Important reminders about research-related payroll expense transfers
A payroll expense transfer (PET) is used to correct errors with posted payroll after the payroll process is complete.
As a best practice, department staff should review payroll transactions on a regular basis to ensure that posted payroll is correct and aligns with actual effort expended. Because PETs impact grant effort reporting, any PETs posted after employee certification require ePERs recertification, thus it is important that these activities are reviewed during the department’s routine review of posted financial activity (i.e. monthly, quarterly, etc.).
Reminders:
- All cost transfers (which include PET transactions) are an exception—not a way of doing business. All PETs moving expenses onto awards will not be approved if they were departmentally approved after a year of the original journal entry date or the date the SpeedType was created, whichever is later. Exceptions will be made at CCO’s discretion.
- If moving payroll after 180 days, a signed PI statement is required and must be attached to the PET when it is created/submitted. PETs submitted without the required PI statement will not be approved until the department has attached it to the PET request. Please make sure the following four questions are answered and included in the attached PI statement:
-
Why was the effort not charged to the award to begin with?
-
Specifically, how does this employee’s effort benefit the underlying activity?
-
Why did it take more than 180 days for the error to be identified?
-
How will this be prevented in the future?
- Please ensure that the award has enough budget before encumbrances to cover the expenses being transferred. If the award does not have sufficient budget, the department may need to provide additional information and/or move unallowable or erroneous expenses before the PET is processed.