Published July 19, 2021
The Research Management System (RMS) has been refactored to integrate with Workday, calculate fringes using the new flat-rate methodology, and has been updated with the new Facilities & Administrative rates .
Fringe Methodology Updates
What’s New?
- Fringes are charged as a flat rate based on job/appointment type (academic, staff, postdoc, clinical fellow, etc.) and funding source (federal/state/local or other). Dependent tuition will not be charged to state and local sponsors, as has been the case with federal sponsors.
- Workday began charging using this new methodology on July 1, 2021, regardless of when the proposal was submitted or awarded.
- RMS will automatically apply the correct fringe rate based on HR and sponsor information. This can be changed if necessary.
- Fringes will be charged only on the first $200,000 of base salary per calendar year. This is the fringe cap.
- Once the fringe cap is reached by total base pay during a calendar year, fringes can no longer be charged to a grant even if there are remaining months of allowable salary.
- Charging of fringe benefits restarts at the beginning of the new calendar year.
Loading the New Rates in an Existing Budget
All budgets should now use the new rates. Newly created budgets will automatically load the new rates. To trigger the new rates for an existing budget:
- Reapply the F&A;
- Refresh the appointments; or
- Update the effort.
Personnel with Salaries over $200,000 (primarily Danforth)
RMS is not calculating fringes correctly for personnel earning over the fringe cap of $200,000 who have effort only in academic or summer months. Fringes for these personnel should be calculated using the Fringe Calculation Spreadsheet (FCS) tool and manually overridden in RMS. The vendor is developing a fix for this issue.
Resources
- Fringe Calculation Spreadsheet (FCS) tool – This Excel document closely mimics how fringes will be calculated in RMS and charged in Workday. An Instructional Guide is available for assistance using the FCS tool.
- STAR Hot Topic: Fringe Methodology Recording – This session covered details of the new calculation methodology, showed examples, and demonstrated the Fringe Calculation Tool Spreadsheet.
- Fringe reference sheet with rates
- RMS User Guide
New Facilities & Administrative (F&A) Cost Rates
- The university has negotiated new F&A rates along with the updated fringe rates.
- These rates cover the period 7/1/2021 – 6/30/2025.
- RMS has been updated with the new rates.
- All new and competitive renewal proposal submissions to federal agencies should use these rates.
- The updated rates can be viewed on the Institutional Data page.
Workday Integration Updates
RMS has been updated to integrate with Workday. Personnel data is now updated from Workday.
- There is a new field on the WU Setup Questions tab: Award Cost Center. This is sent to Workday by SPA at the time of award. Type in the Cost Center where the award line (fund/account) should be setup in Workday. This must be formatted as CC followed by 7 numbers. (e.g. CC0000000)
- Degree formats display in alignment with the Workday format (e.g. BA displays as B).
- Danforth Chair Appointments no longer pull in to RMS so base salary does not need to be reduced.
- It is expected that everyone retained access to their records. If you lost access to an active RMS record that has not been Submitted to Sponsor, contact your assigned OSRS Grant Analyst and copy Randy Gress and Alison Kleber.
Support
- Join the RMS channel of the Research Administrator Network on Teams to ask questions to OSRS and other RMS users. See this information on enabling notifications for the channel.
- Contact your OSRS Grant Analyst.