These procedures, effective for awards issued on or after July 1, 2023, will help you understand how Facilities and Administrative (F&A) cost rates are applied in sponsored project budgets.
Sponsored Financial Services is responsible for clarifying or interpreting this procedure. Please contact us if you have any questions.
Definitions
- Off-Campus Activity
- Off-campus activity is sponsored work requiring an absence from a Cornell campus for a continuous period of at least fourteen days, with neither the use of, nor access to, nor the aid of campus or other university-owned or operated property. By itself, occasional use of facilities away from campus will not lead to the project being designated as off-campus.
What may indicate off-campus activity:
- Conducting fieldwork in a remote location.
- Having residency at another institution or national/international laboratory.
- Incurring project facility rent costs borne by project sources.
What may not indicate off-campus activity:
- Working within a 50-mile radius of the project’s home campus (i.e., Ithaca, Geneva, Cornell Tech).
- Attending conferences or workshops.
- Conducting activities in a personal residence or temporary dwelling, whether or not as a part of a formal remote work arrangement, except when you have a permanent location meeting the off-campus definition, with no on-campus space provided and only infrequent, brief campus visits.
- Being absent from campus for the convenience of the project team members or for reducing project costs.
- Being absent from campus intermittently, where periods of absence are shorter than fourteen continuous days, regardless of the aggregate total.
- Activities conducted by a sub-awardee of Cornell.
- Salary
- Salary is all compensation paid through the Cornell payroll system, not including graduate tuition or payments made by sub-awardees. Sabbatical supplements are normally considered off-campus to encourage faculty members to take full-year sabbaticals. Formally appointed sabbatical salaries (but not other costs) are exempt from indirect costs.
How to Use F&A Rates
For step-by-step guidance see the short How to Use F&A Rates questionnaire or see the process diagram below. The questionnaire will walk you through each question in the process diagram and help you find the end solution.
Most projects tend to be totally on- or off-campus. A small group of projects has both elements. In such cases:
- If the first full year of proposed aggregate salaries and wages on a project are greater than zero and less than or equal to $150,000, the project is treated as entirely on- or off-campus depending on the following conditions:
- If salaries and wages budgeted to be incurred while qualifying as off-campus are greater than 50%, and they are identified as such during the proposal review process, the entire project shall be considered off-campus.
- If salaries and wages budgeted to be incurred while qualifying as on-campus are greater than or equal to 50%, the entire project shall be considered on-campus.
NOTE: For these projects with aggregate salaries less than or equal to $150,000 in the first full year, the status will be determined when the sponsored proposal is prepared, reviewed, and submitted. This process ensures that F&A costs are calculated correctly. If the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) is uncertain of the status, Sponsored Financial Services (SFS) will make the final classification decision. Principal investigators and units are responsible for submitting proposals with adequate time for a full budgetary review. If the off-campus rate is improperly budgeted, and the proposal is not provided to the OSP or the college research office per the guidelines for a full review, or if the proposal does not reflect the intended arrangements, the investigator or department may be required to pay the full F&A cost from discretionary or institutional funds.
- If the first full year of the proposed aggregate salaries and wages is greater than $150,000, or if there are no salaries in the first year, then the project costs must be allocated between both on- and off-campus rates.
Accounting for F&A Costs
Whenever there is a qualifying off-campus component, expenses must be accounted for in an account or sub-account coded as off-campus, and using the proper rate category code (OFF) to permit the correct calculation and application of the F&A rate.
Modifying Project Budgets
If a project is changed from on- or off-campus charges, resulting in changes to some portion of an award or the scope of work, you must follow the normal sponsor and university approval procedures and may be required to submit the changes to OSP for sponsor approval and/or SFS.
Process Diagram
Diagram text-only version