Part IV - Charge-out rates

Section G: Other charge-out rates

Chapter G.3 Avoiding double-charging

1. Double-charging should be avoided, and the costs included in facility charge-out rates should be excluded from estates costs or any other cost total in a project’s fEC.  
2. For directly allocated costs, it is often very difficult to identify the actual costs being incurred that are forming part of the charge-out rates (e.g. depreciation costs on a particular piece of equipment, or a technician who is part of a pool of technicians). This is not a TRAC requirement.
3. TRAC uses a simple method of resolving this, and of avoiding double-charging for directly allocated costs. This is done by deducting the costs used to calculate the charge-out rates from the estates cost figure used in the calculation of the estates charges:
   • the actual costs held in the accounting records which relate to items that are being directly allocated to research projects (such as major facilities and laboratory technicians), should be included as part of the TRAC estates cost total for Research.

     This would include all pool technicians’ salaries, all equipment depreciation or write-offs being recorded in the accounting records, maintenance costs, and so on.

     It would be unlikely to include all the costs included in the charge-out rate calculation. Depreciation in the charge-out rate, for example, being on a replacement cost basis and covering all relevant assets, is likely to be higher than the depreciation in the TRAC estates costs. The latter might be on a historical cost basis and would exclude any costs or assets that have been written-off.

   • the total annual fEC that has been used to calculate the DA charges for these items should then be deducted from the estates cost total for Research, before the estates charges for Research are calculated.
4. This deduction can take into account the likely use of the equipment, not any higher ‘efficient use’. The costs deducted from the Research cost total would therefore be calculated as:
   
   
   the calculated charge-out rates (e.g. £/day)

   multiplied by

   the likely use by all Research activity – including institution-/own-funded activity and PGR supervision – that had been established during the calculation of the charge-out rate

   giving

   the costs to be deducted from the annual estates total before the estates charges are calculated.

5. The avoidance of double-charging is covered in more detail in Annex 18.