Advances move through different statuses as they are created and processed. In addition to status, an advance also has a value for “Last Action Taken” which indicates what stage of processing it has completed.
| Status |
Last Action Taken |
Process Stage |
| In GCA |
Received in GCA |
Received; has GCA Managed Information and Budgets sections |
| In GCA |
Budget # Assigned/Confirmed |
Assigned a new budget number, or confirmed an existing number |
| Returned |
Returned |
Advance returned by GCA to campus for modification |
| In GCA |
Re-sent by campus |
Advance re-sent by campus to GCA after any modification |
| Processed |
Campus Notified |
Selected Mark Setup Complete & Notify Campus which sends an automated email to the PI and the Advance Preparer to let them know the advance has been processed |
A Principal Investigator (PI) or Research Administrator (RA) can request authorization to spend in advance of the receipt of an award or the setting up of an award in UW systems. The department must guarantee these expenditures if an award does not come through. The UW authorizes advance spending through the assignment of an advance budget number.
The PI or RA uses SAGE to create the Advance Budget Number Requests. Once approved by the PI, Department Reviewer, and the Office of Research SFI Reviewer, the advance moves to Received in GCA / In GCA status and is available for processing in SERA.
From the tasklist, click the Select button to open an Advance.
The advance request header for a New or Renewal advance includes (reading left to right):
- a blue arrow to return to the tasklist
- the text Advance Budget Request followed by its number (ADV)
- a link to the associated cycle
- a link to the associated application
- selecting this link opens the SPAERC Applications tasklist displaying just the associated application
- the advance budget number (when in Processed status)
- the request status
- a more options menu (three vertical dots) which allows you to add a comment
For an extension advance, in place of the links to the associated cycle and application, there is a link to the associated advance that is being extended.
The following two images show an example header for a new advance and for an advance extension.
When you open an advance, by default the Request Summary section will display.
Within the Request Summary, you can edit the GCA Managed Information and Budgets sections. You will be able to view the remaining sections:
- General Information
- SFI & FCOI
- Cost Share
- Non-Fiscal Compliance
- Supporting Attachments
- Delegation of PI Approval
These sections are described in the Advance Review & Submit, Request Summary article in the SAGE User Guide.
Within the Request Summary, you can also Return a Request.
Once a budget number or numbers are assigned, you can Mark Setup Complete & Notify Campus to complete the process. This will change the advance’s status to Processed, display the number in the header, and update the GCA and Processes nodes on the Approval Flow.
GCA staff use the System for Electronic Research Accounting (SERA) to manage SAGE-related items of the following types:
- Advance Budget Number Requests (ADV): Campus users create these to request a budget number in advance of their award so that they can begin spending the award.
- Funding Actions (FA): OSP staff create these to manage awards received by the UW.
- Post-Award Changes (PAC): OSP staff create these to manage any award changes made after the initial receipt.
- Other Forms (OTH): GCA staff create these to record and track forms related to setting up new budgets in addition to Advances, Funding Actions and Post-Award Changes.
Features
Make Short Title field uppercase
The Short Title field for FA or PAC inherits the original value from its parent eGC1 which typically is a mixed case entry. A change has been made to always store and display this field in uppercase in SERA independent of the eGC1. This will help speed up data entry as GCA staff can directly copy and paste the data in FIN, and the budget name will already be in uppercase as required by FIN.
Include new FA and PAC data elements in extract
About 30 additional FA/PAC fields have been identified by GCA and added to the data extract (through “Export Pending Actions” from the “Search” tab in SERA). The new fields are added to the end of the file, and the GCA flag is listed as 9 separate yes/no columns on the report. The addition of these fields will help speed up the budget setup process as GCA staff won’t need to look for the information elsewhere.
Make FA “Total Cost Share Amount” Field format Numeric
The “Total Cost Share Amount” field on an FA (previously alphanumerical format) has been cleaned up and all historic non-numeric data has been purged (approved by OSP). The field has been reformatted to accept numeric values only. It is allowed to be empty when the Cost Share flag is “no”, and a numeric value or zero is required when Cost Share is “yes” per business rules. This change will help with cost share amount calculation and match that to Cost Share Summary in eFECS. As a result of this change, the reporting field “totalCostShareAmount” in the Award table in the EDW 1.0 database RAD has also been updated to numeric.
Update auto-generated ADV emails and add to Admin tools
The auto-generated campus notification emails (for FA, PAC and ADV) have been edited by GCA and updated in SERA. The content of these emails is now stored in the admin database and can now be managed through the SAGE admin tool. A new admin UI “SAGE/SERA” (similar to SAGE/SPAERC) is yet to be developed so GCA staff can access this admin tool and manage the content of these emails. This task will be included in a future release (to be prioritized and scheduled).
