By Carrie Bredenkamp

Faculty and staff members who work on sponsored projects are probably quite familiar with the paper Effort Reports that they are required to complete up to three times each year. Now, these reports are more accessible, and the effort reporting process is more streamlined, thanks to OIT partnering with the Office of the Comptroller to move the effort reporting process online.

The new automated process is available by visiting www.ares.umd.edu and clicking the Effort Reporting link in the left menu. There, faculty and staff members who must complete these reports can access and approve them online. The first automated Effort Reports for FY2008 cycle 01 became available in mid August 2007 and by mid October 2007, approximately 90 percent had been approved online. Effort Reports for FY2008 cycle 02 will be available for approval in January 2008.

Moving the Effort Reporting system online has resulted in several improvements to the business process:

• The university no longer needs to print and distribute approximately 4,000 paper reports three times each fiscal year, saving both paper and manhours required for printing, distribution, and collection.
• Measuring federal compliance can now be automated through the online system rather than requiring significant human effort to collate and analyze the paper reports and to follow up on the reports that were not completed.

In November 2007, OIT will enhance the Effort Reporting system by allowing it to automatically apply payroll transfer transactions to Effort Reports that have already been created. This will result in a revised Effort Report being available for online approval, a convenience that was not available with the paper-based process. In January 2008, an additional system enhancement will provide the capability to view Effort Reports during the cycle instead of only at the end of the cycle. This will be a proactive step towards increasing compliance awareness in the short term and reducing the number of Revised Effort Reports in the long term.