The following applies to projects approved by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bund):
- The Bund approves an overall budget that is then used to cover individual types of costs across several calendar years.
- Accounts for individual types of costs can be overdrawn by 20 % at the expense of other types of cost.
- All funds are managed annually. If you want to transfer funds that have not been spent in the current year to the next, you must first ask your funding body for permission. The funding body must be alerted as soon as you realise that you will not require all available funds (by the end of August at the latest). You may access the budget for the following year if need be, but must first discuss this with Project Administration.
- Project Administration can access funds up to two months in advance. We tend to calculate the budget you will need rather lower because the Bund takes interest on funds that were requested but not accessed and spent in a timely manner. It is not possible to pay the interest using project funds.
- You need to provide documentation of your previous expenses when accessing funds. The transfer of funds is therefore subject to severe restrictions.
- Project Administration prepares the report on the expenditure of funds by the end of April of the following year. All bookings are listed individually in the final statement.
- As of 2011, institutions involved in BMBF projects are granted a project allowance for indirect costs worth 10 % of all spent project funds. The university provides half of the project allowance as an incentive to project leaders. This portion of the funds is transferred from the project account to a separate account where the project leader can access these funds for research expenses not directly related to the project. Remaining funds do not expire but will be transferred to the following year. For projects that started in 2012 and later, the project allowance is 20 %. You can find information about the project allowance here.
Practical tips:
- Funding bodies often do not check individual statements until the final statement is drawn up. Funds set aside for expenses that were not approved cannot be used to cover other expenses as the project will have expired by then. To make use of as much of the funds as possible, it may make sense to overdraw the project account. However, please note that the project leader is responsible for covering the overdraft by using other funds if need be (e.g. industry funds, project allowance).
- Often, more consumables are bought than are actually needed for any one project. If this is the case, please divide the costs between several projects / accounts. Please state the corresponding split on the order form.
- Investments can only be settled as described in the corresponding equipment catalogue. Please refer to the correct /item in the “Geräteliste” (equipment catalogue) when making your request to Procurement. This makes it easier for us to allocate your order and to create the list of investments for the financial statement.