Documenting Effort Outside of ECRT

In general, all effort expended on a sponsored project must be confirmed using the Effort Certification and Reporting Tool (ECRT). There are several situations when a researcher will expend effort on a project and use another method to document that time. These situations are:

Volunteer or unpaid effort for adjunct or retired faculty who act as principal investigator or key personnel member:

There are certain circumstances when a faculty member will act as principal investigator or key personnel member but is not paid for that time. Because there is no payroll or cost sharing data, ECRT will not generate an effort statement for these individuals. However, because of their roles in the project, their unpaid effort must be documented and this documentation must be available in the event of an audit. To do this:

1. Produce a manual effort statement using the form at http://www.ospa.umn.edu/forms/unpaideffort.xls.

2. Send the statement to the effort administrator in SPA where this statement will be available in the event of an audit.

Volunteer or unpaid effort for non-principal investigator or key personnel:

The University does not require documentation of this voluntary effort. However, if the researchers' contributions were promised in the proposal and accepted in the award, then it must be documented in case the sponsor wants proof that the commitment was met. Produce a manual effort statement using the form at http://www.ospa.umn.edu/forms/unpaideffort.xls. Send the statement to the effort administrator in SPA where this statement will be available in the event of an audit.

Effort percentages do not equal payroll and cost sharing data:

In these cases, the effort coordinator must document the correct effort outside of ECRT. There are job aides for these situations:

• Faculty with 9-month appointment terms when 9-month pay is spread over 12 months (9 over 12)

• Researchers who are paid multiple rates of pay

• Researchers who are paid overload pay

• Researchers who received retroactive pay