Questions about making travel arrangements

Workspaces OpenCare
, , ,
1

Hi Luce,

we are currently in the process of finalising the budget for consortium meetings vs for covering travel costs of participants not officially tied to the project. So I have a few questions for you :slight_smile:

  1. We would like to pay someone to help us with booking travel and accomodations for members of the Edgeryders team:
  • Are we allowed to do this under the grant agreement, and if so does it fall under direct or indirect costs?
  • Is this expense to be covered from the budget for travel?
  • Do you have a model contract and or invoice for this kind of service?
  1. We would like to award small grants to some participants who make significant contributions to the project:
  • Can we run a competition and give away cash prizes under the grant agreement? If so, what paperwork and information about recipients is needed?
  • If we cannot give away cash prizes, can we pay small amounts of money for specific deliverables to "competition" participants? If yes, do these fall under direct or indirect costs?
  • How can we best go about covering the travel costs for a lot of people not officially on the research team without risking breaching the grant agreement? Is there an upper limit to how many people we can reimburse for their travels to our events? What information/ documents do we need to have prepared before, during and after the event to be on the safe side?
2

Not just travel. Some answers I got from Luce

Me:

Hi Luce, I am interested to learn about how we as consortium partners can work with people we hire for blogging, workshop facilitation, video documentation and other things.

The question is: Can we give people small contracts to organise events and have them pay for related services (chairs, food etc) or is it that only we can pay for services? If yes/ no, can you explain the conditions?

I also need help understanding how much flexibility we have when accounting for staff costs vs non-staff costs. 

For example workshop facilitation has a budget for staff costs, whereas workshop services go into non-staff costs (as per our proposal). But in practice, when we organize an event we might want to pay someone to organise it in full (ex: one of the OpenCare Fellows). 

Under what circumstances can we contract them and what is needed?

Luce:

Staff costs is a budget category in order to pay the time the ER team is going to spend on every WP during the project.

To give you an example:

0.2.1 Community activation (social media etc.) Nadia
0.2.2 Onboarding offline workshops: faciilitation Nadia

The budget Edgeryders prepared before the project submission detailed participation for every team member.

It aimed to evaluate ER needs to obtain sufficient funds for the project’s implementation: by foreseeing the person-month distribution among all the participants on the Edgeryders’ side and ER’s other expenses. In other terms, the task repartition among ER team is an indication. If, for example, you take care of the community activation instead of Nadia, it is ok.

However, ER has to keep up with implementing in due time and action the WP and tasks among each WP, such as decribed in the Annex 1 of the GA.

For the use of budget:

  1. If ER doesn’t plan to use the staff costs to directly pay your salary, ER may further use this budget to pay a service for workshop facilitation, provided that ER is able to prove that the time you spent working on the activity matches what is planned in the budget. For reports (and even after the project in case of audits), ER has to prove it by showing the time sheets you filled and signed, your work contract(s) and the company books.

Before doing so, it is most important for ER and for the University of Bordeaux as a coordinator to make sure your type of contracts enable ER to do it.

If this is something ER wishes to do, you must let us know first.

  1. ER can also recruit some more people to work during the project as supplementary team members, provided that ER will identify for which WP he/she will work (during reports, in the work contracts and time sheets), pay this person according to the UK national law and their usual practices as for recruitement and salary, and redistribute the staff costs budget to include his/her activity.

  2. ER can buy services from a company or from a freelance entrepreneur to help dealing with the activities you mentioned below (blogging, documentation).

An external service would be charged under the direct costs for other goods and services budget category if it matches one of this sub-categories.

  1. ER can also use the budget for indirect costs, if it is not sufficient.
3

This beaurocratic language is driving me nuts :slight_smile:

Let’s speak today about what this means in practice? This kind of thing hurts my brain :)))

4

Well… because of my other part-time position I won’t be working for Opencare on Tuesdays nor on Thursdays, which is also why I couldn’t attend the hangout last week. But we can sure catch up later if needed. :))

5

Q&A

Hi Nadia,

about what is eligible, or not eligible:

1. We would like to pay someone to help us with booking travel and accommodations for members of the Edgeryders team:

Are we allowed to do this under the grant agreement, and if so does it fall under direct or indirect costs?

You have two possibilities (this answer will match the previous one I gave to Noemi):

  • Either you can pay for this service under the indirect cost budget (because there is no mention of such a position in the GA - Description of Action).

  • Or, if Edgeryders doesn’t plan to use the staff costs reimbursed by the EC to directly pay salaries of the staff working on the project, ER may further use this budget for other purposes.

