Grant Management & Financial Oversight
Nothing Sparks Interest in Your Cost Procedures Like Denying an Expenditure
Spotlight Story
Denying an expense? Suddenly everyone wants to read the cost policy. Find out how one compliance specialist overhauled a 36-page procedure into something clear, concise—and actually useful—while tackling travel headaches, audit findings, and the eternal question: “Where does it say I can’t do that?”
If you’ve ever told someone that an expense isn’t allowable, you know what comes next:
"Can you show me where it says that?"
It’s the universal response—a mix of skepticism and hope that maybe, just maybe, they’ve discovered a loophole. And suddenly, your allowable cost procedures become the hottest read in the office.
Which is why having clear, updated procedures is so critical. Not just for compliance, but because it becomes your first line of defense (and sanity) when navigating tricky spending conversations.
After two years of hallway chats, Zoom calls, and email threads with faculty and department administration it became clear: everyone was feeling this gray-area frustration. And honestly? I was right there with them. I read the Code Federal Regulations (CFR). I read university policies. I read sponsor guidelines. And then I read them all again. And yet, the more I read, the less clear things became. Take the classic example: buying widgets after the grant ends. Common sense says, “Nope, those can’t possibly benefit a project that’s already wrapped up.” But try finding that spelled out in black and white. Sure, the CFR says charges must be allocable—but where’s the line that just says, “Don’t buy stuff that will arrive after the grant ends”?
So, being a new-ish person in the grant world, I did what made sense—I built a chart. A big, beautiful Excel grid mapping out where the CFR, university, Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP), and sponsor rules overlapped… and where they collided like caffeinated squirrels. I walked through it with my supervisors, and when they saw the chaos laid out in rows and columns, they agreed: it was time to clean things up and make our path forward a lot clearer.
Because many university procedures are stricter than CFR and sponsor rules, they quickly became the baseline. To the Controller’s office's great delight—or maybe dismay, since I was constantly popping into their office—I worked closely with them to untangle internal Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and see where we could sync things up.
At that point, our allowable cost procedure was a whopping 36 pages. And not the fun kind of 36 pages, like a mystery novel or a juicy grant proposal—this was dense, 2016-era policy speak. It hadn’t been touched in years and read like it was written for folks with law degrees and a passion for footnotes. It needed a makeover, badly.
Step one: slash and burn (gently). I cut out references to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) circulars no one was using anymore, stripped out duplicated university policies that didn’t need to be repeated, and restructured the whole thing. That alone shaved off 10 pages.
Then came the language. I went paragraph by paragraph, trimming fluff and tightening the screws, aiming for something clear, useful, and actually readable. I tossed in real examples where things were murky and rewrote clunky legalese into something laypersons could follow without needing a decoder ring.
I made sure the revised section spelled everything out—clearly, concisely. General Services Administration (GSA) lodging and per diem rates? Check. Rules about flight classes? Check. What happens when someone forgets to include an agenda? Triple check. The goal: eliminate the guesswork and reduce the number of “Is this reimbursable?” emails in everyone’s inbox. By the end of it, our once-overstuffed 36-pager was down to a lean, mean 22 pages.
And finally—the grand finale. After all that work, it was time to do my due diligence and get this information out to the thousands of PIs and research administrators across campus. Because let’s be real: what’s the point of creating the world’s most beautifully clarified, expertly trimmed-down procedure if no one knows it exists?
So, we held a university-wide Q&A session. Open invite. Come one, come all. Got a burning question about GSA per diem rates? Curious if “coffee with collaborators” counts as a business expense? Wondering if you can use leftover grant funds to stock your office snack drawer? (Spoiler: no.) This was the time and place to ask.
Instead of posting the updated procedure and calling it a day, we talked about it, answered questions, and made sure people walked away knowing not just what changed, but why. Because at the end of the day, compliance only works if people know the rules—and understand them.
I have used Artificial Intelligence to assist with writing and editing the submitted manuscript.
Specifically, I used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to help refine the tone, clarify language, and condense content for readability and word count limitations. The content and ideas are entirely my own, and the AI was used as a writing assistant to improve clarity and flow.
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