CHAPTER 3. ENTER DATA FIRST TIME



Setting Up Accounts
Add, Edit, or Delete Accounts
Enter Personnel Data
Enter Individual Expenses
Add, Edit, or Delete Expense Categories and Subcategories



SETTING UP ACCOUNTS.

(a) PRELOADED ACCOUNTS

Your grant is awarded with different amounts of monies in different categories that must be kept separate, e.g., travel, salaries, etc. Since Quicken is set up with the paradigm of a checking account, we have set up separate Bank Accounts for the different funding categories that are found in a typical grant (see below).

Although these Accounts were set up for the typical grant from the National Institutes of Health, (NIH), if you don't need any of these accounts for your grant, you can delete them, of if you need other categories you can add them (see below).

The "Bank" accounts that have been set up for you are listed below:

    Additional Expense Award
    Capital Equipment Award
    Expendable Material and Services Award
    Indirect Costs Award
    Other Expenses Award
    Salary Award
    Staff Benefits Award
    Travel Award

To jump to an Account Register so that you can enter your "Deposits" and expenses (Payments), just double click on the name of the account in the "Account List" to display its Register. You can also display a Register by single clicking on the Account name on the "MY Finances - View 1" page (the first page that comes up when you load Quicken), or if a Register is currently open, you can jump to another Register by clicking on the down arrow in the green bar above the open Register.

Now enter the Date as the FIRST day fo your grant, and enter the grant award amounts as a Deposit in each Account Register in the different accounts listed above (if relevant to your grant), listing the Payee as "Opening Balance" (without the quotes).

You may want to enter the Grant Name, Number, or Account Number in the Memo line so that your printouts for different grants can be easily identified.

When you click on "Enter" after making a Deposit, you will see a dialog box that says: "You are recording a transfer back into the same account. Save it anyway?" Click: YES

Now you are ready to enter expenses in this account.


(b) MEANING of the DIFFERENT ACCOUNTS.

Additional Expenses.
The Additional Expenses are those expenses on an NIH grant that currently are exempt from indirect costs if you use the % Modified Total Direct Cost method for Indirect Costs (see ENTER DATA). These expenses include: student aid, off-site space rental, hospital patient costs, tuition remission, and the amount of subgrants and contracts that exceed $25,000. If you have some of these expenses that do not require indirect costs, then enter them under Additional Expenses. If you have several types of Additional Expenses, you can set up subcategories to keep them separate so that they can be searched for and totaled separately. We have already set up the subcategories mentioned above for Additional Expenses, but you can delete these or add new ones.


Capital Equipment.
Capital Equipment is also exempt from indirect costs if you use the % Modified Total Direct Cost method for Indirect Costs (see below).


Other Expenses.
The "Other Expenses" category is meant for expenses that don't fit the Bank Accounts listed above, but do require indirect costs, e.g., subgrant or subcontract expenses that are below $25,000. You can set up subcategories for this account.


Indirect Costs.
For most grants, the total monies awarded includes an amount for indirect costs (overhead), and it is up to the Principal Investigator to properly allocate and monitor these indirect costs. This becomes especially true if the Principal Investigator rebudgets expenses between categories that are covered by indirect costs, and those categories that are not. If you never plan to rebudget the amounts in the different award categories of your grant, then you can probably ignore the Indirect Costs, and let your institution worry about them.

If you have a grant that does not require that you keep track of the overhead, you can leave the "Indirect Costs Award" blank, or you can delete it.

Indirect Costs are generally calculated one of four ways:

% Modified Total Direct Costs (see below),
% Salary & Wages,
% Salary & Wages + Staff Benefits,
% Total Direct Costs.


Modified Total Direct Costs.
This method is used by most large academic institutions. In this case, indirect charges are imposed upon salaries, staff benefits, expendable materials and services (including noncapital equipment), travel, and subgrants and subcontracts up to $25,000 each. Subcategories have been set up under Indirect Costs to reflect these categories that require Indirect Costs under the % Modified Total Direct Costs method. If you use one of the other methods for allocating Indirect Costs, then enter the subcategories that make sense for you, and delete those that do not.

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ADD, EDIT, or DELETE ACCOUNTS.

Under "Finance" on the Menu Bar, select "Account List" (or use the Ctrl and A keys), then click on the [New] button to open a new Bank Account, or click on an existing account to highlight it, and then click on the [Edit] or [Delete] button.

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ENTER PERSONNEL DATA.

Salary Expense.
You need to enter projected salaries for EACH employee for EACH month that they work on the grant. Create a Subcategory under Salary Expense for the name of each employee.

Enter the absolute dollar amount of each salary, e.g., if a person is working 50% time, then enter the dollar amount for 50% time. Make a note on the Memo line that they work 50% time.

Determining Monthly Salaries.
There may be as many as three salary changes per year:

    (1) at the start of the grant year,
    (2) at the anniversary date for an employee (e.g., merit increase), and
    (3) at the beginning of the fiscal year (e.g., cost of living raise).

