Manage project finances

Spending your budget

The following costs will be automatically charged to your budget:

  • staff costs
  • Principal Investigator (PI) time
  • estates costs
  • indirect costs
  • overheads
  • pooled labour

For other types of spending, you'll need to raise a purchase order with the supplier. Your Department can also do this for you. 

Some purchase orders will need to be authorised by your Head of Department, and you may need to go through a bidding process before you can select a supplier and raise a purchase order.

You'll only be able to raise a purchase order between the project's start date and end date, and within the funder's terms and conditions.

You should then confirm that you've received the goods or services, and authorise the payment to the supplier. This is done through invoicing. Invoices  can be paid until the project’s close date, which is typically 2 months after the sponsor’s end date.

For detailed advice, refer to Procurement Services.

Keeping track of your spending

As a PI, you'll need to do a monthly review of your project budget, and track what you've spent. Your Department will help with this.

You should:

  • keep records of what you've spent
  • make sure that you're not overspending
  • only use your budget for agreed items
  • investigate any variations in spending, and clear them with your sponsors

Tools to help

PIs can view financial information about their project at any time, including:

  • budget
  • expenditure
  • remaining amount available to be spent

If you'd like other members of your project to be able to access this information, contact your Finance Analyst at the Research Operations Office.

You can also track your spending using:

  • Research Dashboard
  • tools that your Department has access to, including CUFS, COGNOS and PI Expenditure.

Re-allocating funds

If you need funds to be re-allocated (or ‘vired’) to another expenditure heading, please contact us to check this is permitted within the sponsor’s terms and conditions.

Cross spending on grants

Cross spending on grants is a breach of the sponsor’s terms and conditions and must be avoided.

If you need to spend funds in a way that differs from your award letter or terms and conditions, contact your funder in advance to request permission. 

Expenses

Find out about claiming expenses.

Invoicing and overdue payments

The Research Operations Office is responsible for making sure funds are requested from a sponsor in line with their requirements. Payment terms or schedules are included in the sponsor's terms and conditions.

How invoicing works

We generate invoices using the University Finance System (UFS) and make sure they meet the sponsor’s requirements. For example, by:

  • using the sponsor’s claim form (if required)
  • using the correct budget headings
  • using the correct currency

We’re sometimes required to support invoices or financial statements with copies of invoices for expenditure charged to an award. We’ll contact you or your Department if we need to do this.

If your award has a payment schedule (for example, payments when you achieve milestones), we’ll make sure invoices are raised according to the sponsor’s instructions.

Some sponsors, such as Research Councils, pay the University automatically – these are known as ‘profile payments’. We’ll record any income from profile payments.

Research Councils require that income is not received before it’s needed. We’ll monitor this and check with your department if there’s a variance. 

Income

When the University receives funds from a sponsor, the money is transferred to the correct award by Credit Control. This is done by matching the amount received to an invoice raised by the Research Operations Office.

Debt collection

Debts are chased as soon as possible, without taking legal action unless absolutely necessary.

In exceptional cases where legal action is needed, authority will be requested from:

  • the University of Cambridge Finance Director
  • the Registrary
  • the relevant Department

Any legal costs will be charged to the Department.

Bad debt

To account for the risk that the University may not be paid, there is general bad debt provision based on the age of the debt:

  • over 360 days old: 100% provision
  • over 180 days old: 50% of the debt
  • over 90 days old: 25% of the debt

Outside of general bad debt provision, there may be specific debts we decide are unlikely to be collectable. In these cases, 100% provision will be applied to the debt, and we’ll email the relevant Department.