ENSEMBLES_lessons_learned

Lessons learned

The following lessons have been learned during the previous years of reporting for the ENSEMBLES FP6 project. All of the comments below apply to situations that have actually arisen. A summary is provided of what the problem was and what ACTION is needed to help prevent the problem arising again. Please let us have any further comments or feedback to help us improve the process in the future.

Deadlines

Information is usually submitted late (sometimes too late for inclusion in the report)
ACTION:Please pass on the request for information (particularly financial information) to the relevant person in your institute as soon as possible so that they can get the required reports back to us in plenty of time.

CPF A3.3 - financial plan for next 12 months

Every year we update Contract Preparation Form (CPF) A3.3 to show each partner's total eligible costs and requested budget for the next 18 months (next 12 months for year 4 reporting). This form is used to determine their next advance of money.
ACTION: Each partner needs to take into account how much money they have already received from us, what they have claimed on their Form Cs so far, and what their total (5 year) budget is. Please make sure that if you are requesting money that the total (orange) box at cell L8 is completed.
A reminder: AC partners' indirect costs should not exceed 20% of direct costs; FC/FCF partners' requested EC contribution for RTD can not exceed 50% of their total RTD eligible costs; No-cost partners have no requested EC contribution!

Form C

ACTION: Please take note of the following points, which might not have been clear to you:

All partners, including no cost partners, need to provide two signed copies of Form C.
The latest version of Form C (available from our reporting web site) should be used.
Please complete all relevant boxes (see the Form C guidance notes).
ENSEMBLES partners have agreed not to charge the cost of the audit certificate to the project (see Section 5.3 of the Consortium Agreement).

Contract Preparation Form (CPF) A3.1 and A3.3 detail how each partner's budget is distributed between the different "activities" listed on Form C, which are RTD, Training, and Consortium Management.
Form C has the following checks - AC partners' indirect costs should not exceed 20% of direct costs; FC/FCF partners' requested EC contribution for RTD can not exceed 50% of their total eligible RTD costs.
No-cost partners should have no requested EC contribution in cell L54!
For cell 47 ("receipts"), the prefinancing received from the Coordinator is not a receipt. A receipt is something that gives rise to profit.
For section 7 please use the exchange rates published by the European Central Bank.
Please remember to have your forms signed and dated (must be dated after 1 September 2008)..

Audit certificate

ACTION: Please take note of the following points:

All partners who request money from the EU will need to provide an audit certificate at the end of the project.
Any partner whose total requested cost to date exceeds €150,000 needs to provide an audit certificate and for every subsequent year.
Special Clause 39 allows partners whose total requested cost to date has not exceeded €150,000 to choose whether or not to provide an audit certificate. However, some partners chose to have an audit done in year 1 and did discover problems, that if left undiscovered, would have been problematic.
Please remember to check that the exchange rate used is consistent between the audit certificate and the Form C.
Please check that the cost model stated on the audit certificate is correct (i.e. matches that listed in Section 9.1 of the DoW) and matches that on the Form C.
Please remember to check that the wording on the audit certificate is correct. Please use the model template as featured on page 216 onwards of the FP6 financial guidance notes.

ACTION: Therefore, we strongly recommend all partners who have requested money from the project from years 1 or 2, to have their Form Cs audited next year so that they can uncover any potential problems (perhaps with their institute's accounting systems for FP6) at as early a stage as possible. Alternatively it might be worth having your year 1 costs and Form C audited now for your own internal purposes. I am making these suggestions because discovering problems at the end of the project could cause problems for you.

Tabular overview of budgeted vs actual costs ("Table 3")

ACTION: Please take note of the following points which might not have been clear to you:

Partners need to take into account what money they have already received, what they have claimed on previous Form Cs and what their total five year budget is. This information is contained in the summary spreadsheet.
All figures are for total eligible costs, not "requested EC contribution".
The "BUDGET" column shows the total eligible costs for the 5 years, as listed on CPF A3.1
The "ACTUAL COSTS" columns for each year ("Period 1" is year 1, "Period 2" is year 2, "Period 3" is year 3, etc.) of the project are the costs that correspond to those reported on the Form C, but with slightly different categories.
The total cost in Period 1 (cell D13, unless you have modified the original version) should correspond with the total eligible cost in Form C (cell L39).
The EC's reporting guidelines don't specify what constitutes a "major cost" so please use your best judgement. Several partners had travel as a major cost, which seems reasonable, but it is probably also valid for many partners to not have any major cost items.

Tabular overview of budgeted person month and actual person month ("Table 4")

In year 1 this information was collected through the WP and RT leaders for their WPs and RTs, and then collated by the coordination team. In years 2 and 3 each partner sent this information directly to the coordination team. For year 4 please use the template to indicate the total person months used for each WP for your institute in year 4. For AC partners please also include your own staff numbers (i.e. the "additional cost" bit). Please send this information directly to the Project Office.