Faculty project codes

From August 2024, in order to improve the in-year tracking, forecasting, reporting and effective use of allocated funds, improvements have been made to how the Activity Codes are set up and managed across the faculty relating to the below codes and funding initiatives

The main change relates to how and where the Faculty-awarded funding to School-led projects sits. Previously, budgets were held at the Faculty level, but spending occurred through School codes. Going forward, all spending will be processed via Faculty codes, with specific task codes assigned to individual projects.

Task codes are now set up for each project within the overall Faculty budget (rather than transferring money to local School codes). On award of project funding, the funding recipient(s) will be notified by finance with their specific task code once allocated and set up in the system.

Faculty Funding Initiatives this guidance relates to:

Responsibility for Approvals:

Bookings, administration, risk assessment, due diligence, payments etc. approvals will continue to be the responsibility of the School or department that funding recipients report into.

Faculty budget holders will only approve spending against the above account codes on the system once all local approvals have reviewed the expenditure is appropriate and other review checks have been completed.

Examples of local approvals can be found on page 2 below. Your School Office will be able to answer any questions about which sign-offs you will need, depending on the type/category of spend. 

Key contacts:

Example sign-off processes:

PR7 forms: These should be completed by the awardee and approved by Heads of Department in the first instance and then submitted to both the budget holder and the authorised signatory for the relevant account via email. Please note the funding recipient is not the budget holder in this circumstance; this is the member of staff in the Faculty responsible for the account. Budget holders and authorised signatories for specific account codes can be found via this checker.

Expense claims: These should be submitted online with the relevant P code and task code and will be sent for approval via the system, requiring approval from Line Managers and budget holders. Itemised receipts need to be attached to the claim, as per University guidance.

Oracle: Marketplace purchases and non-catalogue purchases should be approved at the School level and then processed on Oracle by your local requisitioner. These will come to the budget holder for approval. More information on making purchases can be found on the University’s finance site.

Risk assessments: Awardees must follow all University and School processes around arranging sign-off and risk assessments for events and travel. The Risk assessment toolkit can be found here: Risk Assessment (The University of Manchester). Travellers are encouraged to complete their risk assessments 3 months before travel, as some trips will require sign-off from the Head of School or Extreme Risk Travel Advisory Group.

Travel

All funded travel needs to follow the University travel policy and associated risk assessment procedures.

Unfortunately, the task codes sent to awardees cannot be used on Key Travel, so all bookings should use the task code D05.

The University’s Compliance and Risk site should be reviewed to ensure a correct risk assessment and suitable sign-off have been gathered before booking any travel. Awardees must follow all University and School processes around arranging sign-off and risk assessments for events and travel.

Further Support:

A link to a document for information which brings together some of the University payment and procurement processes can be found here:

Payment methods guidelines - Faculty Funding Awards 2024-25

Further information is also on the Staffnet pages: Directorate of Finance | StaffNet | The University of Manchester

For further finance enquiries, please contact HUMSFacultyOfficeFinance@manchester.ac.uk