Effort Certification

Note that this policy applies only to faculty who have UW-based sponsored project effort. Faculty who only have SCRI-based sponsored project effort will complete their effort certification via SCRI. Faculty that have sponsored project effort at both institutions will need to complete both certifications.

Table of Contents

  1. Background
    1. What does effort mean in this context?
    2. What is effort certification?
    3. ­­Effort certification at UW
    4. Salary cap cost share
  2. ­­­Process for UW Pediatrics faculty
    1. Effort Certification within UW Pediatrics
    2. Sample timelines
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Background

What does effort mean in this context?

  • “Effort” refers to the amount of time that an individual spends on a specific activity.
  • It is expressed as a percentage of total effort, not units of time; e.g. 50% vs. 20 hours/week.
  • 100% is based on actual time spent, not on a standard work week
    • If someone works part-time for 20 hours a week, their 100% = 20 hours
    • If someone works 40 hours in a week, their 100% = 40 hours
    • If someone works 80 hours in a week, their 100% = 80 hours
  • The 100% effort includes institutional activities only
    • For example, consulting work or serving on an NIH study section are not included
  • Note that this differs slightly from the NIH concept of “calendar months” or “person months.” They are similar in that it is based on actual time spent, i.e. working 40 hours a week or 80 hours a week over the course of a month are both 1 calendar month. But NIH reflects part-time effort, e.g. 50% effort for one month is 0.5 calendar months.

What is effort certification?

  • Process required by federal Uniform Guidance 2 CFR 200.430 for federal grant expenditures
  • Functions as a “receipt”/audit documentation for salary expenses
    • For non-salary expenses we get a receipt or invoice detailing exactly what was purchased and how much it cost. We don’t have the equivalent for salaries so the effort certification process fills that gap.
  • Effort certification is imprecise, which the federal government recognizes:
    • Grantees must have a system that provides “… reasonable assurance that the charges are accurate, allowable, and properly allocated”
    • “…teaching, research, service, and administration are often inextricably intermingled in an academic setting. Therefore, a precise assessment of factors contributing to costs is not required when IHEs record salaries and wages charged to Federal awards.”
  • There is no certification requirement for non-grant effort. This process is intended to function as audit documentation for grant expenditures.
  • Note that faculty are not allowed to charge 100% of their effort to sponsored projects, per SOM and Pediatrics policy. Faculty have required institutional activities such as committee service, mentoring, and grant writing that cannot be charged to grants. Pediatrics requires a minimum of 5% non-sponsored effort to comply with SOM policy.

­­Effort certification at UW

  • UW uses ECC system to certify all sponsored project effort, not just federal
    • Effort certification is required for federal awards but UW and peer institutions use it to generate the same level of audit documentation for all awards
  • Detailed certification of non-sponsored effort is not required and not possible within ECC
    • ECC will document what funding sources were used to pay for non-sponsored effort.
    • Pediatrics may use a single funding source to pay for multiple non-sponsored effort categories (e.g. both clinical effort and medical direction) or may use multiple funding sources to pay for a single non-sponsored effort category.
  • Project Statements are used for staff effort
    • PIs certify all staff effort on each grant (separately) for which they are PI
    • Effort is certified in 3-month cycles
  • Effort Statements are used for faculty effort
    • Faculty certify their own effort for all grants that they work on regardless of who is PI
    • Effort is certified in 6-month cycles to capture a reasonable average that accounts for routine week-to-week/month-to-month changes in focus, such as a week on clinical service where no research is done or a week in the field where only research is done
  • Situations that cause unusual/complex FTE numbers
    • Faculty who work part-time FTE have their effort adjusted to 100%; e.g. 40% FTE out of 75% total FTE will show on an effort statement as 53.3333% FTE (.40/.75)
    • Mid-cycle changes such as a grant ending or beginning; e.g. 2 months of 25% effort out of a 6 month period will show as 8.3333% (.25*2/6)

Salary cap cost share

  • Workday allows both direct-charged and cost-shared effort to be tagged as effort on a grant, hypothetically allowing ECC to automatically reflect “true” FTE
  • However, this function does not work for any Pediatrics faculty who receive CUMG paychecks, also known as an X/Y salary split (X = UW pay, Y = CUMG pay)
  • For faculty with X/Y splits, the grants manager must manually update ECC to reflect the correct salary cap cost share and correct total FTE
  • The Research Admin team has developed detailed FTE allocation calculators to facilitate oversight of this gap and to ensure the numbers in ECC are correct
  • The most important thing you can do as a faculty member is regularly monitor your “true” FTE in collaboration with your assigned grants manager
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­­­Process for UW Pediatrics faculty

Effort Certification within UW Pediatrics

  1. Each grants manager works with their assigned PIs to confirm a budget plan for each grant and assign costing allocations accordingly
  2. The grants manager works with each PI to monitor their budgets monthly to ensure accuracy and make corrections
  3. The grants manager works with each PI to monitor their “true” FTE monthly to ensure accuracy and make corrections
  4. Project statements/effort statements become available in ECC and go to grants manager first
  5. The grants manager reviews for accuracy and corrects for salary cap cost share
  6. The grants manager reviews statement(s) with PI
  7. The grants manager completes “pre-review” in ECC so statement is routed to PI
    • Steps 6 and 7 can happen in any order depending on the PI’s preference
  8. PI completes certification in ECC
    Job Aids:

Sample timelines

  • Project Statements (staff):
    • Performance period: 7/1/25-9/30/25
    • Statements available for grants manager pre-review: 11/4/25
    • Target date for grant manager to complete pre-review: 12/12/25
    • Due date: 1/23/26
  • Effort statements (faculty):
    • Performance period: 7/1/25-12/31/25
    • Statements available for grants manager pre-review: 1/27/26
    • Target date for grant manager to complete pre-review: 2/27/26
    • Due date: 4/24/26
  • We aim to provide 6-8 weeks for faculty to review their statements, ask any questions, review any corrections, and certify
  • Late certification is better than incorrect certification. Re-opening and re-certifying effort is a red flag for auditors. We would much rather miss a deadline to ensure everything is correct than certify something incorrect and have to fix it later.

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