Assume, e.g., that an employee did not start work on the first day of a month, and the anniversary date for that employee is 2.47 months after the start of the grant year. Therefore, the salary at the start of the grant year will run for 2.47 months, and a promotion salary will run for 9.53 months. You would enter the first month at [(Salary #1) x (0.47)], and the second month at Salary #1. For the third month, the salary would be [(Salary #1) x (0.47)] plus [(Salary #2) x (0.53)]. For months 4-12 you would use Salary #2.

To obtain the fractional part of a month to use, divide the number of days worked at Salary #1 by the number of work days in that month (see below).

If there is a cost of living increase at the start of the fiscal year for your institution, then a new salary must be entered for the appropriate months.


Work Days Per Month:

    January - 23 days
    February - 20 (add 1 for Leap Year)
    March - 21
    April - 22
    May - 22
    June - 21
    July - 23
    August - 21
    September - 22
    October - 22
    November - 20
    December - 23

Such salary changes should be anticipated, calculated very carefully, and entered into Grant Tracker at the beginning of the grant year so that these monies will be committed. These values can be changed, of course, if necessary.


Staff Benefits.
To be totally correct, you should calculate the Staff Benefits for EACH month for the whole year after you have entered the Salaries for the whole year, and then correct these each month if there have been any personnel changes. Alternatively, you can calculate the Staff Benefits just at the end of each month, when your actual salary expenses are available.

The simple way of obtaining the total salaries for each month is to prepare a Cash Flow Report (see Chapter 7). If you just want "Last Month" then select this under "Report Dates". For other months, enter the inclusive dates, e.g., 2/1/97 and 2/28/97. Then click on [Create]. You will see the salaries for each employee, and the total for that month. Now there are two options.

(1.) You can multiply the salary for that month for each employee by the Staff Benefit percentage, and enter these values as Payments for that month under Staff Benefits for EACH employee (create subcategories under Staff Benefit Expense for each employee as you did under Salary Expense).

OR

(2.) You can multiply the TOTAL all of the salaries for that month by your staff benefit percentage, and then enter ONE staff benefit expense for that month, using the preprogrammed subcategory, "Total for Month".


Hourly Workers.
If a person is paid hourly but works full time, then multiply the hourly rate by the number of work days for that month times 8 hours to give you the salary for that month to enter into Grant Tracker. Check that you have entered the correct amount when you reconcile your accounts each month.


Students (and others who work variable hours).
For a student, or other employee, who works variable hours per month, we suggest that you set up a monthly salary as your best estimate, and enter this amount for each month that you expect the student to work. Then each month correct this entry, based upon the expenditure statement from your institution. If you see that your estimates for the remaining months are too high or too low, then correct these entries promptly so that your Salary balance will be as accurate as possible.

Although students don't generally receive Staff Benefits, some institutions still take Staff Benefits from the grant. If this is the case for your institution, then be sure to enter the appropriate Staff Benefit amount for each student, even though you know that the student won't receive it.



ENTERING DATA on EACH EMPLOYEE.

Date: Enter the date for the first month the employee works on the grant (see below).

NOTE: Don't use the first day of the grant year as the date for entering the first month's salaries (e.g., use the second day), or the "Net Worth by Year Report" will not be accurate.



Number: This column should be left blank for employees.

Payee: Enter "Salary Award" without the quotes. Subsequently you can double click on an empty Payee line, and the QuickFill Transactions box will pop up. Select "Salary Award", and then make any necessary changes in the Category, Memo, and Payment lines.

Note: There are 40 spaces available for Payee.

Category: Under "Finance" on the Menu Bar, select "Category & Transfer List" (or use the Ctrl and C keys). Then click on the "New" button, and enter the Name of the employee (e.g., K.C. Brown). Then click on "Subcategory of:", then on the Down Arrow to show the list of Categories, and select "Salary", and then "OK". For subsequent entries for this employee, you can just select the subcategory (employee name) that you have just created by using the Down Arrow in the Category line.

Note: There are 65 spaces available for Category, however, Quicken will only allow you to use 32 spaces (very strange).
You need to use the arrow keys to visualize all 65 characters.

Memo: The Memo data field under Salary Award can be used for entering the Percent Time an employee spends on the Grant (e.g., if less than 100%), his/her Social Security Number, Birthday, Visa Number, etc.

Note: There are 54 spaces available for Memo.
You need to use the arrow keys to visualize all 54 characters.

Payment: Enter the monthly salary (see above for calculating the correct amount).

REPEAT this process for EVERY MONTH that a given employee is on this grant.

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ENTER INDIVIDUAL EXPENSES.

Expendable Materials And Services (ExpMatServ).
Subcategories have been set up for you for the most common categories of expenses (see below). If you wish to further subdivide your Expendable Materials and Services account, you can add new subcategories (see below).

