Source: OSP Website

The disabling of sponsored accounts helps to ensure awards are closed out on a timely basis and prevents additional transactions from being posted to sponsored accounts that have ended. OSP Research Finance oversees the various stages of disabling that occur. The disabling process begins with the entry of the Final Figure in GMAS and continues with the disabling of the subactivity, segment, and ultimately the fund. Note: activity values are not currently disabled in the general ledger (GL).

Fund Disabling 

Sponsored fund values are automatically set to disable in the GL following the segment closeout. OSP Research Finance and tub/local units coordinate the fund disabling process, which automatically disables the fund values in the GL during the first week of the month after the segment is closed.

Subactivity Disabling

After OSP Research Finance enters the Final Figure for an activity-subactivity combination in GMAS and the account is reconciled, the account is automatically queued for disabling 90 days after the account end date. OSP Research Finance also has the ability to manually queue a subactivity for disabling ahead of that schedule, when required. The automated disabling process in GMAS feeds reconciled accounts for disabling in the GL. This process occurs on the 4th of every month and accounts that satisfy the disabling criteria disable by the 10th of that month (or by the 18th of the month for quarterly closing). No disabling process runs from June through August due to fiscal year-end.

Accounts will fail to disable if there are balances to non-sponsored funds using the sponsored activity-subactivity combination. These balances are most common when there is a balance on a companion account, which is commonly used for recording cost sharing or when there are work-in-process (WIP) equipment entries associated with fixed assets that require reconciliation. Until these balances are reconciled, the account will continue to fail disabling.

Segment Closeout

Once all of the subactivities of a project have been disabled and when the project ended over 9 months ago, segment closeout begins. Each month, OSP Research Finance and the Pre-Award offices receive a report identifying segments that are ready for closeout or segments that require additional actions prior to closeout.

The Pre-Award offices work with the Department/Local Level Managing Units as needed to resolve any pending GMAS requests or open pre-award items that prevent segment closeout and to confirm that the project is not ongoing. Once Pre-Award resolves the pending items the segment closeout process resumes.

OSP Research Finance resolves any outstanding post-award GMAS issues related to outstanding receivables or incomplete financial deliverables. Each month, the Post-Award Operations Team manually closes each segment that has all accounts disabled and no pending requests or open items in GMAS. Once a segment is closed, it cannot be re-opened.

GMAS Process for Segment Closeout

Refer to the Segment Closeout Business Process (HarvardKey login required)