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Monthly Reconciliation

As part of its overall system of internal controls, the University of Maine (UM) requires that a person familiar with activity on a sponsored project review the monthly transactions on the general ledger of that project to reconcile all transactions. Office of Research Administration (ORA) reserves the right to request a copy of the monthly reconciliation procedure per department from time-to-time in connection with Cost Transfers.

General Monthly Checklist for Administrators and Principal Investigators (PI)

In general, any discrepancies a PI notices should be reported to the grant administrator, who will take action to rectify the problem. ORA has created a few simple tools to use during monthly reconciliations. The Monthly Reconciliation Checklist and a simple Financial Review Log can be downloaded here. GL Reader instructions is also available to assist departments with monthly reconciliation/project account reviews.

Expenditures

Salaries

  • Were all salaries that belong on this award charged?
  • Were any salaries that don’t belong on this award charged?

Other direct

  • Do I recognize all of the charges posted this month?
  • Are there charges I expected to see that didn’t post this month?
  • Do I see any anomalies — amounts charged twice with identical document numbers, for example?

F&A

  • Does the rate in the “F&A Rate” column agree with what I expect for this award?
  • Does the F&A charged this month agree with the rate shown? Remember that some expenditures, e.g., capital or fabricated equipment, participant support, and subcontracts > $25,000 are not usually subject to F&A.

General

  • Are all Encumbrances closed?
  • Is the budget up to date? (Remember that for some awards, funding subsequent to Year One will be placed in a separate account. When that happens, salaries may need to be reassigned to the new account number. Always run GL reports at the grant level to ensure you capture all internal project numbers for the grant.)
  • Do I have enough money to cover all anticipated expenditures through the end of the budget period? (Check the Balance column, and remember to add salaries, fringe, and F&A to the Commitments column, either in your head or by exporting the summary report to Excel and adding the encumbrances.)

Identify grants that have been closed out by the Grant Accountant. Note: not all grants that have been closed are marked as CLOSED. Grant Accountant will leave closed accounts in “Inactive” status for 6-months after reconciliation prior to moving to “closed” status.