The Pre-Award At-Risk form has been updated and is now available on the ResearchAdmin Forms and Templates page. Please pull down a fresh copy of the current form for each use, as outdated forms will no longer be accepted starting July 15, 2022. Minor updates were made to better capture information for Pre-Award At-Risk requests only. The requested at-risk account start date must be a date that is on or after the anticipated award start date.
If a project will incur allowable costs prior to the award start date, the RA/Unit will need to request separate approval for Pre-Award Spending. Once the ERA Award is active, the RA/Unit will:
1) Submit an award change request to document expanded authorities, or
2) Submit an award change request to request sponsor prior approval.
Any award with pre-award spending should have a designated “Pre-Award Spending Date” in ERA to document the use of expanded authority or sponsor prior approval.
The unit is responsible for any charges made based on anticipation of an approved pre-award period.
Glossary
Pre-Award At-Risk: Pre-Award At-risk accounts provide Principal Investigators (PIs) with an opportunity to initiate sponsored research projects and begin incurring associated expenses when an award has not yet been issued by the sponsor. This should be done in order to allow work on the project to begin while the award is being negotiated, and in order to mitigate the need for cost transfers.
Pre-Award Spending: Pre-award spending is the ability to incur expenditures prior to the actual start date of an award. Typically, Pre-award spending is requested once an award has already been issued by the sponsor and we know the official award start date. Any award with pre-award spending should have a designated “Pre-Award Spending Date” in ERA to document the use of expanded authority or sponsor prior approval.
By Research Operations