Kuali Research FAQ

Log in here with your UMass Amherst NetID and Password.

If you want to provide additional people access to edit any given proposal whether it be for vacation purposes or just general practice, affiliate users to the proposal by selecting the Access tab within the proposal (see menu on left side), select Add user and set their Role at the level of Aggregator Document Level.

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View our Kuali Research Training Guides. If you need further help, please submit a ticket to the R&E Help Desk.

Research IT Help Desk staff are available 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, except when the university is closed due to holidays, administrative closings, or inclement weather. Help Desk requests can be submitted 24/7, however, if one is submitted outside of business hours it will not be answered until the next open university business day.

All requests for support must be submitted through the R&E Help Desk.

You will be sent a confirmation email from our ticketing system that your request has been received once it is seen by our staff.

Upon receipt, we will evaluate the request and address accordingly. If it is determined to be a problem/bug with Kuali, we will submit a ticket to the vendor in order to get it resolved.

If your request is regarding a change to the system itself, please note: Kuali is a hosted product and alterations to system functionality and/or behavior are not controlled by UMass. 

Information on Kuali Research trainings can be found here.

The term Intellectual credit is used in the Kuali Proposal module to indicate how the PI and any Co-PIs will be credited for expenditure under the project. The data entered in the Intellectual credit section will be used by the campus to allocate credit for research expenditures to the home department of participating faculty in campus reporting of sponsored research expenditures (e.g., PI & co-PI each 50% credit on a $100,000 would end up reporting $50,000 each in expenditures).

Go into the Credit Allocation Screen and review the Intellectual Merit Splits. Regardless of how many PIs you have on the file or how the Intellectual Merit is split up, make sure that each PI has 100 listed next to their department line.

Submit a Organization (Subcontractor) Request. If submitting an S2S (Grants.gov) application which includes subcontractors available in Kuali, confirm that the subcontractor has a DUNS number preloaded to Kuali one of two ways (note: S2S applications with subcontractors missing DUNS numbers in the Kuali address book will not pass Grants.gov/sponsor validations and cannot be approved and routed):

1. Within the proposal record, under Basics, navigate to the Organization and Locations page and then select the Other Organizations tab. Select the blue Add Organization button. If the DUNS number is populated, you are all set. If not listed, submit a Help Desk Ticket.
2. Run the validations early in the proposal building process. If there’s a validation error for the DUNS number, submit a Help Desk Ticket.

Effort is listed in the Organization tab of the Key Personnel section in order to send this data to ECRT to facilitate the effort certification process. Effort should be listed for Year 1 only. For faculty with 9 month Academic Year appointments, use the Academic Year Effort and/or Summer Effort field. For all other key persons with calendar year appointments, use the Calendar Year Effort field.

UMass will still submit proposals through Research.gov. Proposal records are still required in Kuali. These records are required for routing and approvals as well as to help in budget building. All NSF sponsor documents however will be uploaded to Research.gov and not in Kuali. A PDF of the draft application uploaded to Research.gov should be attached in Kuali in the Internal Attachment section so that approvers can view the proposal. This includes a draft of the project summary, abstract and references for the whole project if we are not the lead institution.  Click the +Add button, then select Full Proposal from the Type dropdown and then select Status as Draft.

UMass relies on the NSF HERD survey to get metrics on our expenditure activities related to other institutions. Kuali now gives us the ability to also tag proposals by NSF science division for purpose of metrics and reports. For more details, see NSF Higher Education Research and Development Survey (HERD).

PIs must both Approve and Certify their proposals. PIs are notified to approve a proposal via email. Approval and certification is a two-step process. To certify, within the Key Personnel section, click the caret next to your name, select Proposal Person Certification and complete the six questions. Next, click Save and then navigate to the Summary/Submit screen and click Approve at the bottom to approve. Both steps must be completed or routing cannot continue.

Wildcard searching in Kuali is using the * symbol before and after your search criteria to find sponsors, people, subrecipients, etc. It allows you to search under certain parameters, so if you don't type something exactly right, it will still show suggestions. Otherwise, if you type something incorrect, it will show No Value.

