Person-Months
The unit sponsors use to express effort: the share of a person's annual activity devoted to a project, in months.
Rather than percentages, federal sponsors express effort in person-months: calendar months for 12-month appointments, or academic and summer months for 9-month faculty appointments. One person-month is the effort equivalent to one month of an individual's total institutional activity.
Person-months convert a percent-effort commitment into a dollar figure for the budget, and they're what appears on the proposal, the award, and progress reports, so they have to stay consistent across all three.
Person-months link the budget, the effort commitment, and reporting; inconsistencies between them surface in audits and progress reviews.
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.