To: CAOs and CFOs,
| What you need to know: • New procedure for “Financial Closeout of Federally Sponsored Projects”, which will be effective August 1, 2025, is developed to support the campus to comply with Federal requirements while ensuring full recovery of project costs. • Departments are encouraged to evaluate the current business processes to ensure timely review and reconciliation of project expense in compliance with UCLA policy 910: Management of Sponsored Projects. • April 11, 2025, a draft of the new procedure was communicated to research administrators, soliciting the feedback until May 9, 2025. |
Dear Colleagues,
Federal agencies have been strictly enforcing the sponsored project’s closeout requirements in Uniform Guidance (§200.344 Closeout) and their policy statements. With an increasing compliance risk, which in turn can increase financial risk and reputation risk, in October 2024, EFM formed a campus wide workgroup including research administrators from various schools to develop the enhanced procedure for “Financial Closeout of Federally Sponsored Projects”.
The workgroup developed the new procedure with the four following goals.
- Compliance: To improve compliance with federal requirements, other sponsor’s policies and UCLA policies.
- Cost Recovery: To ensure a full recovery of costs incurred for the project by posting expenses timely to the general ledger.
- Efficiency: To gain efficiency and reduce error rates by minimizing manual expense adjustments outside Financial System in finalizing expenses and closing the fund.
- Accountability: To clearly define responsibility of each role that takes part in closing the project fund to promote collaboration and keep all parties accountable.
We are pleased to share that a draft of the new procedure for “Financial Closeout of Federally Sponsored Projects” was made available to the research administrators on April 11, 2025, to solicit the feedback through May 9, 2025 via the attached email. After May 9, 2025, we will finalize the procedure incorporating the feedback as appropriate and the new procedure will become effective August 1, 2025.
Please review the procedure document to evaluate the current business processes supporting financial management of sponsored projects to stay incompliance with UCLA policy 910: Management of Sponsored Projects, principles of which were used to develop the new procedure for “Financial Closeout of Federally Sponsored Projects”.
To learn more about the procedure for “Financial Closeout of Federally Sponsored Projects”:
- The draft of the procedure along with FAQ and other relevant documents can be found here.
- Presentation of the webinar held on March 24, 2025, video presentation, and podcast are available for view here.
- Background and other relevant information can be found in the EFM Presentations at RAF, “The New Procedure for Financial Closeout of Sponsored Projects” (March 2025, December 2024, November 2024, and October 2024). All RAF presentations can be found here.
We appreciate your understanding and cooperation as we move through this transition. Should you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to EFM at EFMOperations@research.ucla.edu
Sincerely,
Yoon Lee
Senior Director, UCLA Extramural Fund Management
Office of Research Administration