NIH Type 3 Foreign Supplement (FS) awards are issued under a separate Letter of Credit (LOC) document number from the parent award and require separate accounting and financial reporting. For each FS award, CGA establishes a separate A# in the PeopleSoft Research Administration System (RAS).

FS awards affect how the parent award is administered. Most parent awards that receive an FS award and were previously subject to the Streamlined Noncompeting Award Procedures (SNAP) are prospectively converted to non-SNAP status upon authorization of the FS award. As outlined in the NIH Notice of Award (NOA), this change requires annual financial reporting, and carryover of unobligated balances requires prior NIH approval. To support these requirements, CGA establishes additional activity periods in RAS, as needed.

The award's indirect cost treatment is different. For most Type 3 FS awards, the NOA does not authorize UCSF to recover indirect costs (IDC). Any IDC funding included in the NOA is intended solely for the foreign subrecipient. Accordingly, CGA budgets the entire federal award internally as subaward costs, with 100% of the UCSF budget allocated to direct costs.

These awards require specific accounting treatment. Only subaward expenses should be charged to FS awards. CGA establishes the FS award A# in RAS using the parent award's F&A rate and assigns F&A Base Code I, which excludes subaward expenses from the indirect cost base. As a result, indirect costs are not assessed automatically when subaward expenses post to the ledger. 

If you have questions about NIH Type 3 Foreign Supplement awards, the CGA Service Team is here to help. Please contact us at [email protected].