1. EFFORT CERTIFICATION and REPORTING (ECR)
Information for Department Administrators
Revised – August 2010
Part II of III

2. Table of Contents Part I – see separate presentation
Effort and ECR Background
ECR Basics
Establishing a New Department Administrator
Part II – this presentation
Monthly FEI Process
Effort Certification
Contact Information
Part III – see separate presentation
Reviewing Previous Certifications
Recertification
Reports

3. FUNDING & EFFORT INFORMATION (FEI)
Monthly
FUNDING & EFFORT INFORMATION (FEI)
Process

4. Reports – Monthly Funding & Effort Information Report (FEI)
The Monthly Funding and Effort Information Report shows all the payroll information for a certifier for a specific period.
To run the report, the user can select the link on the Department Dashboard page. This method will run the report for the department being viewed for the last month for which information exists in the system.
The report can also be run from the View Reports page. The user enters the relevant information in the search boxes and selects ‘Run Report’.

5. Reports – Monthly Funding & Effort Information Report (FEI)
Data within the FEI report is restricted by system security. An administrator can run the report for an entire department if they are setup within ECRT as an administrator for that department.
They can also run it for a single employee if that employee has charged time to an award or account owned by their department.
Note that when filling out the selection screen for the report, the user should fill in EITHER the employee line or the department line. Do NOT fill in both. OR
NOT BOTH

6. Reports – Monthly Funding & Effort Information Report
The Monthly Funding and Effort Information Report shows the account number, account title, account type indicator (master, sub, cost sharing, or grant related income), job code, account purpose, PI, and actual payroll percentage charged to each account.

7. Reports – Monthly Funding & Effort Information Report
The second page of the FEI report provides space for requests to transfer salary charges as well as to capture the signatures necessary to process such a request.
Please remember government regulations require that transfers must be completed within 90 days of the original charge.
In addition, transfers done on a monthly basis to capture the correct effort in an account, help eliminate questions, need for memos, etc. .

8. Certifier Perspective
Effort Certification
Certifier Perspective

9. Certification – Certifier Actions
A certifier, such as a PI, has a limited number of links on their Welcome screen when they log into ECR. In general, they can certify their effort and the effort of research assistants that work for them. They can also see reports related to their projects.
A certifier starts the effort certification process by clicking on the link to Certify My Effort.

10. Note: names used are fictitious
Certification – Reviewing Effort
Note: names used are fictitious
The certifier is brought to the Effort Certification screen. The screen must be reviewed by the certifier and then approved to move to the “certification statement”.
The screen shows % of effort spent on each activity
The Certification Payroll report link shows the dollars paid the researcher and how the percentages on this screen were calculated.
The screen will reflect 100% from all activities. This example shows a researcher with two grants as well as non grant activity.

11. Certification – Reviewing Effort
This is the bottom ½ of a certification screen.
The Sponsored activity appears in the top part of the card and the Non Sponsored activity appears in the bottom part of the card. There are subtotals for each award as well as the Sponsored and Non Sponsored areas.
The total effort may add to slightly more than 100% because of rounding. This will have no adverse effect on the certification process or statement.
The text box at the bottom allows certifiers to enter comments and notes.
THIS TEXT BOX ALLOWS CERTIFIES AND ADMINISTRATORS TO SHARE INFORMATION

12. Certification – Reviewing Effort
This example shows a researcher with cost shared activity.
Notice the subtotal for each award includes both direct and cost shared amounts.
Totals are shown for sponsored and non-sponsored categories. .

13. Certification Payroll Report
This is the ECPR report as it appears in HTML format. It can be created in Excel, PDF or other formats by clicking on the icons on the lower right portion of the screen.
There are two formats available. The Account View shows the payroll dollar totals and related percentages calculated by ECR and display on the Effort Statement.
A researcher questioning how effort percentages were derived, will find this report useful as it provides detail information.

14. Certification Payroll Report
This example shows the ECPR report second option: Pay Period format.
This format sorts the payroll dollars by pay period and shows the payroll totals for each pay period and for the entire certification period.
This report should be used by Department Administrators if they need to reconcile the total payroll dollars and distribution sent to ECR with Payroll system reports.

15. Certification – Effort Card Tools
This example illustrates additional tools and links available to a researcher as they certify their effort.
A link to an effort calculator is located above the column headings on the right side of the card. This tool can be used by a researcher to convert hours or dollars to a percentage.
The Show Dollar Value link will translate the percentages into the underlying payroll dollars.
The Refresh Statement link will recalculate the card percentages and totals.
The Related Reports link is another way to access the Certification Payroll Report.

