Eliminate Quarterly Financial Reports
AAU, COGR and APLU recommend that agencies eliminate quarterly financial reports once they have transitioned to subaccounts. Institutions draw down cash by award accounts on a regular basis, typically monthly. This provides agencies with up-to-date financial information and renders additional financial reports unnecessary. Agencies should also consider whether there is a need for annual and final financial reports and discontinue the practice of requesting financial reports both in online systems and by hard copy resulting in duplicative effort.
- In a recent AAU-COGR-APLU survey, 39,934 separate federal financial status reports were filed by 50 institutions in FY14.
- 46 institutions reported filing 21,627 quarterly financial reports for which cash is already drawn down on an account or document level (and reports are therefore redundant/unnecessary).
- After moving to reporting at the award (subaccount) level NSF no longer requires quarterly financial reports, but many other agencies do (e.g., USDA, Department of State and NASA). NIH is finalizing its transition to reporting at the award level, but it is not clear if they will eliminate quarterly financial reports. In addition, NIH already has financial status reports required to be filed in eCommons (duplication).