Financial reporting

Financial reports 

There are 4 dashboards available in Sapphire to NHMRC Administering Institution Finance Officers (FOs) and Research Administration Officers (RAOs), to assist the submission of grant financial reporting for grants that an Administering Institution manages.  

The Financial Report Summary dashboard, which shows the status of: 

• Annual financial statements (called Regular reports)
• Final acquittals (called Final reports)
• Transfer Acquittals (called Transfer reports).

The Grants - Financial Acquittals dashboard, which summarises the detail provided in submitted report templates, including reported expenditure categories and values, for all reports submitted by the Administering Institution.

The Grants - Financial Milestones dashboard, which lists all payment milestones for all grants held by the Administering Institution.

The Grants - Financial Summary dashboard, which shows all grants held by the Administering Institution and allows selection by grant to provide a breakdown of all payment milestones for that grant.

RAOs and FOs also have access to the financial report download page. This page summarises the number of pending, submitted, rejected and overdue reports for their Administering Institution. FOs can then use the download function to get the full detailed list of reports due for submission, in the format required for submission. If there are multiple reports due for a grant across multiple years, only the earliest year due will be included in the template download.

Administering Institutions are advised to prioritise overdue reports for submission as Sapphire will only accept reports in sequence.

Financial reporting process

1. All financial expenditure data reported to NHMRC is to be consistent with the relevant grant guidelines and the Direct Research Cost Guidelines.
2. Financial reports are managed in Sapphire through a separate Financial reports tab (they do not show as ‘milestones’ on the Grant Milestones tab).
   • Details of previous grant financial reporting is available via the Grants – Financial Acquittals dashboard.
3. Financial reporting templates are available to download from Sapphire for Regular, Final and Transfer financial reports. The template allows bulk upload. 
   • Details on error handling is included in the Grant Management SOP – 2.4.1 Submit Statements on the Sapphire help page. All errors identified and preventing an upload must be addressed before the upload is successful. 
4. The template is in .xlxs format and will download data for all financial reports due and available to submit at the time of the template download. All previous financial reports are to be submitted prior to the Final financial report for the grant. 
   • Note sequential period reporting explained at point 8.
5. The template can be downloaded by financial report type: Regular (previously referred to as Annual Financial Statement), Transfer and Final - or as a single, consolidated download covering all report types where a financial report is pending submission or overdue.
6. The template download will include a combination of pre-populated fields and fields for Administering Institutions to enter their expenditure data.
   • Pre-populated fields should not be deleted or overwritten as this will create an error. 
   • Sapphire will calculate fields that are based on information in system (Grant identifier; income = grant funds paid; balance brought forward = previous report final result).
7. If you do not intend to submit all due reports at the same time, as the template download includes all grant financial reports due, you will need to remove rows for grants that will not be uploaded in the submission.
   • If an expenditure category applies to a grant scheme, the field cannot be left blank.
   • Zero expenditure in a reporting period will not create an error as there may be instances where this is a valid entry.
8. All financial reports will only be able to be uploaded in sequential order. That is, financial reports for all previous report periods must be submitted before the report for the following period becomes available as:
   • Information will only download into the template for grants that have had all financial reports submitted.
   • If there are outstanding Regular reports, these are to be successfully submitted before a Final or Transfer report is submitted.

Submission of financial reports

For NHMRC grants, Regular reports must be submitted to NHMRC by 30 April following each calendar year of funding. Final financial reports must be submitted to NHMRC no later than 6 months after the funding period has been completed, or six months after relinquishment or termination of a grant, preferably earlier. Transfer reports must be submitted within one month of the date the transfer is approved by NHMRC or the effective date of the transfer, whichever is the later. All financial reports may be submitted as soon as their status changes to ‘pending’ and can be submitted before the due date.

Failure to provide report(s) within agreed timeframes will result in consideration of possible actions in accordance with the Funding Agreement.

Categories for financial reporting

Reporting in Sapphire is to follow the template categories as follows and guidance to assist finance officers on how to upload financial statements through Sapphire is available on Sapphire Help.

The field Funds previously returned to NHMRC should no longer be used as where funds have been invoiced for recovery due to overpayment or error during the research activity duration, they are now factored into the income calculation.

Salary expenditure is reported based on the grant guidelines under which the grant was funded.

