Principal Investigators on sponsored projects must complete Time & Effort Reports three times per year according to the following schedule; at the completion of fall term, at the completion of winter term, and at the completion of summer term. Principal Investigators will be contacted by the Office of Research Administration office when the reports are available in the on-line Time & Effort report system.
Step-by-step instructions for completing the Time & Effort reports:
- Access the on-lineTime and Effort Report system
- Login using your NetID (OU email) name and password.
- Select the reporting period.
- A list of grants/funds for which you are listed as the Principal Investigator will be displayed.
- Click the fund number (Note: Adobe Acrobat Reader, available free from www.adobe.com, is required to read the effort report).
- Each effort report is divided into 3 sections: Bi-Weekly, Monthly and Graduate Assistants.
- For monthly employees and graduate assistants, each employee’s effort on various activities/positions numbers (teaching, department chairs, grants, etc.) is presented in percentages. For monthly employees, totals for all position numbers should equal 100% for each employee. Review and verify these percentages. As Principal Investigator, you are only expected to determine the reasonableness of the allocation of effort.
- For student and bi-weekly employees, compare the total hours to the hours per your records. Only hours charged to the fund are visible, so you are only expected to gauge the reasonableness of the hours reported. Recall that a time card was previously certified for the employee's time.
- An adjustment column is provided to make corrections to the percentage effort reported if necessary. For significant changes, a justification should be recorded in the comments.
- The Principal Investigator should sign and date the report.
Completed reports should be sent via campus mail to Grants, Contracts & Sponsored Research, 530 Wilson Hall.
(9/25/2009)