16. Certification – Effort Calculator
If the user clicks the Effort Calculator link described on the previous page, a pop-up window appears with the information on the left.
The first step in using the calculator is to fill in the average number of hours the researcher works in a week.
Next the user enters values in either the Hours or the Percentage columns. After clicking on the “Calculate” box or moving to a new entry box, the system will calculate either the hours or the percentage, depending on which data was entered. In this example the hours were entered and the percentages calculated.
Entry
Result

17. Certification – View Dollars
If the user clicks the Show Dollar Value link above the column headings, the view at the left is displayed. The percentages in each column will be translated to the payroll dollars represented by the percentages.
Clicking the Show Percent Value link above the columns returns the user to the standard certification view of the effort card.
NOTE: When viewing the effort card in dollar values, the certification button at the bottom is not active. Certification must be done in percentages, not dollars.

18. Certification – View Line Dollars
Another useful tool on the effort card is the View Line Dollars icon.
Clicking this icon will display a section of the Certification Payroll Report report described earlier that shows the transactions summarized to arrive at the percentage on the individual line. This information is displayed in a pop-up window on top of the effort statement screen.
The information on this report provides the detail behind the totals displayed when the View Dollars link is clicked. (See previous page.)

19. Certification – Certifying Effort
Returning to our example, we can see this certifier has two awards.
Within each award, the accounts for the award are listed.
To certify effort, a researcher enters the percentage of effort spent on each award/account representing the effort spent on each activity and clicks the checkbox next to each line.
AMOUNTS NEED TO BE ENTERED AS WHOLE NUMBERS.
The screen displays both sponsored and non sponsored accounts as the certification must account for 100% of UM effort.

20. Certification – Certifying Effort
After all effort percentages are entered for all activity, the certifier will see an error message if the total certified effort is less than 100%.
When all effort has been accounted for, the researcher clicks the “Certify” button below the totals.

21. Certification – Certifying Effort
The researcher is then presented with a message which requires positive certification that the effort recorded in the screen is a reasonable approximation of the actual effort spent on all activities for which he/she is compensated by UM.
In this example, we are showing the certification screen in two slides for easier viewing.

22. Certification – Certifying Effort
In this example, there were no changes, so there was no need to add a note or attachment to the statement.
After a final review of the information on the page and the certification statement at the top, the certifier will click the “I Agree” button under the message (see previous slide).
At this point, the certifier is returned to the Home Page.

23. Certification – Certifying Effort
Using a different example, the certifier entered effort percentages that differ from the ‘Computed Effort %” (Computed effort reflects how the salary was charged in the payroll system)
The ‘Certified %’ for the second award as entered by the certifier differs from the ‘Computed Effort %’.
The certification screen continues on the next slide.

24. Certification – Certifying Effort
In this example, the certifier then enters an explanation for the changes in the text box for the Effort Note.
In this example, the certifier’s explanation states that extra work was done in the current period to offset an anticipated reduced amount of effort in the next period.
The department administrator reviews the changed effort and initiates a payroll journal entry to change the account distribution in the payroll system and reflect the correct effort on the grants.
I put in extra time on this award this period because I have limited time next period. Overall effort should remain on budget over the current year.

25. Certification – Certifying Effort
Below the note text box is the Effort Note History section. Clicking on the + sign will expand the history to show all notes entered, who entered them and when they were entered The expanded notes section is shown at the bottom.
Tools are provided to allow the user to copy the contents of old notes into new notes above.

26. Certification – Certifying Effort
Need more information about an account?
The account names are all links to a summary screen, an example of which is shown on the next slide.
To get there, click on the account name.
I put in extra time on this award this period because I have limited time next period. Overall effort should remain on budget over the current year.

27. Certification – Account Summary Page
Need more information about an account?
The account names clicked on the previous slide bring you to the Account Summary screen.
The summary screen shows more information about the account, including a longer name, the number, a description, amount, the sponsor name and number, the PI, and the start and end dates.
The department that is associated to the account is shown in the middle section.
The summary screen also shows all of the certifiers charging time to the award and their related departments.

28. Administrator Perspective

29. Dept. Administrator – Certification Review
Once a researcher has certified their effort, it is the responsibility of the Department Administrator to review what has been submitted.
In ECR, the review process is done by selecting the Manage Effort Tasks link on the home page.
The number in parentheses at the end of the link indicates how many tasks have been routed by the system to the Dept. Administrator and need to be completed.

30. Dept. Administrator – Certification Review
The Dept. Admin. Is taken to their “To Do List”. Each line in the list represents a certification that needs to be processed.
Note that in the earlier version of ECR a double asterisk was used to denote certifications that had no changes made by the certifier. In the new version of ECR, forms with no changes are completed automatically after being certified by the user. Therefore, only certifications with changes will appear on this list.
Each line will now need to be reviewed due to changes. The next step is to click on one of these lines.