Users can see the status of their proposals and awards through the Kuali Dashboard. This is the first page after logging in to the system.

Please see the Tagging Centers & Institutes guide.

Data validations are used to ensure faculty and staff have entered all the required information in a proposal record. It will also verify whether the proposal will pass all data validation for grants.gov submissions. In addition, through its linkage with the NIH validation service, all NIH proposals built in Kuali are validated for NIH requirements. This will ensure there are no last-minute issues in getting a proposal submitted.

The Kuali Salary Guide Excel spreadsheet is used to calculate months to percent of effort, serves as the new Grad Calculator, and assists with calculated NIH salary cap cost share. It can be found here.

Upload a complete Salary Guide to the Internal Attachments tab for OPAS review. Please see more guidance all found on our Kuali Research Training Guides.

For the purposes of budgeting, Kuali uses an AY date range of September 1st to May 31st. The Summer months are June 1st to August 31st.

Enter the Budget section of Kuali and open the budget you are currently working on. Navigate to the Personnel Costs drop down and select Project Personnel. Click the Details button. The Salary Effective Date defaults to the project start date. Change this to the current date or the date you started working on the budget.

In the Budget module, click Personnel Costs, then Project Personnel. Add personnel, then click Details. The Salary Effective Date will default to the project start date. Update the Salary Effective Date to today’s date. If you have already added the person, use the date that the person was added.

In order to make budget changes you will need to first mark your budget Incomplete. Then make the edits. When you are done, mark the budget as Complete.

PIs will be asked to complete a PIAA on NEW awards and when non-standard terms and conditions or unusual contractual requirements are included in amendments. When circumstances require a PIAA, the Office of Post-Award Management (OPAM) will send it via Kuali Build.

MOUs are required for all multi-investigator awards. RTF splits will be captured in the Kuali Research proposal module, so the MOU form has been revised, shortened and streamlined. PIs and co-PIs must sign the MOU, which must be routed and signed by all PIs, co-PIs, department heads, and deans. OPAM will send out the MOU via Kuali Build.

Department IDs will no longer be collected during the pre-award process. When OPAM begins processing a new project award, the PI and award business manager will automatically receive an award notification emailed directly through the Kuali system. The new award notice will include a Controller’s Office from link in Kuali Build. Information for the account establishment process will be entered into this form and it also allows PIs to request subaccounts for multi-investigator awards. Note: Renewal and continuation awards will not include this requirement.

The Kuali Research award module will notify the PI, award business manager, and the Controller’s Office when an award has been made available to the Grant Accounting unit for account set up in PeopleSoft. This notification will provide you with a direct link to the award record, the award terms and conditions, and the feedback survey. The PI and business manager will receive an email from Research Accounting once the award and project have been created in PeopleSoft and a ST gets created.

Yes. Each fall and spring R&E puts on a Core series training program that OPAM is a part of. OPAM will provide information about office roles and post-award Kuali navigation and information. You may also request 1 on 1 training via @email and a staff member will walk you through questions you may have.

Kuali was implemented on the UMass Amherst campus in summer 2019. In alignment with the campus strategic plan, Innovation and Impact: 2018-23, the implementation helped to provide necessary administrative and compliance support to conduct high impact research commensurate with other leading research universities. Replacing the SmartGrant system, which served the campus for over 20 years, was a priority for the campus as outlined in the 2015-2020 IT Strategic plan (PDF, pages 36-38).

• Easier navigation and a more modern, user-friendly interface that includes a Principal Investigator dashboard.
• A single repository for all proposal, award, and compliance information.
• Productivity and reporting tools to streamline and better manage the full lifecycle of sponsored projects.
• Reporting capabilities that offer users the tools to leverage our powerful repository of information to gain important insights and make more informed decisions.

• Kuali Research replaced SmartGrant (previously GAMS) as of July 8, 2019.
• Kuali Research replaced e-Protocol for both human subjects (IRB) and animal subjects (IACUC) as of October 15, 2019.
• No new data has been fed into the old Research Administration Data Warehouse (JOL).