Project Cost Distribution for Expenses Using Award Funding Patterns

Distribute expenses for sponsored projects automatically based on the designated funding patterns. At the time of expense entry, the employee only needs to specify the correct project, task, and expenditure organization. The expenses are allocated to awards and funding sources based on the defined funding pattern. This helps ensure accurate distribution of project costs for sponsored project expenses that have multiple funding sources and reduces manual corrections during the expense entry and reimbursement process.

Grant Administrators create and maintain funding patterns once a project receives funding from one or more awards and associated funding sources.

Sponsored project expenses are now automatically distributed according to assigned funding patterns. By specifying an expenditure item date range and task level, customers can apply distribution rules that automatically split sponsored project costs, eliminating the need for manual entry of award charging instructions.

Automating the distribution offers several key business benefits:

• Enhances compliance to grant usage rules. This is important for public sector or NGO customers, where grants often come with strict usage rules and regulatory reporting needs.
• Reduces manual work, minimizes human errors, and accelerates the expense reimbursement process.
• Eliminates the complexity of manually splitting costs during expense capture, improving adherence to obligations associated with awards for both external and internal funding sources.

Defining Funding Patterns

Employees no longer need to worry about contract and funding source details or how the expense cost is distributed. They simply need to provide the project, task, and expenditure Organization information, and the system will handle the rest based on the active funding pattern. Manual entry of contract number and funding source details is only required if the sponsored project does not have predefined funding patterns.

Expense submission with only Project and Task Details

Error Handling

If the process is unable to distribute the costs, the expense report remains in the “Pending manager approval” status and is not routed to the manager for approval. The distribution related information, including errors, will not be displayed to employees. Only Auditors, Grant Accountants, or Administrators with appropriate privileges can view the failed distributions using the Project Cost Distribution Results page. The system displays the cause of each error, allowing users to take corrective action such as adjusting the funding pattern. Once resolved, distributions can be regenerated using the expenses audit page.

The Project Cost Distribution Results page will display the funding patterns, distribution sets, and rules that were used for the failed transaction.

Users with privileges to access the Audit work area and generate cost distributions can search for reports that are pending manager approval due to failures in the cost distribution process. They can open the report and view details in the View Project Cost Distribution Details section. This opens the Project Cost Distribution Results page where errors can be reviewed. After resolving the issues, the user authorized to view and correct the distribution can regenerate the distributions by clicking Distribute Project Cost again. The employee is not impacted by any failures or corrections during this entire process. The report automatically resumes the approval flow, once award-related distribution errors are corrected.

Audit Search Page

Expense with Failed Project Cost Distribution

Project Cost Distribution Results

Steps to Enable

Use the Opt In UI to enable this feature. For instructions, refer to the Optional Uptake of New Features section of this document.

Offering: Financials

You will need to opt-in to this feature in the Setup and Maintenance work area. 

• Once you enable this feature, the following activities are required to enable the functionality:
  • Create Funding Patterns
  • Set Funding Patterns to Active to enable:
    • Ability to leave Contract and Funding Source values blank on sponsored projects in expenses 

Tips And Considerations

• You can use funding patterns to distribute project costs only if the funding patterns are in Active status and the expense items are within the date range of the funding pattern.

• Users who have access to the Expense Audit UI (with the Manage Expense Auditing privilege), the ability to view and generate distributions (with the Generate Expense Award Distribution privilege), and access to the expenses business unit (BU), can regenerate distributions once the underlying issues causing the distribution failure have been resolved.

Key Resources

• To know more about cost distribution, see the Project Cost Distribution Using Award Funding Pattern topic.
• Watch Project Cost Distribution Using Award Funding Patterns Readiness Training
• Related help:
  • Using Grants Management
• 23A Update WN for Project Cost Distribution Using Award Funding Patterns

Access Requirements

Users who are assigned a configured job role that contains these privileges can access this feature:

• Privilege Name and Code:
  • Manage Award Funding Patterns (GMS_MANAGE_AWARD_FUNDING_PATTERNS_PRIV)
    • Allows users to manage award funding patterns assigned to a sponsored project.
    • Rolled up to Duty Role—Award Management (ORA_GMS_AWARD_MANAGEMENT_DUTY)
  • Distribute Award Project Costs and Quantities (PJC_DISTRIBUTE_AWARD_PROJECT_COSTS_AND_QUANTITIES_PRIV)
    • Allows users to initiate the Award Distribution process, which matches the costs and quantities provided to available award funding patterns, distributes costs as appropriate, and displays the results.
    • Rolled up to Job Roles:
      • Grant Management
        • Grants Accountant (ORA_PJF_GRANTS_ACCOUNTANT_JOB)
  • Error Handling in Expenses using Audit UI
    • Allows access to the Auditing work area—Manage Expense Auditing (EXM_MANAGE_EXPENSE_AUDITING_PRIV)

    • Allows viewing and generating distributions for a sponsored project with an active award funding pattern—Generate Expense Award Distribution (EXM_GEN_AWARD_DIST_PRIV)

    • In the data security policy, provide BU access for which the expenses need to be corrected.