GIM 15 - Documenting Salary Transfers

The same principles apply to payroll transfers as apply to non-payroll transfers. In addition, the following procedures apply to payroll transfers.

When transferring salary expenditures to or from a sponsored project budget number, the conditions which must be adhered to are as follows:

If salary corrections are required, the department should submit the salary transfer and note the change on the quarterly Grant and Contract Certification Report (GCCR) including the correct budgets and corresponding salary amounts. There is no need to regenerate the GCCR as the correction will appear on the next GCCR following the salary transfer. Do not use whiteout.
The transfer must be completed by the Principal Investigator or an individual who has been delegated authority by the Principal Investigator in writing and has knowledge of how the work benefited the receiving budget (see GIM 14, Delegation of Signature Authority).
The PI or responsible official should then certify (sign) and date the report which is stored in the departmental file for audit.

For faculty salaries already certified, the Faculty Effort Certification (FEC) Report must be revised to reflect the revised distribution of effort and resubmitted to the Management Accounting and Analysis Office along with a copy of the posted salary transfer. In addition, use the free form comment section of the FEC to explain why the change is now appropriate when the effort was previously certified as being a reasonable reflection of effort.
Consistent with non-salary transfers, the requests must be processed within 90 days of when the error was discovered. In addition, submit transfers promptly after the end of the financial reporting period to facilitate timely submission of financial reports by GCA.
The transfer must include the following:
- The reason(s) the expenditure was initially charged to the incorrect budget.
- The reason(s) the expenditure was initially charged to the incorrect budget.
- Payroll transfers must be made within 90 days of when the error is discovered. If, however, the transfer is requested more than 120 days after the transaction date, an explanation for why the transfer is late must be included. The 120 days is from when the transaction posted to the budget to when the transfer is submitted.
- When it is necessary to correct these errors, departments must provide convincing evidence that the services are properly allocable and that the budget receiving the transferred salary actually received a benefit from the services involved.