Preparing EU-fin for periodic reporting

Interactive user manual for coordinators

What is EU-fin?

• Web-based tool for the financial management of fp7 projects– Planning of budgets & person months– Reporting actual costs & person months by

beneficiaries directly into EU-fin– Explanation of costs– Monitoring– Reallocating budgets

Introduction

How does it work?

• Setting up EU-fin by coordinator• Partner/coordinator enters planning of budgets• Partners report actual costs & explanation• Coordinator monitors reporting, enters payments,

generates reports• Allocating budgets and monitor spent budgets

Introduction

Structure of EU-fin

• Coordinator menu– Setting up / adjusting project interface– Monitoring module– Generating reports– Payment module

• Beneficiary menu– Personal menu for each partner– Budgets, costs & explanation forms– Generating Form C

Introduction

Log-in

This presentation contains direct links to the right pages in EU-fin, to use these links you have to log-in first.

Go to: EU-fin Log in

Your user information has been sent to you by e-mail, contact the helpdesk if you haven’t received this e-mail

Change log-in information before first log-in: Change password

Structure of coordinator menu

Navigation panel:

• 4 submenu’s• Click on these titles to navigate through the coordinator

menu• A submenu will appear on the left side

Introduction

• Check set up of EU-fin

• Check planning of the budgets per beneficiary

• Invite partners to EU-fin

In this manual

Structure of manual

Check each parameter:Go to ‘Reports » Parameter reports’ to check the information that is inserted for each parameter, the most important parameters are:- Users (email address right?)- Links beneficiary to work package

In the following slides is explained how to make changes to parameters.

(1) Check set up of EU-fin

Check set up of EU-fin

Update project info and parameters

'Project » Project information and parameters'

• Update project information:– Indirect cost calculation: Advice or no advise

Advice: in the beneficiary menu an advice is calculated for the indirect costs, depending on the method used by a beneficiary

– Whole duration column closed: yes or no Yes: in the beneficiary menu, the whole duration column is closed for the partners

Check set up of EU-fin

Update periods

‘Project » Periods’• Update period information• Click <Edit> in front of the period you want to

change and click <Update> after making adjustments

• After each reporting period: close period

Check set up of EU-fin

Update type of expenditures

‘Project » Type of Expenditures’• Click <Edit> in front of the type of expenditure

you want to change, and click <Update> after making adjustments

• Type of expenditures cannot be deleted once the budgets have been entered in the beneficiary menu for this type of expenditure

• Name and order can be updated

Check set up of EU-fin

Update modules

'Project » Module‘• The use of modules is optional• To remove a module, first go to ‘project » Work

package/Task’ to remove the link with a module, then remove the module

Modules can be used to add another aggregation level. Without modules there is only one level, namely work package. When using modules there are two aggregation levels, the module will become work package, and the work packages become tasks. Thereby creating even more insight in the project budgets

Check set up of EU-fin

Update work package

'Project » Work Package / Task'• Click <Edit> in front of the work package you

want to update and click <Update> after making changes

• Work packages cannot be deleted once budgets or costs have been reported

Check set up of EU-fin

Update user

'Project » Update Users'• Select the user you want to update and click

<Save> after making changes• Users that are linked to a work package cannot

be deleted. First remove the user from the work package, before deleting the user.

Check set up of EU-fin

Update Beneficiary

‘Beneficiary » Update beneficiary’• Select the beneficiary you want to update and

click <Save> after making changes• Beneficiaries that are linked to a work package

cannot be deleted

Check set up of EU-fin

Update link beneficiary to wp

‘Beneficiary » Update link benef. to wp’• Select the work package, then the beneficiary

and click <Save> after making changes• To insert a new link between a partner and a

work package, go to 'Beneficiary » Insert Link Beneficiary to Work Package'

• After adding the link, go to ‘Beneficiary » Create beneficiary menu’ and click on <Create> to activate the new link

Check set up of EU-fin

Update EC contribution

‘Beneficiary » Update Beneficiary contribution per activity’

• Select the partner, then the activity and update the requested contribution for this activity. Click <Save> to save the information

Check set up of EU-fin

Update Communication

'Beneficiary » Communication'

Here you can update the main e-mail addresses, fax numbers and phone numbers of each beneficiary.

Note: the e-mail address, phone number and fax number of a single user can be inserted and updated via ‘Project » Update user’

Check set up of EU-fin

Update Addresses

'Beneficiary » Addresses'

Here you can update the address information of your beneficiaries

Check set up of EU-fin

Enter beneficiary menu

'Beneficiary » Go to beneficiary menu‘*

*Note: If you have made changes to the EU-fin set up, first go to ‘Beneficiary » Create beneficiary menu’ and click on <Create>. This will update the structure of the beneficiary menu

When EU-fin is set up by these steps, a personal menu for each beneficiary is created. Beneficiaries can access this menu directly and report their actual costs and person months.

