ECC – FAQ

ECC is the University of Pittsburgh’s online effort reporting tool that is used by PI’s to facilitate certification of effort associated with federally sponsored research. ECC also provides information over the course of the year to assist department and central administrators with monitoring effort and making appropriate adjustments to effort distributions on a timely basis. Salary distribution and Cost Sharing data are loaded to ECC on a nightly basis which allows users to review distributions and make adjustments as needed throughout the period of performance.

You will not have a specific ECC username or password. You will use your Pitt Passport username and password credentials to log in to the portal and then click the Huron link to access ECC.

ECC training is available for PIs and is mandatory for Effort Coordinators. Descriptions of all workshops offered and registration is available on the FCR workshop registration page.

 View Additional reference materials.

The Federal Office of the Inspector General has performed effort reporting audits at a number of large research institutions. These audits have resulted in multi-million dollar settlements stemming from disallowed compensation costs due to late or missing effort certifications and other effort reporting noncompliance.

Given Pitt's lofty rankings and high-profile research, the University must be prepared in the event that an audit comes our way. To that end, the University undertook an initiative to improve our compliance over effort reporting which included policy development based on federal regulations, an upgrade to the SPAR system and the implementation of the electronic certification application, ECC.

The University's investment in these effort reporting tools has streamlined effort certification for faculty to reduce the risk of disallowed salaries, fringe benefits and associated indirect costs recovered through federally funded projects.

As competition for federal funding increases and funding levels decline, it is important that the University is viewed as a good steward of federal funds, complying with all fiscal requirements.

Only the PIs of federal awards have certification responsibilities and access to ECC.

ECC sends automatic emails at the beginning of each Certification Period to every user who has certification responsibilities. As the period progresses, there are 3 other automatic reminder emails that are sent from ECC. Only PIs who have uncertified effort will receive the reminder emails.

Faculty without federally sponsored projects will not receive any emails from ECC.

If you are a federal PI and your employee classification indicates that you are a Visiting Faculty Member, Student, or Faculty Emeritus, you will not have access to ECC. A proxy will need to be assigned to certify your personal effort statement on your behalf.

There are three Periods of Performance that coincide with the University’s academic periods, September-December, January-April and May-August. The 45 day certification window will open to PIs approximately five weeks following the end of the Period of Performance. You will receive an email notifying you of the opening of the certification window.

View Certification schedule

As the Principal Investigator (PI), you are ultimately responsible for effort distributions to your federally sponsored projects. Effort distributions are dynamic representations of each employee's activities. The determination of these distributions requires a dialog between the PI and fiscal administrators.

The PI must provide estimates of time devoted to each activity for him\herself and each employee working on his/her sponsored projects. The PI must communicate any significant change in activity (work beginning on a new project, work ending on a completed project, realignment of duties between research personnel, etc.) to the fiscal administrator.

Actual effort distributions must be representative of work performed, not based on budget availability.

Fiscal administrators will ensure budget compliance through modifications to salary distribution where required, leaving actual effort percentages unchanged.

Checking the boxes on each federal line is a confirmation that you have reviewed the line and agree with the percentage of effort attributed to that project. Checking the boxes on the subtotal lines for the Sponsored Non-Federal and Non-Sponsored sections is an acknowledgement that the employee performed other activities in fulfillment of their appointment. You are not certifying these activities but acknowledging the consideration of this work in relation to the work performed on your federal sponsored project(s).

All federal PI’s related to a particular research employee will have access to this employee’s effort statement However, each will only have access to certify his/her federal sponsored lines.

You should be acknowledging that the federal effort is reasonable based on the employee's total portfolio of work. For details on this, please view the Certification vs. Acknowledgment of Non-Federal Effort document in the PI Reference Material section.

An effort statement may be reopened if a salary reallocation is applied after the statement was certified. If this occurs the statement will require recertification. You will receive an email if any statement that you have previously certified is modified and reopened for recertification. The statement will reappear in your Statements Awaiting Certification tab as well as your Work List.

In general, honest errors or mistakes are not likely to result in "personal liability," but intentionally false statements can be considered "false claims" against the federal government. If you are ever named individually in a legal proceeding arising from your University duties, you should consult the Office of General Counsel.

When entering data into certain fields, such as a department or PI name, the system is equipped with “smart keys” which generate suggested values when at least 3 characters are entered. The more characters you enter the more specific your search results will be. After typing in your search criteria, please allow a few seconds for the system to identify your data. Once the data box returns a value, select the appropriate option, and click the submit button.

You may wish to place an effort statement on hold if you detect that the effort statement is incorrect for a variety of reasons such as:

• you are awaiting a late account number
• effort percentages do not total between 99-101%
• effort percentages do not appear to be a reflection of the effort for the period
• the PI disagrees with the percentages displayed

Please remember, each effort statement may only be certified two times. Placing the effort statement on hold will prevent the inappropriate use of one of those allowed certifications.

No. The certification period is 45 days long and will not be extended for any PI with an effort statement on “Hold.” If the effort statement is released from “Hold” 5 days into the certification period, the PI will have 40 days to certify that effort statement.

ECC access is based on the department(s) identified for each Effort Coordinator's role. ECs will be able to access all effort statements for employees whose home department resides within the EC’s assigned areas. They will also be able to access effort statements for all employees whose home department is outside their assigned departments, but who have effort on accounts within one of the EC’s assigned departments.