Commitments Application
What is the Commitments Application?
A commitment is any financial obligation your department makes to another entity—either internal or external to the University.
The Commitments Application acts as a tracking mechanism for these obligations and, in tandem with the OVCRI Transfers Application, can also transfer funds to fulfill said obligations.
Examples of commitments include MOUs (memos of understanding), cost-sharing or proposal matches, recruitment and retention packages, co-sponsorships, annual dues, internal awards, etc.
Note: The intent of the Commitments Application is to track and fulfill obligations. As such, commitments should only be created by the obligating unit. Commitments should not be created for receiving funds.
What are the pieces of a commitment?
Commitments are comprised of one or more sub-commitments, their associated fiscal years, and the transfer(s) within each fiscal year. Think of each commitment as a parent and its affiliated sub-commitment(s) as a child or children. A commitment may have as many sub-commitments as necessary to accurately record the financial obligation. Each sub-commitment can be assigned attributes such as Category, Keyword(s), and Support Length to enable meaningful reporting and easier administration.
Naming convention of a LogID
The LogID of a Commitment contains three pieces. The first three characters refer to the committing department.
Example: PRV = Provost, KV3 = School of Molecular & Cellular Biology, 451 = History
The next piece represents the fiscal year that the commitment was created in, and the last four digits are simply sequential starting with 0001 and incrementing to 9999. As sub-commitments are added to a commitment, they are also created sequentially.
Example: PRV120001-2 , KV3130010-3, 451200023-1
Get Access
Gaining access to the Commitments Application is a simple process. Note that access is granted at the College or Major Administrative Unit level.
Follow these steps to gain access:
- Review the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Office of the Vice Chancellor of Research and Innovation (OVCRI).
- Contact the OVCRI Business Office to execute the MOU and have your account provisioned.
OVCRI Expectations
- Colleges will organize and coordinate their instances of the Commitments Application.
- Primary contacts will become familiar with Commitments and provide support to their users.
- OVCRI provides Commitments Applications support to primary contacts only.