Check set up of EU-fin

The coordinator can enter the beneficiary menu from EU-fin: Select the beneficiary from the drop down box and click <Beneficiary Menu> to enter the menu for that beneficiary

Note: the beneficiary menu that is accessed from the coordinator menu is not the same as the beneficiary menu that the beneficiaries see after log in. To access the actual beneficiary menu, go to the link www.eufin-fp7.com and click <Beneficiary menu>. Use the personal log-in information of partners (go to: 'Project » Insert user')

Enter beneficiary menu

Structure of beneficiary menu

Navigation panel of beneficiary menu

Click on these titles to navigate through the beneficiary menu

• Financial planning: Planning of budgets• Project costs: Reporting of actual costs• Reports: Generate queries of entered data• Documents: View documents uploaded by the coordinator• Beneficiary: View and update the beneficiary information• User manual: access the EU-fin user manual for beneficiaries

The beneficiary menu

(2) Planned budgets

Check planned budgets

In EU-fin, the planned budgets are entered per work package (or task: use modules). For every work package, the budget is planned for every type of expenditure and period. Planned person months can be entered at the bottom of the page.

When planning the budgets, the budget panel on the left shows the assigned budget for the activity type of that wp. It also registers total budgets on whole duration level.

There are 3 methods for entering the financial planning, these are:

Method 1:

The coordinator enters all planned budgets per work package, both the whole duration budget and the break down per period. The whole duration column is closed (See Slide 9).

Method 2:

The coordinator enters the whole duration budgets, the whole duration column is closed (See Slide 9) and the whole duration budgets cannot be changed by the partners. The partners enter the budget breakdown per period

Method 3:

The partners enter both the whole duration budget and the break down per period. The whole duration column is open (See Slide 9).

Planned budgets

Check planned budgets

Before inviting the partners to EU-fin, the financial planning must be checked.Use the analysis ‘Budget and Costs’, you can use the following settings:

When using Method 2&3:

The partners have entered the planned budgets for this reporting period. When inviting them to EU-fin to report the eligible cost for this reporting period, ask them to check the entered financial planning.

Planned budgets

Check planned budgets

The following reports are also useful for checking the planned budgets:

• ‘Reports » A3.1 Complete’

To check if the A3.1’s from EU-fin are the same as the GPF A3.1’s. If the requested EC-Contribution is not right, you can update this via ‘EC-Contribution and Payments » Update beneficiary contribution per activity’

If the planned budgets are not right, you have to update the whole duration budgets in the beneficiary menu. Go to ‘Beneficiary » Go to beneficiary Menu’

EU-fin reports

Check planned budgets

• ‘Reports » Datadumps » EC-contribution and budgets planned’

To check if the budgets that are inserted in the whole duration column are the same as the assigned budgets (calculated from the assigned EC-Contribution).

Percentage: Funding percentage for this activity type

• (Is dependent on the status of the Beneficiary, adjust via ‘Beneficiary » Update Beneficiary’

EC-Contribution: Assigned EC-Contribution

• (Update via ‘EC-Contribution and Payments » Update beneficiary contribution per activity’

Budget Assigned: Budget calculated from the assigned EC-Contribution

• Is calculated automatically from the assigned EC-Contribution. Change status of beneficiary or EC-Contribtion if the budget assigned is wrong.

Budget Planned: Planned Budget in the Whole duration column

• This is the budget that is entered in the whole duration column in the beneficiary menu. Go to the beneficiary menu of a beneficiary if this budget is wrong: ‘Beneficiary » Go to beneficiary Menu’

Difference: The difference betwee budget assigned and budget planned

• Is calculated automatically from budget

EU-fin reports

Check planned budgets

The EU-fin beneficiary menu is simple to use, therefore beneficiaries don’t need much training.

A manual is available with step-by-step instruction for partners (including Force instructions. This manual can be found at the log-in page for the Coordinator menu.

After having made all the necessary adjustments to this manual, you can upload this document into EU-fin. In the coordinator menu, go to ‘Project » Documents’ . Upload the file and provide an explanation, click on <Save> to save the document. The partners can find the document in the beneficiary menu under ‘Documents’ in the navigation panel.

Manual for beneficiaries

Beneficiary user manual

After EU-fin is ready to use, the partners have to be invited to start reporting their eligible costs. We advise to send the first e-mail to the partners from a personal account of the coordinator or the coordinators assistant. The e-mail from EU-fin might not be recognised as important, because it is from an unknown source.

In the link a template for this invitation e-mail can be found. Words in Italic have to be filled in for the specific situation of the project (Names, dates, addresses etc) and the template can be adapted if required.

To open the document, click here:

Inviting partners

Microsoft Word-document

Invite partners

After introducing EU-fin to the beneficiaries, their log-in information can be send to them.

Go to EU-fin ‘Project » Email’ to compose the email. In this editor you have to fill in the following information:

– Subject Enter the subject of the e-mail (the project name will automatically be included in the subject)

– To Select the recipients of the e-mail– With Authorisation Tick this box to include the personal log-in information

of each user– Body text Enter the text of the e-mail (You can use the following

template:

Invitation email from EU-fin

Invite partners

Microsoft Word-document

Example of the generated E-mail

Invitation email from EU-fin

Invite partners

Text entered by coordinator

User information included by EU-fin

• When the partners start reporting the actual costs and person months in EU-fin, the coordinator can monitor their actions in EU-fin

• Monitoring is explained in the manual ‘Monitoring with EU-fin’ that can be found at the log-in page for the Coordinator menu.

Monitoring