Notice Number: NOT-OD-16-028

Key Dates
Release Date: November 19, 2015

Issued by
National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Purpose

In accordance with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) payment policies, NIH must transition domestic, non-competing awards from pooled payment accounts to Payment Management System (PMS) subaccounts in Fiscal Year 2016. (See “Related Announcements” above for background.) This Notice informs recipients how NIH will process competitive revisions/administrative supplements (Type 3s) associated with domestic, non-competing continuation awards in Fiscal Year 2016 and provides further guidance on completing the Subaccount Transitional Federal Financial Reports (FFR) specific to supplements during this transition.

NIH Implementation

All awards issued on/after October 1, 2015, must be issued in a PMS P subaccount. For non-competing continuation awards and competitive revisions/administrative supplements (Type 3s) issued to domestic awards, the conversion to a subaccount will occur with the first award issued by NIH using FY16 funds.

It is important for NIH to note, the process that is being used for issuing Type 3 domestic supplements for FY 16 is different from what was done in the past. In previous years, Type 3 domestic awards were issued in the same account as the parent award (pooled accounts) based on HHS’ previous long-standing policies and practices. This change is solely to ensure that NIH completes all subaccount transition activities by the end of the current fiscal year.

Therefore, in some instances, due to the NIH awarding Institute/Center’s (IC) workload volume and the timing of the supplemental request, there will be instances when NIH may opt to issue a supplement in FY16 prior to awarding the non-competing continuation grant. In these specific instances, the supplement would be issued with a new document number at the time of award in order to establish the P subaccount in PMS. The FY 16 parent continuation grant will subsequently be awarded to that P subaccount.

Recipient Reporting

As previously announced, there will be no change to the due dates, submission, or review of progress reports for FY 2016 awards.

A Subaccount Transitional Federal Financial Report (FFR) expenditure report is required for all continuation awards transitioning from the pooled to the subaccount and is due no later than 90 days after the end of the calendar quarter in which the budget period ended. The purpose of the Subaccount Transitional FFR is to assist NIH in identifying the unobligated balance to be transferred from the pooled to the subaccount. A Subaccount Transitional FFR for all intent and purpose is equated to an annual FFR and may include an unliquidated balance.

When a supplement is awarded prior to issuance of the parent’s continuation award, the recipient is instructed to include only expenditure data pertaining to the pooled account in PMS on the Subaccount Transitional FFR. In this case, the FY16 supplement and parent awards will contain the following term:

Recipients are advised to include the following statement in Box 12 of the Subaccount Transitional FFR associated with its FY15 parent grant award:

Subaccount Transitional FFR Per instructions from NIH, this report only contains expenditure data pertaining to the pooled account in PMS. Expenditures from the supplement funds awarded in the PMS subaccount prior to the end date of the period covered by this report, will be included in the next FFR required for this award.

NIH has updated the frequently asked questions pertaining to domestic supplements in FY 2016 (Section D) on the following site: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/payment/faqs.htm.

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

Division of Grants Policy
Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration (OPERA)
Office of Extramural Research
National Institutes of Health
Telephone: 301-435-0949
Email: [email protected]