31. Dept. Administrator – Certification Processing
When changes have been made to the certification statement by the researcher, ECR calculates the dollars related to the changes and shows them to the right of the changed lines.
In this example, $ is reflected as the amount that would be potentially transferred to the non-sponsored account from the sponsored account. Typically, the researcher should include notes in the bottom section if the effort lines were changed. THIS AMOUNT IS A GUIDE AND NEEDS TO BE VERIFIED BY THE ADMINISTRATOR. PAYROLL JOURNALS NEED TO BE DONE BY PAY PERIOD, NOT FOR THE TOTAL OF THE CERTIFICATION PERIOD.
It is the administrator’s responsibility to review the appropriateness of the cost transfers based on the effort that has been certified and initiate a payroll transfer for the correct amount within the 90 day period required by the government.
See next slide

32. Dept. Administrator – Certification Processing
After review, the administrator clicks the “Process” button at bottom of the page.
It is recommended that the administrator add notes in the box at the bottom of the screen for future reference. An example may be: Payroll Journals completed on 9/30/09.
After processing, the item is moved from the administrator’s task list and the status is set to “completed”.

33. Dept. Administrator – Certification Re-Processing
This does not appear to be a valid distribution of effort. I will be contacting you shortly to discuss.
If after reviewing the Certification the Administrator believes there is an error, they should indicate the reason why there is a problem in the notes box and click the “Return To Certifier” button at the bottom of the screen.
This action causes an to automatically be sent from the Administrator to the Researcher telling them that the certification needs further review and requires the administrator to contact the researcher. It also changes the status of the certification from “Certified” back to “Not Certified”.
The researcher would then reopen the certification, review the administrator’s notes, and take appropriate action if needed, and resubmit for processing.

34. Manual Certifications

35. Dept. Administrator – Manual Certifications
University of Miami policy prohibits Department Administrators from certifying effort on behalf of researchers. If a researcher does not want to use ECR to certify their effort, the DA will have to print out a certification form, have the researcher sign it, and then upload the form into the system.
This process is started from the Department Dashboard screen. To access that screen and begin the process, the user will select the ‘Department Dashboard’ link.

36. Dept. Administrator – Manual Certifications
In anticipation that some researchers will not use the system to certify their time, ECR accommodates manual processing of their forms.
The Administrator should first select the Department Dashboard Link on the home page.
Go to the Certifer List and select the researcher to process by clicking on the icon for the appropriate certification period.

37. Dept. Administrator – Manual Certifications
It is against UM policy for an Administrator to certify time for a researcher. So if the certifier will not fill out his/her effort statement, the Administrator must coordinate the certification.
The Administrator’s first step is to print the certification form by clicking the Link at the top of the screen.

38. Dept. Administrator – Manual Certifications
The Administrator should return to the Department Dashboard page and again click on the researcher to be processed after the manual certification card has been signed This will bring up the certification page.
STEPS:
Print certification form, and have it manually certified by researcher (include the certifier's signature and date).
Scan the form and save it to your computer (save it to a place in your computer you will remember later).
Enter the percentages as certified on the paper certification form and check each of the boxes.
(Continues on next slide)

39. Dept. Administrator – Manual Certifications
(Continued from previous slide)
Upload form from where you saved it in your computer by using the Attach File button. See Next Slide for detailed examples.
You must add a note to reflect that the certification was completed manually. Please remember to save your note by clicking Save Effort Note button.
Finally, click the “Certify” button and complete the certification process.
The electronic record now reflects what was certified, the record is marked as completed, the scanned document is stored in ECR as well as the note for audit trail purposes.
Certification was manually completed by Mr. Esxxx on 9/16/09 and it is attached

40. Dept. Administrator – File Attachments
To upload an attachment, first click on the Attach File link on the effort card.
The pop-up box to the left will appear. In this box, click the Browse button.
A second pop-up window will appear for your desktop or local disk drives. Locate where the attachment was stored and click the file name. It will be populated to the File Name box at the bottom of the window.
Next click “Open” on the second pop-up.

41. Dept. Administrator – File Attachments
The file name from the second pop-up box will be populated into the first pop-up window.
Now click “Attach File”. Once the file is attached, the pop-up window disappears and the name of the attachment is shown on the effort card.
Clicking on the Action icon with the page and arrow will allow the user to open the attachment – the signed effort form.

42. Contact Information

43. See separate presentations I and III for additional information
Questions?
Judy Mallon
Supervisor
Sponsored Programs Or
Maria V. Ortiz
Director
See separate presentations I and III for additional information