Unifying continuous 2 CFR § 200.430 effort certification, pre-award compliance validation, deterministic budgeting, and post-award reconciliation — engineered to operate natively inside Oracle PeopleSoft or alongside your enterprise financial system of record.
Lead PI: Dr. Kenneth Schumacher • Department: Biomedical Engineering • Total Allocation: $2,485,210 (5-Year MTDC)
Universities don’t need a multi-year rip-and-replace project to solve urgent audit bottlenecks. Adopt individual high-impact compliance modules—starting with Effort Certification (RSEffort)—or deploy the unified ResearchSphere lifecycle platform.
Native PeopleSoft 9.2 Fluid bolt-on or standalone portal enforcing 2 CFR § 200.430 compliance: 100% payroll distribution math, ≥25% commitment reduction alerts, retroactive cost-transfer auditing, and dual-signer DocuSign attestation.
Eliminates late FFRs and trailing charges under 2 CFR § 200.344. Orchestrates 90/60/30-day closeout checklists, open encumbrance liquidation, final invention disclosures, and ERP project freeze workflows.
Automates pass-through entity compliance under 2 CFR § 200.332. Tracks annual Single Audit (FAC) findings, dynamic risk-tier scoring, subaward invoice burn rates, and PI technical performance attestations.
End-to-end research administration combining Federal Opportunity Intake, Deterministic Budgeting, Pre-Flight Sponsor Validation, DocuSign Institutional Routing, and Bi-Directional ERP Award Setup.
Universities run on mission-critical financial ERP systems of record that have taken millions of dollars and decades to establish. Yet research compliance remains vulnerable to disconnected spreadsheets and manual handoffs.
Faculty and departments build complex proposal budgets and effort trackers in disconnected spreadsheets. Formula breaks, outdated fringe rates, and misapplied salary caps introduce pre-flight compliance exposure.
Personnel represents 70%+ of research volume. Unmonitored 25% commitment drops, retroactive payroll cost transfers, and paper/PDF effort certifications are the #1 cause of federal False Claims Act settlements.
When awards arrive, staff spend 2 to 4 weeks manually re-entering award data, milestones, companion projects, and budget periods into the ERP, delaying project start dates and research expenditures.
Legacy software vendors insist the only solution is replacing your entire enterprise financial ERP. ResearchSphere serves as the research intelligence layer that seamlessly coexists with your system of record.
Personnel compensation constitutes 65% to 75% of academic research expenditures and represents the single largest federal audit liability for universities. RSEffort transforms retrospective, error-prone effort reporting into continuous, automated payroll compliance that eliminates False Claims Act risk.
Reconciles all institutional activities—sponsored awards, cost sharing, instruction, clinical, and administration—to precisely 100% of Institutional Base Salary (IBS), preventing over-allocation.
Automatically flags whenever a PI or key person's actual payroll effort drops 25% or more below sponsor-approved commitment, triggering mandatory prior-approval workflows.
Screens payroll postings against NIH Executive Level II caps and award periods, blocking late salary transfers (>90 days) or post-certification adjustments without justification.
Orchestrates Employee first-hand attestation followed by PI/Supervisor verification with native DocuSign integration and immutable SHA-256 audit trails.
From the first opportunity intake to final award closeout and effort certification, ResearchSphere connects your investigators, central office, and financial systems into a unified workflow.
Live search across federal databases (Grants.gov, NIH RePORTER, NSF Award Search, SAM.gov). Automated sponsor announcement parsing extracts budget limits, mandatory attachments, and eligibility criteria into human-verified compliance checklists before proposal development begins.
Eliminates formula drift by pulling institutional F&A rate agreements, fringe benefit schedules, and federal salary caps directly from your core rate tables. Budgets match your financial system down to the exact penny.
Eliminate routing bottlenecks with automated institutional approval chains. Embedded DocuSign workflows capture investigator assurances, chair endorsements, cost-sharing approvals, and AOR authorizations with zero paper delays.
Upon sponsor award notice, proposals convert directly into active ERP awards, companion projects, and budget periods without manual re-keying. 15 automated 2 CFR 200 rules screen ongoing expenditures to ensure single-audit readiness.
Select a major federal sponsor opportunity below to inspect how ResearchSphere automatically audits guidelines, enforces salary caps, reconciles effort commitments, and orchestrates institutional sign-off.
From executive leadership monitoring multi-million dollar portfolios to investigators certifying effort and preparing proposals, ResearchSphere provides purpose-built interfaces.
Provide university leaders with real-time portfolio trajectories, active award commitments, indirect cost recovery forecasting, and 2 CFR 200 audit risk monitoring across every academic unit.
Your enterprise financial system of record—whether Oracle PeopleSoft FSCM/HCM 9.2, Ellucian Banner, or Workday—remains the authoritative source of truth. ResearchSphere does not replicate, replace, or disrupt your core financial ledgers, chart of accounts, or project costing engines.
Deploy directly inside your existing PeopleSoft 9.2 Fluid environment with zero external middleware, or connect via REST APIs to any university ERP.
Granular role-based security models ensure investigators see only their authorized proposals, awards, and effort statements, while central administrators maintain enterprise-wide oversight.
Eliminates multi-year ERP migration risks. Deploy in weeks, not years, with zero disruption to active campus operations.
Estimate the annual administrative time saved, proposal error reduction, and audit risk mitigation based on your institution's sponsored research volume.
Key questions addressed for Vice Presidents of Research, Controllers, Chief Information Officers, and Sponsored Programs Directors.
Connect directly with our institutional architecture team for a private demonstration tailored to your university’s sponsored research volume, compliance priorities, and ERP landscape.
All inquiries route directly to our executive team with same-day response for university evaluators.
Explore live PeopleSoft & ResearchSphere architecture, screenshots, and compliance workflows.
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