Grant reporting and audit requirements

Financial statements and reporting

Contract and Grants Accounting:

• prepare all financial statements and acquittals for externally funded contracts and grants
• collate the Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC).

For more information, see:

• the Contract Research and Grants Financial Management Procedures
• the Consultancy, Secondary Employment and Internal Work Policy

For advice on negotiating financial reporting requirements for contracts and grant agreements, see the guidelines for negotiating financial clauses (staff login required).

Audit certification requirements

If possible, you should request a waiver of funder requirements for external audit of financial statements. For advice on negotiating external audit requirements for contracts and grant agreements, see the guidelines for negotiating financial clauses (staff login required).

If a grant requires audit certification, Contract and Grants Accounting complete financial statements and submit them to internal and external auditors.

Before an audit, your organisational unit must supply documentation to confirm staff time and salary spent on the project, in-kind payments, and other types of expenditure for the project.

Your Finance Professional Services team will prepare the documents. The chief investigator (for research projects) or project manager must sign off on a confirmation of staff engaged on the project for the time covered by the financial statement (see the example research hours chief investigator confirmation).

We often have to meet tight deadlines for preparing and submitting these financial statements. Providing this documentation before each audit helps us to complete the process more quickly.

Finance staff