Department administrators must work with PIs to be aware of salary cap limits on all sponsored awards and, if necessary, record cost share for salary amounts that surpass the identified cap. The SPAR application automatically calculates cost sharing only for DHHS accounts. However, Pitt receives funding from various sponsors, each with their own unique salary caps. Consequently, administrators must manually record cost sharing for these non-DHHS awards to ensure compliance.
If faculty in your area have a less-than-annual appointment and are planning to work outside their appointment period, please process all summer appointment information timely to ensure that payroll is paid in the month the work is performed. This is necessary to maintain the accuracy of SPAR payroll distributions and effort reporting information.
If you have concerns about an effort statement’s presentation or anticipate a SPAR modification to the effort statement, place the effort statement on hold to prevent an inappropriate certification. Be aware that an effort statement can only be certified twice. The PI certification window is not extended for time spent on hold, therefore, please remove the hold as soon as possible. PIs whose personal effort statement is on hold will not be able to certify any effort statement for which they are responsible. When the hold is removed, the PEC and all associated PIs will receive a system generated email.
If you need to modify a SPAR line for an account that has been disabled, you will first need to contact your Sponsored Projects Accounting representative to request that the account be enabled.