Sponsored Program Compliance
8. Financial Management/Audit Realities
Audit Survival Guide
The topics discussed in the earlier pages of this site deal with issues around the general topic of responsible research conduct. These topics touch on different elements of the regulatory environment dealing with the conduct of research and the relationship between the researcher and society.
The remainder of this site deals with another aspect of the regulatory environment—dealing with the management of project funding. Just as with the conduct of research, there are externally imposed requirements on the individual researcher and on the institution related to the management of research funds. The remaining sections of this tutorial focus on obligations to sponsors to maintain fiscal accountability and comply with regulations.
The objectives of good research management are twofold:
- to make best use of available funds to achieve research outcomes
- to avoid problems of fraud, waste and abuse of sponsor support
Increasingly, requirements related to the use of federal funds create serious exposure for the University of Rochester and its individual PIs. One purpose of this site is to minimize that risk.
Audits today focus on the direct costs of research, including the thousands of individual transactions in which PIs authorize the expenditure of sponsor funds for salaries, supplies and other costs of research. Recent university audits and settlements with the federal government have highlighted particular areas where regulations and compliance are complex and sometimes difficult. The following pages of this web site review these issues.
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