In that case, the further use of funds will not be taken into consideration by the European Commission for reports nor audits (free of use). The counterpart is that you need to prove the costs related for the staff working on the projects (as you will have to do for all the staff declared for the project), by keeping time-sheets and work contracts.

Example: if you are declared on the project, but paid on other source / already paid by another contract, you can on the one hand use the EU grant Edgeryders received to reimburse your time on the project and to cover for other participants’ expenses. But in order to be able to do this, you will have on the other hand to report to the EC only the time you spent working on the project by providing time sheets and work contracts.

Is this expense to be covered from the budget for travel?  

NO - travel budget is only meant to pay for the fares, not for the service

Do you have a model contract and or invoice for this kind of service?

NO - the contract is to be made as Edgeryders’ would usually do, and comply with the British law, since it is registered in the UK. Alberto previously showed me a model which might also be suitable for this purpose. (To be confirmed by a lawyer, in my opinion).

2. We would like to award small grants to some participants who make significant contributions to the project:

Can we run a competition?

This point is still to be confirmed by our project officer.

And give away cash prizes under the grant agreement? If so, what paperwork and information about recipients is needed?

NO - you are not allowed to distribute funds as such to other persons.

If we cannot give away cash prizes, can we pay small amounts of money for specific deliverables to “competition” participants? If yes, do these fall under direct or indirect costs?

NO - you cannot ‘redistribute’ some of your tasks to other persons (if I understood well what you meant by “specific deliverables”). However, you may reward their contribution by buying them goods/services, which could be eligible as the needs listed under the “other goods and services” budget costs. Or by using the indirect costs budget category, which will not be audited.

How can we best go about covering the travel costs for a lot of people not officially on the research team without risking breaching the grant agreement? Is there an upper limit to how many people we can reimburse for their travels to our events? What information/ documents do we need to have prepared before, during and after the event to be on the safe side?

There is no limitation as to covering the travel costs, but we recommend that for each funding you summarize information about the beneficiary, the context, the purpose, the expected impact of the travel (by filling a form). This will be useful in case of justification for reports.

Best,

Luce

6

Thank you, super helpful. Should we move call to Mondays?

As long as it is the same time or later to allow people in different timezones to participate monday-wednesday is fine for me. Let me know?

7

Monday call

Is fine for me generally…

1 Like
8

monday it’s better also for me

hi, moving to monday is good!

best

Zoe

1 Like
9

Ok, what I understand…

First, thanks @LuceChiodelliUB for taking the time to go through each of our questions.

I understand that from the direct costs we can’t touch the staff costs without some extra care, and their corresponding time budgeted (that is where our time sheets are important for accountability and consistency with our proposal). Also from the direct costs - travels are very clearly defined, but we can be flexible with how we allocate those and to whom, as long as they are attached to a task for purposes of reporting.

Where the doubts are is with direct costs: non staff. Nadia’s question I think falls here:

If we cannot give away cash prizes, can we pay small amounts of money for specific deliverables to “competition” participants? If yes, do these fall under direct or indirect costs?

Some of these “prizes” (more like “perks”) can meet activities we budgeted for, and which require us to work with collaborators. For example:

  • Task: Seed and drive online conversations - includes an amount for blogging, which is budgeted as non-staff cost. This means we will have help contracted for small amounts which will be paid upon deliverable. Because it's non-staff, we don't need time sheets, only valid contract.
  • Task: Outreach and onboarding - includes an amount for workshop services (NB not facilitation, which is under staff costs and needs timesheets as per our budgeting). Services can be catering, but can also be contracting someone to take care of logistics and paying them agains workshop deliverable. Because that budget is for non-staff, we don't need time sheets, only a valid contract and proof of expenses - maybe even traveling, where that is the case. 

Basically looking at how our nonstaff budget was put in the proposal, this makes sense. Pasting it here for future reference.

10

Hi Noemi,

Under the “other direct costs budget” - as long as an activity has been specifically mentioned in the table you posted above, it can be eligible under the other direct costs, you understood it right. You have to keep traces of your expenses (invoices, flight tickets, bids, etc.) to justify them for reports.

The indirect costs budget is a flat-rate sum that you may use the way you want, meaning that you may also use some of this budget to buy extra services / give extra perks.

11

Great, all sorted.

Thanks so much for the reassurances! And for emailing us due documentation for reporting.

12

You’re welcome ! Just let me know if anything I send or write isn’t clear enough. :slight_smile:

13

Monday should be fine too

1 Like