Effort Reporting FAQs

General Questions

  1. What is effort reporting?
  2. Who is required to certify effort?
  3. I didn’t have to certify effort in the past.  Why do I have to do it now?
  4. How often do I need to certify my effort?
  5. What’s the level of precision when I certify my effort?
  6. Is it necessary for me to change my payroll distribution to reflect the short term fluctuation of my effort on various activities?
  7. What happens if I don’t certify my effort?

Who should certify?

  1. As a PI, can I allow an administrator to certify my effort report for me?
  2. As a PI on a large research project, what do I do if I don’t have enough specific knowledge about the work performed by employees who work on the project but do not report to me on a regular basis?
  3. As a staff member working for a PI, what do I do if I don’t have enough specific knowledge about the funding projects that I am working on?
  4. How do faculty members or employees who have left the University certify the effort report?
  5. As a PI, how do I certify the effort of employees who work on my projects and also work on projects for other PIs?

UA compensated activities and level of effort

  1. Is all of my salary subject to effort reporting?
  2. When allocating my effort to various UA related activities, what activities should I consider? (fellowship and scholarship should be excluded when considering compensated effort)
  3. I have a 9-month appointment. How do I account for my effort?
  4. Is there a maximum level of effort that can be charged to sponsored projects?
  5. Is the time that I spend on writing grant proposal chargeable to sponsored projects?
  6. When certifying my effort, how do I treat vacation, sick leave, or other time off provided by the University policy?
  7. I work more than 40 hours a week.  Does effort reporting include only the work I perform within the 40 hour week?
  8. If I perform my University activities outside of the normal business hours (i.e., nights/weekends/vacation), do I still have to account for that time as part of my total University compensated effort?
  9. If I perform my University related activities at home or during travel, do I include this time when I consider my total University compensated effort?
  10. If I voluntarily worked more hours on my service duties or my administrative duties, do I have to change the effort percentage devoted to my sponsored project(s)?
  11. Can any work I do be considered as done “on my own time”?
  12. How do I certify the effort I spend on industry-sponsored clinical trials, for which I am compensated on a per patient basis?
  13. How do I certify the effort I spend on different activities when the base salaries for these activities are different?
  14. How do I certify the effort I spend on NIH projects when my salary exceeds the NIH salary cap?
  15. How is cost sharing reflected on my effort report?
  16. What should I do if I need to reduce the effort on my sponsored project?