EC awards are the most frequently audited.
During May 2017, the Research Operations Office organised a half-day event on the audit requirements of Horizon 2020 grants, led by ROO and LEES Chartered Certified Accountants. The presentation slides available here are a quick guide to H2020 audit requirements based on Version 4.0 of Annotated Model Grant Agreement (21 April 2017).
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FP7 awards – will be audited at the end of a reporting period if the cumulative request for funds exceeds €375,000
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Horizon 2020 awards – Under H2020 an audit will be required with the final claim, when the total requested EC Contribution on actual direct costs exceeds €325,000. This applies to Research and Innovation Actions, Innovation Actions & ERC grants. No audit is required for Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. However, the University highly recommends having an interim audit carried out on any H2020 grant where the budget for the direct costs is >€325,000.The interim audit is to be conducted at the end of the first reporting period, enabling Departments to identify areas of risk as early as possible. Guide on interim audit is available here.
A flowchart showing the typical process of managing EC grants audit can be downloaded from here.
Timesheet requirements for EC funded projects can be found our H2020 Staff Costs and Timesheets webpage.
The following documents outline the evidence and documentations that are generally asked for by auditors for audit of FP7 and H2020 grants.