About the Effort Certification System

What is the Effort Certification System?

The Effort Certification System (ECS) provides a web-based means for Principal Investigators or other knowledgeable persons to certify the effort of University of Texas at Austin employees who are paid by sponsored research projects.

Certification of effort on federally-sponsored awards is required under the terms of Office of Management and Budget Circular A-21, section J.10, and by other sponsors, but the University's previous paper-based system of certifying employee effort provided inaccurate and incomplete records of employee effort on sponsored projects. ECS addresses those inadequacies while also reducing the amount of clerical work and paper required by the existing system. ECS applies the federal standards for effort certification to all sponsored projects to be consistent with Cost Accounting Standards.

Purposes

1. To provide an acceptable method to document the distribution of charges for personal services on sponsored research projects in compliance with OMB Circular A-21 and other regulations.
2. To provide tools to ensure effort on all sponsored research projects is certified.
3. To incorporate effort records from various sources into a comprehensive single effort certification record. These sources include:
1. Payroll records distributed as a result of direct appointments to sponsored projects
2. Personnel charges made to sponsored projects through the salary clearing account system.
3. Mandatory and voluntary committed effort cost shared as part of project terms and conditions.
4. To provide an automated method to track the certification status of each research project.
5. To present effort certification information to Principal Investigators and their designees in an easily-accessed, easily-understood manner.

Delegation

Certification of each project must be done by someone with direct knowledge of the services performed on that project. If you are a Principal Investigator, you can authorize persons who have knowledge of the work performed to certify, to precertify, and to authorize others. More information is available on the Authorizations page. From the home page of ECS, select a Unit Code from the "View Authorizations" menu and click the "Go" button to view and/or update project authorizations.

Please remember that although the Principal Investigator can authorize others, the PI remains ultimately responsible for the accuracy of certification.

To Find Out More

• Read through the ECS Tutorial.
• See the ECS FAQ page.
• To enroll in an informational class about ECS, which features a hands-on demonstration with test data, go to TXCLASS and enroll yourself in DE 503, Introduction to the Effort Certification System.

Thanks for Your Participation

With cooperation of the research community, the effort certification process will become more efficient, more comprehensive and easier for everyone.