ERS Release Announcement for Spring 2021

Dear Colleagues,

EFM is pleased to announce that you can now access your department’s Spring 2021 effort reports and begin the certification process.

As with our prior releases, effort reports affected by known UCPath issues will continue to be flagged as “Under Preliminary Review”. A complete list of reports impacted by one or more of these issues can be found in the ERS Master Exception List.

Please visit EFM’s special instructions page to view an example of “Under Preliminary Review” flag along with a comment explaining about the known UCPath issues and the necessary actions to take moving forward.

As we open this certification session, we’d like to remind ERS Coordinators, Reviewers and Certifiers to be mindful of upcoming and past certification due dates. Incomplete or improper reporting of effort is a compliance violation that could result in audit disallowances and/or withholding of federal research funding. If your department has any outstanding unflagged effort reports from previous quarters, please complete certifications in ERS as soon as possible.

If you discover an inaccuracy in an effort report or potential defect that is not captured as part of the know UCPath issues, please contact ERS Help Desk (ershelp@research.ucla.edu) with the employee name, employee ID, report period, and description of the issue for the impacted effort report and EFM will assist with looking into the protentional finding further.

General Reminders and Reference

• ERS includes earnings through the Pay End Date of 6/30/2021. Additional earnings will be included as we prepare for the upcoming release of Summer 2021 effort reports.
• Please visit ERS System access for information accessing ERS on campus and off campus.
• Please see ERS FAQs for helpful information related to effort reports.
• Principal Investigators (PIs) are required to include committed cost sharing when certifying effort reports.
• PIs must self-certify their own effort reports.
• Non-PI effort reports can be certified by either the PI, the employee, or an authorized certifier with first-hand knowledge of the employee’s effort.
• Unless an effort report status is “Certified” the report is considered “Open” and requires review and certification.
• Effort reports with a “Not Required” status should be reviewed and verified to determine if effort or cost sharing should be reported.

For any questions, please contact ERS Support at ershelp@research.ucla.edu.

Thank You,

UCLA ORA – Extramural Fund Management