Electronic Personnel Effort Reports (ePERS)
Effort reporting is a requirement for recipients of federal awards as a means of attesting to the appropriateness of salaries and wages charged to the contract or grant.
Sponsoring agencies require reasonable assurance that labor costs charged to a sponsored project reflect the actual effort expended on the project.
- Review the ePERs - Policy & Procedure (CCO) which provides a framework for managing personnel effort reporting at CU Boulder.
- The Office of University Controller's ePERs Training page offers resources about the ePERs process, such as how to certify, supervisor certification and ePER summary reports.
- Every faculty member and staff employee working on a sponsored project is required to take the ePER - electronic Personnel Effort Reporting Percipio course.
Payroll Expense Transfers (PETs)
- The Payroll Expense Transfers - PETs (Regular Users) guide describes how to create and submit a payroll expense transfer.
- If you are an HCM user who creates PETs, take the Creating a PET: Multiline Paychecks and Grant Funding Percipio course.
More Resources
- New ePERs tile for principal investigators (Article; 2023)
- Test your knowledge of ePERs
- ePERs for Separated Employees
- PET Transfer Quick Reference Checklist
- PET Guidelines
- Notice of Overpayment Form
- PET Calculator.xlsx
Email Matrix
Review who gets what notification, when the notification is sent, and what needs to be done.
Click to view the ePER Email Matrix PDF
| Type of Email Notice | You'll Receive this Email if... | So Now You Need to... |
|---|---|---|
| Initial ePER Notice Sent after the end of each academic term. The Office of the University Controller (OUC) sends email notifications when ePERs are ready for certification or re-certification in the portal. | your salary or at least part of your salary was charged to a sponsored project in that term. | certify the ePER (i.e. certify your effort on the project during that term). |
| Reminder Notice For Boulder campus, the cadence of the emails is initial, 15-day 30-day, 60-day, 90-day, 120-day and then every 10 days. | you have not yet certified your ePER. | certify the ePER within the required 120-day time frame. |
| Past Due Notice Sent every 10 days once the ePER becomes past due. | you did not certify your ePER within the required 120 days. | certify the ePER as soon as possible. |
| PET Notice Sent when project effort certified is less than salary charged. A message pops up after clicking the Certify button indicating that the ePER certifier needs to request a PET from their payroll liaison. | your effort percentage differs your payroll distribution. | double check the numbers that you certified on the ePER. If it’s a typo, please recertify your ePER. If the original number on the ePER is incorrect, please contact project PI/Supervisor, the project fiscal manager, or your department payroll liaison to submit a PET to correct the funding allocation. |
| PET Reminder Notice Sent every 10 days after initial PET notice, until PET is approved or canceled. | your ePER effort still does not match your payroll and a PET has not been approved yet. | ensure that the PET is submitted and approved. Note your ePER is not complete until the PET is approved, then our ePER system will generate a new ePER with updated effort for you to certify. |
| PET Completion Notice Sent when the PET is approved. | your ePER required PET has been approved. | do nothing. This is just to inform you that the ePER is now certified. |
| Revised ePER Issued Notice Sent when ePER needs to be re-certified as the funding distribution has been updated after an ePER was certified. | a re-certification of the ePER is now due. | re-certify the ePER if you agree with the updated effort. If you disagree with the changes/updates and you are not willing to recertify the new numbers, then a PET is needed to correct your effort. Please reach out to your payroll liaison. |
| ePER Recertification Notice Sent when a PET changed your payroll distribution so that is inconsistent with your previously certified ePER. | your previously certified ePER has been undone by a new PET that changed your payroll distribution. | recertify the ePER. |
| ePER Recertification Past Due Notice Sent every 10 days until ePER is recertified. | you did not recertify your ePER within the required 30 days. | recertify the ePER. |