Effort Certification Training

Overview

All salaries posted to sponsored research awards must be certified by the PI. As an effort certifier, a PI must review the salaried effort during the timeframe reported and determine whether it is a reasonably accurate representation of how that employee spent their time.

After each Spring, Summer, and Fall semester, Effort Certification reports will be generated in Workday and sent to PIs for their review and certification. The report will be presented as a Task Item in the PI’s inbox.

Table of Contents

1. How to review and approve reports within your inbox (for PIs)
2. How to see your previously approved reports (for PIs)
3. How to access and review reports and statuses (for rest of campus)
    

1. How to review and approve Effort Certification reports in Workday (as a PI approver)
   
   Procedure
   1. Find your available Effort Certification reports on your Workday landing page or in your Task inbox. One report will be generated for each employee costed to your award(s). 
      
      
       
   2. Within each report, above the grid displaying the employee’s effort data is a Details chevron. Clicking it will expand the header information and display the employee’s name, the reported period of effort, and the certification statement. The statement is your affirmation of the effort data and is certified upon hitting Submit. 
      
       
   3. Below the Details header, you will see the Summary view tab. This tab reports the effort distribution over the entire reporting period. Non-sponsored accounts will be displayed first, followed by sponsored accounts. There will be no worktag displayed for non-sponsored accounts. Rather, they will say [blank].
      
      **Please note, all of an employee’s effort is displayed. As an effort certifier, you are being asked only to review and certify the effort costed to your award(s).** 
      
      
       
   4. You also have the option of viewing the employee’s effort with greater detail, by clicking the Aggregate or Details tabs. Aggregate will show you monthly detail, while Detail will show you the effort broken out by pay period. 
      
       
   5. You also have the option to export the report as a pdf, in case you would like to keep it for your records or share with a department/award administrator who may track the staff on your awards.
      
      To do this, click the hyperlink, which takes you to a new screen. In the top-right corner of the new screen, click the [PDF] symbol to open display options for your pdf before printing. 
      
       
   6. If the effort report is a reasonably accurate representation of how much the stated employee spent their time on the award, and you would like to certify, click the Submit button at the bottom of the report.
      
      If the effort is not reasonably accurate, within +/- 5%, do not certify the report. Instead, please reach out to your ORA grants administrator to discuss the error and any necessary payroll adjustments that must occur to reflect more accurately where the employee’s time was spent. 
      
      
      ORA will cancel the pending Effort Certification report in question to allow the payroll accounting adjustments to be made. After payroll adjustments are performed, ORA will generate new effort reports that reflect the requested corrections.
       
2. How to see your previously approved reports (as a PI approver)
   1. Within your Task inbox, there is an Archive folder. If you click Archive, you can find all your completed tasks by scrolling or using the search function, which provides both a simple search and options for an advanced search.
      
      To find Effort Certification reports you’ve already completed, you can enter “effort certification” in the search toolbar. You can narrow down your results by also adding the employee’s name. 
      
       
3. How to review reports and statuses (as a campus administrator)
   1. As a campus administrator, you will not have access to view or certify reports within a PI’s inbox, but you can use Workday to find all reports that have been generated.
      
      Use the main Search Toolbar to find and select the Effort Certification Status Report. 
      
       
   2. In the prompt window that opens, you have the option to search for reports based on Cost Center (such as an academic department or research center), specific grant worktag(s), or specific employee(s).
      
      To search for all reports by Cost Center, enter the name of the department or research center in the “Costed or Supervisory Organizations” field:
      
      
      To search for all reports by Award(s), enter the relevant grant worktags in the “Worker Organization Assignments” field:
      
      
      To search for all reports for specific Employee(s), enter the employee(s) name(s) in the “Employee” field:
      
       
   3. You are required to enter From/To dates in the report prompt. You can enter a known Effort Certification reporting period, e.g. 7/1/2023 – 12/31/2023, or cast the widest net possible by entering 7/1/2023 (Workday’s first day of costed payroll) through the current date.
       
   4. You can open each effort report by clicking the hyperlink in the leftmost column.
      

For more information
If you experience any problems with or have questions about the Workday effort certification process, please contact Corey O’Connor at coconnor1@mines.edu.