| TRAC costing standards |
TRAC minimum requirements
|
| 1 |
annual transparency reporting – accountability
for public funds:
- total gross costs of institutional activity on Teaching, Research,
Other, as defined under TRAC;
- calculated by a robust method and reconciled to consolidated financial statements;
- signed off by head of institution as representing a fair and reasonable view of the actual costs.
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Part III
annual TRAC |
| 2 |
costing for internal purposes and to inform pricing:
- calculation of Teaching, Research and Other activities, by department
and research sponsor type.
|
| 3 |
attribution of academic staff costs to activities:
- consistent treatment as direct or support
- in-year time allocation, at least on a sample basis, for academic staff.
|
| 4 |
attribution of other costs to activities:
- direct allocation where possible and cost-effective;
- at least a cost-driver model with four to six robust drivers, verified
by surveys etc. for larger cost pools and used consistently.
|
| 5 |
cost adjustment:
- full economic costs including adjustment for:
- infrastructure costs;
- cost of capital employed
- no other adjustments to gross costs.
|
| 6 |
costs in medical and dental schools:
- attribute time on clinical services to Teaching, Research, Other and
Support, on the basis of the services received from the NHS under knock-for-knock.
|
| 7 |
review and development:
- annual review of cost driver information;
- annual calculation of costs to be reported under TRAC;
- sponsor rates recalculated every year;
- time allocation verified (re-collected) on a rolling three-year
basis.
|
| 8 |
audit:
- appropriate institutional committee confirms compliance with the
set of process standards.
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Part
II
quality assurance |
| 9 |
materiality and dispensations:
- for institutions with R income of less than £0.5k verification
of costs is optional;
- no requirement to recalculate or re-verify costs if institution
can show that impact is minimal or effort disproportionate.
|
| 10 |
rate calculation:
- institutions should calculate indirect cost rates using as a base
the cost information calculated for costing standards 1 and 2 above.
|
Part IV
indirect cost rates and estates charges |
| costing research projects |
Part V
TRAC fEC |
(the numbering of the costing standards has been updated and therefore does not quite follow the numbers originally assigned to them in Volume I of the TRAC Manual)
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