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Budget Preparation

Templates Required

The Office of Sponsored Programs requires the budget spreadsheet and justification be included with every proposal.

OSP Budget Spreadsheet Template

This Excel spreadsheet template will assist you in planning your project budget.  It has the correct Staff Benefit and Leave Rates pre-loaded.  There is a yearly escalation for multi-year budgets. 

Please provide your budget spreadsheet in excel file format to OSP with your submission.

Sample Budget Justification

Please provide your budget justification in word file format to OSP with your submission. 

A Budget Justification must be included regardless of agency/sponsor requirements. A consistent approach is applied to all sponsored projects to assure compliance. The federal government makes it the university's responsibility to fully justify all budgets. It is one the primary functions of the OSP office to review budgets and to match the requested  budget lines to the project narrative.  We must ensure forethought, the necessity of the project budgeted expenditures, the consistency in accumulating costs, and compliance of all items listed with GAAP/CASB. Budget narratives are the roadmap for post-award determination on allowability and allocability of costs.

Direct vs. Indirect Costs

Direct costs are those costs that can be identified specifically with a particular sponsored project, instruction, other sponsored activity or other institutional activity relatively easily with a high degree of accuracy.  
2 CFR 200 Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards (redirects to U.S. Government Publishing Office website)

Direct Cost Examples:

  • Salaries
  • Fringe benefits
  • Travel
  • Consulting Fees
  • Expendable Materials & Supplies
  • Publication Fees
  • Equipment
  • Graduate Student Tuition

Facilities and Administrative (F&A) also referred to as "Indirect" or "Overhead"
The University of Alaska negotiates a Facilities & Administrative (F&A) cost rate agreement with its cognizant agency, the Office of Naval Research.  This rate allows the University  to recover the costs of Facilities and Administrative support for sponsored projects. Indirect costs are general institutional costs incurred for common and joint objectives, for example: capital improvements, general administration, sponsored programs administration, department administration, O&M depreciation and library.  

The current provisional F&A agreement can be found at the UA Statewide Cost Analysis website.

The base of indirect costs calculations is "Modified Total Direct Costs" unless stated otherwise by the sponsor.