Academic Coordinator Responsibilities

The Academic Coordinator plays a key role in working with the Principal Investigator (PI), coPI, and others in the Finance and Sponsored Research offices to manage external awards. They initiate transactions in Workday, provide the PI with accurate and timely information about expenditures, and advise when and how adjustments should be made. The Coordinator responsibilities include:

  • Create & submit Supplier Invoices
  • Create & submit Purchasing Orders
  • Create & submit Travel Expense Reports
  • Create Request for Check forms
  • Initiate Hiring Forms and terminate and resubmit if changes occur.
  • Review and approve Workday timesheets to ensure correctness (when the Coordinator role is “Sign Off Supervisor”)
  • Create & submit Expense Transfers/Cost Transfers to correct errors, allocate costs that are shared across multiple projects, and transfer expenses that are older than 4 months (120 days), which are a focus of audit
  • Assure that expense transfers (payroll and non-payroll) are fully explained, justified and approved by faculty, and that a copy of the original expense transaction is provided
  • If a Workday transaction by a PI or coordinator allocates unallowable costs to an external award, the Workday transaction will be sent back for retagging to the correct account by the Approver for the Finance Office or Office of Sponsored Research.
  • Any unallowable expense that is determined after Approval to have been mistakenly allocated to an external award will be journaled from the award account to a nonsponsored account, such as department operations, gift funds, faculty startup, faculty research incentive, or central operations, as directed by the Grants Accountant or other Finance Office Approver.