• Salary & Allowances is used for People Support Schemes where the objective is to support a single investigator and provide a maintenance allowance.
• Scholarships & Stipend is only for use where a post graduate scholar is supported by a NHMRC Post Graduate Scholarship (refer to the Direct Research Cost Guidelines).
• Salary is used for Research Support grants including Investigator Grants, for salary payments to investigators and researchers supported by the grant funding, including salary payments from IRIISS grants. Where guidelines specify a limit on salary payments to a Chief Investigator, it is expected that as per the Funding Agreement the detailed expenditure is available to provide to NHMRC on request. We may ask for this information as part of evaluations or compliance activities.
• Travel & Allowances is for reporting of travel and travel related expenditure for NHMRC People Support Schemes, MRFF Fellowships, TRIP Fellows and ARC/NHMRC Dementia grants and NHMRC Post Graduate Scholarships (and may apply in very limited circumstances for Independent Research Institute Infrastructure Support (IRIISS grants) if allowed under the grant guidelines). All other schemes should include this expenditure into ‘Other Research Costs’.
• Equipment is an expenditure category for IRIISS grants, Equipment grants, Research Support and Investigator Grants for valid expenditure under their grant guidelines and the Direct Research Cost (DRC) guidelines.  
• Other Research Costs is for expenditure that is not salary or equipment for Research Support grants including Investigator Grants and for IRIISS grants where allowed under the grant guidelines. This field is not for use for People Support Schemes or MRFF Fellowships. For ‘the research costs’ allowed under the Postgraduate Scholarship scheme, TRIP Fellows and ARC/NHMRC Dementia grants these should be included under Travel and Allowances.
• Participating Institution Expenditure is for entry of the total expenditure reported by all participating institutions to the relevant grant for the reporting period. It is expected that participating institutions are reporting an expenditure breakdown to the Administering Institution that will be available for review when a grant is audited or additional reporting is requested, such as for evaluation purposes.
• Funds Transferred to New Admin Institution is to record the amount included in the transfer acquittal that has been, or will be, paid to the receiving Administering Institution. It is expected that funds are transferred between institutions as soon as practicable once the transfer is approved by NHMRC to minimise the disruption to the grant. The transfer acquittal does not need to be approved by NHMRC prior to the transfer of funds as we expect the amount to have been agreed between the releasing and receiving institutions/organisations.

Final Reports (Acquittal)

Acquittal refers to the process of assessing and reconciling the Final financial report at the conclusion of the funding or after the transfer of a grant to another Administering Institution. This process enables NHMRC to ascertain whether the Administering Institution has satisfied their obligations to manage the funds as required by the Funding Agreement. The total funding received for the duration of a grant must be reported on a year-by-year basis.

Sapphire facilitates this reporting by building the financial reporting history of a grant as each year's financial information is submitted in system as Regular reports, culminating in a Final Report. NHMRC will raise an invoice to recover any unspent NHMRC funds at the end of the funding period. Administering Institutions are to return unspent funds on receipt of the invoice.

Final financial reports will not be accepted with a negative balance.

Certification

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) (or delegate) of the Administering Institution must certify off system that the accounts and records underlying Regular, Final and Transfer reports have been maintained in accordance with Australian Accounting Standards and the responsible officer (or delegate) must certify that all funds provided for that research activity have been used for that research activity in accordance with the terms of the Funding Agreement. The CFO and responsible officer who have certified will need to be listed as part of the upload process and are to be approved nominated position holders in Sapphire.

Unspent funds and extensions to the funding period

If it is anticipated that the research activity will not be completed in the approved funding period, a variation to extend the grant must be submitted to NHMRC, before the end date of the grant and no less than within a month of the end date of the grant. Late extension requests are unlikely to be approved other than in exceptional circumstances where a grant variation request was unable to be submitted for consideration within the funding period.

Scholarship Final reporting

The process for acquitting a Scholarship (PhD or Masters) at the end of the approved funding period is identical to other grants. However, the $500 thesis allowance should be shown as spent in the Final financial report. No financial report is required from an Administering Institution when the thesis allowance is subsequently paid to the scholar as the funds have already been acquitted. Where there are unspent funds, other than the thesis allowance, at the time of the Final financial report, these must be disclosed in the Final report and will be recovered by NHMRC.