The Contracts and Grants Accounting (CGA) Support Team is pleased to announce two recent enhancements that are part of our ongoing efforts to streamline sponsored research collections and payment processes and to improve internal controls.
RAS Award Contacts
As part of our collections communication strategy, CGA sends monthly notices to sponsors for awards with new outstanding balances over 120 days. Beginning July 2023, CGA will copy the department's Research Services Analyst (RSA) on these monthly communications to facilitate better collaboration.
Campus departments often maintain separate lists of sponsor contacts throughout the award lifecycle. CGA recently worked with UCSF IT to create a new data field within the Research Administration System (RAS) Award Profile page to store award collection contact information centrally. This month, CGA will begin to populate this contact field with known collections contacts.
We are asking RSAs to share their collection-related sponsor contacts by populating the Award Contacts tab of the Award Profile in RAS. Doing so will provide all key UCSF stakeholders with access to the same contact details when resolving outstanding invoices with sponsors. Instructions for adding award contacts are available in the RAS User Reference Guide.
Deposit/Payment Inquiry Report
To improve self-service access to sponsored research payment data, CGA collaborated with IT to deliver a new Deposit/Payment Inquiry Report in RAS. Launched in April, the report is designed to help campus users research sponsored payment activity recorded in RAS. It provides several options to search for payments, including by Deposit ID, Payment ID, Payment Amount, and Received Date.
We advise that all RSAs use this report to review sponsored research payment information before contacting the CGA Payment Desk for assistance. The new report is available from the Department Based Reports folder in RAS. For step-by-step instructions to access the new report, see the How to Run RAS Inquiries training guide.
If you have questions regarding any of our collections and payment processes, email [email protected].