Effective Date: July 1, 1996

In order to comply with the Federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-21 and the Cost Accounting Standards Board’s cost accounting standards, the University of Florida’s policy for charging costs to federally sponsored projects is:

1. Clerical and administrative salaries will be charged indirectly unless direct charging can be justified in accordance with OMB Circular A-21.
    
2. Postage will generally be charged indirectly.
    
3. Basic telephone charges will generally be charged indirectly.
    
4. Lab supplies will generally be charged directly.
    
5. Office supplies will generally be charged indirectly.
    
6. General purpose software will generally be charged indirectly.
    
7. Technical software will generally be charged directly.
    
8. Subscriptions will generally be charged indirectly.
    
9. Institutional and individual memberships will generally be charged indirectly.
    
10. Repair and maintenance charges for equipment purchased on the award will generally be charged directly.
     
11. Other related costs (photocopies, travel, technical and scientific equipment, animal care and other services provided by specialized service facilities) will generally be charged directly.

Exceptions to this policy will be permitted only under the following circumstances:

1. Clerical and Administrative personnel whose salaries are paid from a federally sponsored project must have responsibilities specifically associated with the work of the federally sponsored project. The specific association requirement may be satisfied in one of two ways:

1. Unusually high levels of administrative activity associated with unusually large and complex projects such as program projects, cooperative agreements, coordinating centers, and multi-center grants or operations offices. Only in such cases, eligible responsibilities might include coordination of financial activities for multiple projects, core units, meetings for steering or advisory committees, pilot project programs, special reporting needs, etc.
    
2. Administrative work that is specifically related to the distinctive scientific and technical requirements of the work of the sponsored project, such as data collection, maintaining subject/patient data, phone surveys, etc.

The clerical and administrative salaries that support a major project or activity may be requested. A major project would include:

1. Large complex programs such as general clinical research centers, primate centers, engineering research centers and other federally sponsored projects that entail assembling and managing teams of investigators from a large number of institutions.
    
2. Projects which involve extensive data accumulation and entry, surveying, tabulation, cataloging and reporting such as epidemiological studies, clinical trials and retrospective clinical records studies.
    
3. Projects that require making substantial travel and meeting arrangements for large numbers of program participants.
    
4. Projects whose principal focus is the preparation and production of manuals and large reports excluding routine progress and technical reports.
    
5. Projects that are geographically inaccessible to normal departmental administrative services i.e., seagoing research vessels and radio astronomy projects that are remote (not in Alachua County) from campus.

See the following web site for the justification forms and instructions on how to complete them: 

http://rgp.ufl.edu/research/formstable.html

The following are costs that may be allowed as direct charges to a grant if the CAS Exemption form can show how the charging of such costs to the award are for "unlike circumstances".  Examples include: 

Postage
Basic Telephone
General Office Supplies
General Purpose software

Non-Federal Sponsored Agreements

All costs may be direct charged. All questions should be directed to the appropriate contract and grant office for your college.