Account Expenditure Guidance
Pre-Expenditure Review – Travel
To ensure appropriate monitoring of awards, the UCF Office of Research is required to review certain categories of travel expenditures to confirm they are allowable on a specific sponsored project. The following types of travel require prior approval by Office of Research:
- Domestic (Continental U.S.) travel exceeding $2,500 per trip, per person
- All international travel
A Spend Authorization must be created by the Traveler’s unit in Workday prior to the travel date, in accordance with Florida Statute §112.061. This is the university’s formal document for travel approval. The worktags applied to the Spend Authorization and resulting Expense Report/s must align with the sponsored research financial grant from which the travel is being funded.
The travel requisition is routed to the Office of Research (OR) for approval. If sponsor approval is required, unit is responsible for submitting request to OR to obtain sponsor approval. Additional information prior to submission of the request to sponsor for approval may be required.
Travel will be approved by OR if either:
- The travel is allowable based on the terms of the award
- The travel is within the authorized award period of performance
- Adequate overall award budget is available to support the travel
- Sponsor approval has been obtained, if required
Unapproved or unallowed travel expenditures or those restricted by the sponsor cannot be charged to the award and will instead need to be charged to the non-sponsored source of funds.
Fly America Act
The Fly America Act mandates that all federally funded travel utilize U.S. flag carriers (or under qualifying code-share agreements), unless specific exceptions apply, including Open Skies. The exceptions provided by the Open Skies Agreements for government funded travel do not apply if your transportation is funded by the Department of Defense.
A codeshare flight is when one airline sells a ticket for a flight that is operated by a different partner airline. To comply with Fly America regulations, air ticket must be purchased using the U.S. airline’s designator and flight number.
International travel on federal grants may qualify for exceptions in certain instances . If exceptions apply, the Fly America Exception form must be completed and included with the spend authorization/expense report submission.
Export Control & International Travel
International travel with UCF-owned equipment may be subject to export control restrictions. For guidance, especially regarding the transport of computers or scientific devices, contact the Office of International Collaboration and Export Control (OICEC) at oicec@ucf.edu.
Pre-Expenditure Review – Equipment
All equipment purchases must follow bid/quote thresholds as outlined in the UCF Procurement Services Procedure Manual and is monitored by UCF Procurement.
Federal Property Control System Analysis regulations require the Office of Research to review all C&G equipment purchases for allowability. Prior to making an equipment purchase (via requisition, computer store, expense card, or PCard), the PI or designee must submit a requisition in Workday. Equipment purchases funded with sponsored research funds which meet the applicable threshold route to OR for approval.
If sponsor approval is required, unit is responsible for submitting request to OR to obtain sponsor approval. Additional information prior to submission of the request to sponsor for approval may be required. Once approved appropriate decal assignment is documented in Workday.
Decal Instructions
Approved equipment will receive the proper decal, based on the funding source:
- CG – Non-Federal Sponsor
- CF – UCF
- US – Federal Sponsor
- UL – Assets Loaned from Federal Government
- CL – Assets Loaned from Non-Federal Sponsor
- LE – Leased Assets
This decal data must be included in the Workday record so Property and Inventory Control can apply the correct identifier.
Note: Equipment purchases made within 90 days of the project end date require additional justification with exception of equipment purchases on instrumentation grants. An instrumentation award is where the sponsor explicitly restricts funding to equipment budget only with no allowance for other budget categories. If the sponsor’s proposal guidelines and/or award terms impose no such restriction and the project included only equipment costs at UCF’s discretion, the award does not qualify as instrumentation Award.
Personnel
Personnel policies for C&G-funded projects follow the same procedures used for departmental (E&G) funding but need to adhere to the authorized award period and sponsor restrictions, if any. For full details, refer to UCF Human Resources.