Effort Reporting: A Practical Guide
Because federal awards pay for people's time, institutions have to show that the salary charged to each project matches the effort actually spent on it. This guide covers how effort works and where it goes wrong.
Effort is one of the most audited areas in research administration, and one of the easiest to get subtly wrong.
What 'effort' means
- Effort is a percentage of an individual's total institutional activity: not a 40-hour week.
- All activities count toward 100%: research, teaching, administration, clinical.
- Sponsors express it in person-months, not percentages.
Committed vs. charged vs. certified
- Committed: the effort you promised in the proposal and award.
- Charged: the salary actually posted to the grant.
- Certified: the after-the-fact confirmation that charges match reality.
- All three should reconcile; gaps between them are classic audit findings.
Common pitfalls
- Over-the-cap salary charged in full (see the salary cap).
- Forgetting cost-shared or committed-but-unpaid effort.
- Showing 0% effort while named as key personnel.
- Mismatched person-months between the budget, award, and progress report.
Getting it right
- Reconcile effort to payroll every certification period.
- Update commitments when effort changes mid-project.
- Keep person-months consistent across the proposal, award, and RPPR.
Common pitfalls
- Letting committed, charged, and certified effort drift apart. All three have to reconcile.
- Certifying effort without reviewing actual activity, which undermines the attestation.
- Forgetting to adjust effort when the salary cap changes or when a key person's role changes.
Effort reporting is where commitments, payroll, and reality have to agree: reconcile them before an auditor does.
Frequently asked questions
What is effort certification?
A periodic, after-the-fact confirmation that the salary charged to each award reflects the effort actually devoted to it.
Why is effort a common audit finding?
Because committed effort in the proposal, salary charged in payroll, and certified effort often fall out of sync, and auditors test exactly that reconciliation.
How is effort expressed?
Federal sponsors use person-months rather than percentages, converting a share of total institutional activity into months.
Track this in GrantsManager
GrantsManager surfaces every deadline, reconciles spend, and keeps effort and reporting in one place, so checklists like this stay out of your inbox.