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.

Form C

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

Year 5 of the project runs from 1 September 2008 to 31 December 2009.
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). Please don't include this in your direct costs and don't put this under "subcontracting" in box 2 as the cost will be deducted from your claim by the EC.
No partner (with the exception of partner 3, CNRS) should have any costs listed in the subcontracting row of box 2. If you put costs in this row they will be deducted from your claim.

Form C has the following automatic 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 (Met Office) 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 January 2010).

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.
The end date of the project is 31 December 2009. Certificates not covering the full length of the reporting period will be rejected.
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.
AC partners will need to ensure they have the additional paragraphs included in their certificate as specified in footnote 330 and 332.

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 5 (cell H13, unless you have modified the original version) should correspond with the total eligible cost in Form C (cell L38).
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 5please use the template to indicate the total person months used for each WP for your institute in year 5. 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.