Subcategories Provided for ExpMatServ

    Alter, Renovate
    Art Work
    Books
    Consultants
    Engineering
    ID Requisitions
    Miscellaneous
    Petty Cash
    Photocopies
    Photography
    Postage
    Purchasing
    Repairs
    Reprints
    Service Contracts
    Stores
    Telephone


ENTERING DATA for EXPENDABLE MATERIALS and SERVICES

Date: Enter the date of the requisition or purchase order.

    NOTE: Don't use the first day of the grant year as the date for entering expenses (use the second day), or the "Net Worth by Year Report" will not be accurate.


Number: This column is normally used to enter the numbers of the checks that you write, but this has no relevance to tracking grants. We suggest that you enter O for Open (i.e., not paid for), or leave this space blank for Closed (i.e., paid for and appears on your institution's monthly expenditure statement).

You will use this feature while Reconciling your accounts each month. For example, you can search (Find) for O ("Oh") in the check Num column, and obtain a list of the requisitions that have not been paid for, and click on them when you find one listed on the expenditure statement from your institute, correct the expense if necessary (e.g., shipping charges that you didn't know about), and then delete the O (i.e., this item is now paid for, i.e., "Closed", and appears on your institution's monthly expenditure statement) (see Chapter 4 for more details).

    Note: We do not recommend that you use the Reconciling feature of Quicken. It is not helpful for tracking grants.

Payee: Enter "ExpMatServ Awd" without the quotes. Subsequently you can double click on an empty Payee line, and the QuickFill Transactions menu will pop up. Select "ExpMatServ Awd", and then make any necessary changes in the Memo, and Payment lines.

    Note: There are 40 spaces available for Payee.

Category: You can pop up the Category & Transfer List by clicking on an empty Category line. You can also show the list of categories and subcategories by selecting the Down Arrow on the Category line. Then click on the category of choice, and it will be entered in your Category line (see below for how to enter new categories).

    Note: There are 65 spaces available for Category, however, Quicken will only allow you to use 32 spaces (very strange). You need to use the arrow keys to visualize all 65 characters.

Memo: Enter the requisition number or purchase order number, a few words to describe this order, the name of the vendor, etc.

If your institution uses Number Codes to separate expenses into categories, you can enter these number codes on the Memo line.

Every part of a word or phrase on the Memo line can be searched for.

    Note: There are 54 spaces available for Memo.
    You need to use the arrow keys to visualize all 54 characters.

Payment: Enter your BEST ESTIMATE of the dollar amount for the order. This value may have to be changed when you reconcile your Grant Tracker records with the expenditure statement from your institution. Perhaps the greatest uncertainty is the shipping charge. On the other hand, if the amount paid differs greatly from what you expected, then call your purchasing agent for clarification or correction.


ADDITIONAL EXPENSES.
CAPITAL EQUIPMENT.
OTHER EXPENSES.
TRAVEL.
The expenses for these categories are entered in the same way as described above for Expendable Materials and Services. Note, however, that Capital Equipment and Additional Expenses do NOT require Indirect Costs (NIH grants), but all of the other expense categories do, if you are using the % Modified Total Direct Cost method for calculating Indirect Costs.


INDIRECT COSTS.
If you have a grant that does not require that you keep track of the indirect costs (overhead), or if you are certain that you will not rebudget your grant between accounts, then you can probably leave the "Indirect Costs Award" blank, or delete it.

If you DO need to keep track of Indirect Costs, then we suggest one of the following procedures.

To be totally correct, you should calculate the Indirect Costs for EACH month for the whole year after you have entered the Salaries and Staff Benefits for the whole year, and then correct these each month to include the other types of expenses for that month.

Alternatively, you can calculate the Indirect Costs just at the end of each month when your actual expenses are available for all categories of expense.

In either case, the simple way of obtaining the totals of the expenditures for each month that require Indirect Costs is to prepare a Category Summary Report. If you just want "Last Month" then select this under "Date". For other months, enter the inclusive dates, e.g., 2/1/97 and 2/28/97. Then click on [Create].

You will then see the totals for the different expense categories for just that month.

Now there are two options.

(1.) You can multiply the total expenses for that month for each expense category by the indirect cost percentage, and enter these values as Payments for that month under Indirect Costs for EACH expense category (these subcategories have been set up for you).

OR

(2.) You can multiply the TOTAL all of the expenses for that month that require indirect costs by your overhead percentage, and then enter ONE indirect cost expense for that month, using the preprogrammed subcategory, "Total for Month".

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ADD, EDIT, or DELETE EXPENSE CATEGORIES and SUBCATEGORIES.

If you want to delete any of these expense categories (or subcategories), or add new expense categories (or subcategories), then under "Finance" on the Menu Bar, select "Category & Transfer List" (or use the Ctrl and C keys). Highlight (single click) the category that you want to delete, and then click on the [Delete] button or the [Edit] button if you want to edit. Click on the [New] button to add a new expense category.

To add a new Subcategory, also click the [New] button, and enter the Name of the subcategory, then click on "Subcategory of:", then click on the Down Arrow to show the list of Categories, and select the appropriate expense category, and then select "OK".

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