Business Office Q&A

An ancillary review can be used from multiple modules within PERA. This activity is sent from within PERA to the respective organization or individual requesting an action be complete.

From the Funding Proposal, ancillary reviews are carried out in parallel with proposal preparation and standard review processes. Example of an ancillary review being sent for a Funding Proposal to the business office would be: Cost Share Approvals, including Salary Cap.

From the Award, ancillary reviews are carried out in parallel with award setup and award modifications. An example of an ancillary review being sent to the business office for an Award would be: Budget allocation request for award amount received.

When an ancillary review is sent from PERA, it will appear on the dashboard of the individual(s) receiving the request. An Ancillary Review can be sent to an Organization (generic business office email) or an Individual. When an Organization is selected, the ancillary review will appear on the dashboard of each individual that is a part of that Organization in PERA. As soon as one person responds to that ancillary review, it will “fall off” of each individual’s dashboard as no further action is needed.

PERA will be the source of truth when it comes to Terms and Conditions related to carryforward, equipment ownerships, travel restrictions, etc. These items will not be integrated to SAP and thus will not appear in AIMS either.

Locating Terms and Conditions
1. In the Funding Award, select View Award

2. Select Terms and Conditions

3. The next question for not authorized additional funding will show under Budget Allocation.

There are several documents which could be uploaded as attachments to the Funding Proposal. Standard naming conventions have been created to assist with consistent document management within PERA and to assist other users in identifying the appropriate document(s) for review.

In PERA, all funding proposals will be budgeted based on person months rather than % of effort. A calculator has been created which will convert person months to % of effort to better assist with cost distribution and projections.

View the calculator.

Due to some sponsor requirements, a proposal budget may show a Subaward’s actual direct costs and indirect costs. These two numbers together will be the amount to be awarded to the Subaward. Purdue’s indirect cost will then be applied to the first $25,000 of the Subaward budget as it always has been.

When completing the Post Award Budget Allocation template and subawards are included in the proposed budget, the total direct costs to be awarded to the Subaward will be entered under total Subaward Costs (including Indirects). This amount will be the Subaward Direct Costs and Subaward Indirect Costs from the Pre-Award Budget Spreadsheet. Of the total to be awarded to the Sub, you will enter the amount up to $25,000 that would need overhead applied for Purdue’s Indirect Cost application in the Subaward Base section. This will indicate what portion of the Subaward costs should be included in the F&A Base calculation for Purdue Indirect costs.

Each grad will have their own line for fee remits and fringes because PERA provides a more granular detail.

All budgets are based on project period, including the cost share budgets.

Form 32s will no longer be used when budgeting and allocating cost share in PERA. Pre-Award will be uploading a Cost Share Spreadsheet to the Funding Proposal which will detail which departments are committing what in each project period. This spreadsheet is similar to what was found in COEUS, but has been enhanced to include details like the cost share type, primary PI, F&A rate, etc. In addition to this spreadsheet, the FINAL Budget Spreadsheet of the funding proposal will include a separate tab with the cost share budget for the grant.

When allocating the cost share budget, a new Cost Share Budget Template will be used.

  • There should be one Cost Share Budget Template workbook (excel file) per cost share WBSE needed
  • If multiple sources need to be allocated to the same WBSE, provided they each have the same fund account, there will be a tab for each source account within that workbook. For example, if grad support is being commitment by a College and Office of Research and each should be allocated to the same WBSE, one tab will allocate the College commitment and include the appropriate source account and a separate tab will include the Office of Research commitment with the appropriate source account.

A big change with PERA is related to the cost share pulls. After go-live, cost share budgets will be pulled from source accounts based on the project periods rather than the portion of the project period which falls with each fiscal year.

For example, a project period of 1/1/2024 – 12/31/2024 has a budget of $100,000. Prior to PERA, $50,000would have been pulled in FY24 (1/1/2024-6/30/2024) and the remaining $50,000 would be pulled in FY25 (7/1/2024-12/31/2024) at 7/1/2024. In PERA, $100,000 will be pulled in FY24 since the start of the project period falls in FY24.

SPS webpage, they will own the spreadsheet.

No. When allocating the budget for sponsor funds or cost share, the Budget Remaining Column can have a balance. Validate the Budgeted Total column matches the amount showing awarded via SPS/Sponsor or total Cost Share committed for the area making the commitment to ensure the appropriate amount is being allocated.

When searching in PERA, enter % then your search criteria.

Reviewing the Compliance Review tab on the Award Workspace will provide details of IACUC protocols along with approved animals for purchase.

RAD in PERA
RAD in Fiori

Contains agreements that are expired that contain language authorizing automatic renewal upon expiration.

From the Award Workspace in PERA, select View Award on the left side of the screen. From here, you will select Terms and Conditions to view any restrictions, equipment ownership, carryfoward, pre-award cost allowability, etc.

In the attachments tab of the award, you will be able to find the Notice of Award, Award Modifications, and Terms & Conditions.

From the Award workspace, go to the Related Projects tab and locate the original agreement to the award or subaward, whichever the amendment is related to. After clicking into the original agreement, locate the Amendments tab on the Agreement workspace. Here you will find all amendments related to this award or subaward.

Any communication between the sponsor and SPS prior to PERA go-live (Oct 7) will be held in Perceptive Content. After go-live, these emails could be located in the Attachments tab or History tab depending on the method used by SPS to upload.

The business office will not be able to upload documents directly to the workspace of an award, but documents can be uploaded to Award Modification Requests (NCE, Revised Budgets, Prior Approvals, etc).

More to come. The eRA team is working on a governance structure that would determine the best approach to these requests. The roles with PERA are often “all or nothing”, so we need to be mindful of what roles are being provided to non-business office staff.

All active and pending awards, however documents will not be transferred to PERA from COEUS, so it will look like a blank shell. Once a current pending proposal is awarded in PERA, the launch team will attach the proposal documents from COEUS into the Funding Proposal shell. These documents can be located in the attachments tab of the funding proposal.

Everyone who is active in the HR system will have access to PERA using SSO.  To get the correct roles, we will need you all to request those. We are working on using the ticketing system (TDX) much like we have the request links for access on the Coeus page now.  However, you can email perahelp@purdue.edu with any changes. 

Perceptive will have the financials, like invoices.

PERA will contain all new award and proposal documents like agreements, amendments, and budgets.

Existing awards in COEUS that continue will have a “shell” put into PERA- award documents will not be transitioned to PERA, but any new documents after go-live will be in PERA.

SPS needs this breakdown between direct costs and IDC when they enter it into PERA and complete the award set up. It needs to be recorded but does not come out of the source account.

You will follow the award amount located in the email. When the amounts are different, this is an indication that the award is being incrementally funded.

While the negotiations of cost share will be conducted via email outside of PERA, the official approval by each department/college will be obtained via ancillary review from the funding proposal. These approvals can be found in the Reviewers tab of the Funding Proposal.

The Business Office is responsible for submitting any NCE, NTP, or modification requests.

Pre-award/Proposals: Proposal@purdue.edu

Post Award after the award has been established: Reach out to your business office with modification request such as NCE or budget adjustments.

These requests can be routed through the system. However, areas who still wish to manage these types of approvals outside of the system will be able to do that before entering the request in the system. The PI can initiate these actions but in the interest of minimizing the administrative effort of faculty, it is expected that business offices continue to take the lead on these actions. Training materials will substantiate this directive.

While it is true that roles which allow edits or activity requests to be made in PERA will be limited to assigned Depts, every BO staff will have viewer access to all proposals and awards similar to what they have today in COEUS.


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