify changes that need to be made prior the certification. This means it isn't a requirement for both departments to review, but if it makes sense and helps ensure the statement is accurate before getting to the faculty/PI to certify, it is a best practice.
Recommended actions:
- Communicate between units on information and which unit is completing each step.
- If it is determined another individual should be listed as effort coordinator, see job aid on Managing Coordinator Assignments and Authorizations (including how to identify a primary Effort Coordinator).
- One department can be listed as primary and the other as secondary, but it will allow both to participate in the pre review action.
- In some cases, this means receiving information in a restricted access to the specific faculty that has grants in two different departments or downloading the effort statement into pdf to share with the grant manager in the second department to give their input.
GIM 35 covers University policy for effort reporting.
The Effort Reporting website is full of information! Check out the following subpages on:
- Effort Reporting Schedule
- Effort Compliance Topics
- Effort Reporting System/Processes
- Job Aids and Tools
- Training
- ECC Office Hours
You can also contact the following emails for additional support:
- Post Award Fiscal Compliance email: gcafco@uw.edu
- For questions and issues relating to Effort Reporting, email: effortreporting@uw.edu
For Further Support
Back to TopReach out and we will route your questions, comments, and/or ideas to the appropriate subject matter experts on our team and keep an eye out for monthly updates via AST's Newsletter.
Last Updated: Tuesday, November 25, 2025