Info Day on New Calls and Partner Caf

Info Day on New Calls and Partner Café Brussels, 8 September 2010 How to apply – Budget and Reporting

Budget preparation (1/3) The budget exercise among project partners is a key element in the preparation of the application form: 4 valuable elements for a successful budget exercise → develop a budget: 1. Per partner involved in the partnership 2. With a breakdown per Work Package (WP - 3 in total): Coordination, Activities and Dissemination 3. With a breakdown per Budget Line (BL – 5 in total) : staff, administration, travel and accommodation, equipment and external expertise and services 4. Per reporting period (payment forecast – until 6 max. ): on a 6 -month period basis Important: the right way of developing a budget is to (1) identify the activities to meet objectives and the resources needed, (2) approximate their costs and (3) forecast the payment dates. Please note that the budget exercise needs to be consistent with the planned working hours per partner as requested in the AF.

Budget lines (2/3) BL 1: Staff: Costs only for personnel employed based on actual salary rate on a yearly basis and number of hours actually worked for the project evidenced by timesheets. BL 2: Administration: Direct and indirect general costs. 2 thresholds to respect: • total of BL 2 (admin. ) cannot exceed 25% of the total of BL 1 (staff); • total of indirect costs declared on flat-rate basis cannot exceed 20% of the direct costs (BL 1, BL 3, BL 4, BL 5 and BL 2 direct costs part) of the operation. BL 3: Travel and accommodation: Only for employed personnel travelling, trips motivated by project activities. BL 4: Equipment: Only depreciation allowances, purchase should remain exceptional. BL 5: External expertise and services: Costs for supplies of services and goods (e. g. : consultants, experts, interpreters) on basis of contracts/agreements and invoices/ requests for reimbursement.

Budget monitoring (3/3) Significance of the well-justified budget allocation: • Appropriateness of the allocation and justification of the resources (budget and staff) is one management related criteria for the evaluation of AF • In case the AF is selected, will ease the duty of the LP to produce a budget breakdown per partner, per WP, per BL as part of the subsidy contract • Budget consumption is monitored for each reporting period (automatically filled-in in each progress report) in the implementation phase • Necessity of having a well-prepared budget since the very beginning because the budget change during implementation phase is limited by: ü flexibility rules (max of 20. 000 EUR or up to 10% of the BL, WP, partner budget whichever is the higher) or ü twice in the project lifetime, changes above the flexibility rules, adding up to a max. of 20% of the total costs stated in the contract.

Payment forecast and reporting (1/3) Applicants are asked to complete the payment forecast table in AF representing 6 month reporting periods over the full implementation period ü for instance: payment forecast for ADES Project: 4 reporting periods starting 31/01/2011 (MC Meeting) ending 30/11/2012 (3 months after August 2012). Tip 1 → please refer to project specifications and make sure to use the full implementation period from the start of the project (date of approval of the MC) until the end of the activities (including dissemination activities if foreseen). Tip 2 → Please make sure that the total in the payment forecast table is the same as the total project budget of the AF. • Estimation of the actual payments has to be done during reporting of 6 months. The detailed dates of reporting periods will be defined in the subsidy contract. • For each 6 month period, a project progress report (including an Activity Report and a Financial progress report) has to be submitted by the Lead Partner. • Prefilled progress reports are sent by the LP within 4 months after the end of reporting period.

Reporting principles (2/3)

Reporting audit trail (3/3) The partners must ensure that all accounting documentation related to the project is available and filed separately, even if this leads to a dual treatment of accounts (for example if it is necessary to file accounting documents centrally). It is the Lead Partner’s responsibility to ensure an adequate audit trail which implies that the Lead Partner has an overview of: • Who paid, • What was paid, • When was it paid, • Who verified, • Where the related documents are stored. The Lead Partner must ensure that all partners store the documents related to the project in a safe and orderly manner at least until 2020, if not longer, in case there are national rules that require a longer archiving period.

Further questions For questions regarding procedures, please send an e-mail to procedures@espon. eu Thank you for your attention