Direct Costs
Costs that can be identified specifically with a particular project: salaries, equipment, supplies, and project travel.
Direct costs are expenses a sponsored project incurs that can be assigned to it with relative ease and a high degree of accuracy: the personnel working on the award, the materials and supplies they consume, project-specific equipment, participant costs, and travel.
They stand in contrast to F&A (indirect) costs, which support research broadly but can't be tied to a single project. Every line in a proposal budget is classified as one or the other, and that split determines how much indirect cost the award ultimately recovers.
Your direct-cost base drives how much F&A the award recovers. Misclassify a line and you under- or over-recover.
Track this in GrantsManager
GrantsManager gives PIs and administrators one real-time view of proposals, awards, budgets, and compliance, so terms like this stop living in spreadsheets.