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The RME Costing and Pricing Tool (CPT) is an RME tool that calculates the cost and price of a research project based on entered inputs in order to seek project approval and funding.
It is designed to make it quick and easy for researchers to enter project details, view the calculated cost and price in the tool, and allocate costs across funders and the institution. Data is shared across the Research Project Requests (RPR) domain, the CPT tool and Project records.
Process design overview
To suit your institution's policies, RME administrators configure CPT to define funding rules, salary rates, indexation percentages, and settings for specific scenarios, such as method for on-cost.
To capture project costs and details, RME administrators or eForm designers leverage existing eForm functionality to design eForm templates and workflows. Purpose-built fields and elements are provided to support CPT processes. The associated workflow can support automated online review and approval. For details, see the RME Designer documentation.
Researchers enter project inputs online in an eForm. The eForm can includes dates, funding, investigators and new staff, their employment and workload details, facilities, and consumable and capital items.
Details in the eForm are automatically displayed in CPT as soon as they are entered. The tool applies funding rules as defined by your institution, factoring in salaries, indirect costs, usage costs, and any pricing details, and then calculates the total cost as well as the price of the project. Users can view the project cost and price, and allocate costs to funding bodies and/or the institution. A button to access the tool is included in eForms, and can also be displayed in the toolbar of Project record pages, the RPR eForm listing page. The associated workflow can route the eForm automatically through online review and approval processes.
Approved project details can be pushed from the eForm into supporting fields or related items in core records via the workflow associated to the eForm (Push to Database Tables activity). Project leaders and administrative staff can manage the project via the Projects module and other relevant modules in RME.
Standard audit settings in System Preferences can be used to track user activities related to CPT.
Outputs can be generated for stakeholders as reports designed in RME Designer. Outputs can provide the full picture of research project financial activity, including the true cost, pricing and expenditure of research projects.
RME APIs can be leveraged to integrate with existing external systems used by your institution, such as a finance system, facility management database, or HR system.
Post-award, different eForms can be created for different purposes, for example, an eForm to collect post-award details and approved funding amounts, and another to process a variation to the funding or project that impacts the cost. eForm templates can be configured to re-use previously entered data from one form to another to minimise duplicate entry (Based on Existing functionality).
Dedicated Help links provide context-sensitive online help for all RME pages (not individual eForms; help content can be built into the eForm design).
This page supports the Costing and Pricing Tool (CPT), which was implemented in version 7.7.0 in mid-2021. Research Costing and Pricing (ReCaP) is a separate tool.
Click to show or hide: CPT high-level components diagram
For a full explanation of all areas to consider when configuring the tool, see the CPT configuration guide help page and CPT Configuration for specific settings.
The table below provides a summary of the pages in the tool itself. These are used to view calculated costs and pricing, and to allocate costs for consumable and capital items, facilities and team members. These pages are only available when the Costing and Pricing Tool product key is applied.
RME administrators or office staff allocate these pages based on your role or involvement, so access may not be provided for all of these.
In the tool, the panel on the left includes a list of the pages available. The order in this panel is set and cannot be changed. Page status indicators are used to inform you about the status of each page.Page changes: You may change the field labels in the default label to suit your needs. Do not change a CPT page layout via the Page Layout Designer without consulting the ResearchMaster team. While the system allows you to change the layout, these pages involve complex calculations and dependent functionality so guidance is needed to prevent impacts to key functionality.
Area (in alphabetical order) |
Page |
Description |
Page ID |
Consumable and capital items |
Used to allocate costs for consumable and capital items to the relevant funder/s It displays consumable and capital items selected in the eForm application. You cannot add or delete items. |
CPT016 |
|
Costs |
Read only Used to view the cost of the project Costs are broken down into direct salary costs, other direct costs, and the final cost. |
CPT017 |
|
Facilities |
Used to allocate costs for facility usage to the relevant funder/s It displays facilities selected in the eForm application. You cannot add or delete facility details. |
CPT015 |
|
Funding rules |
Read only Used to view the funding rules that are applied in calculations for the project, based on the relevant Primary AOU, Project Type an/or Primary Fund Scheme |
CPT013 |
|
Indirect Cost Recovery |
Displays if the Override ICR percentages for cost items field in an RPR eForm template = Yes Used to manually override the indirect cost recovery (ICR) percentage for cost items with an ICR value |
CPT025 |
|
Institution contribution |
Used to review the total cash and in-kind contributions of the institution for the project |
CPT023 |
|
On-cost Percentages |
See: CPT Configuration |
Used to display a grid on funding rule pages to support the solution for on-cost patterns, which is set by the On-Cost Method option in the CPT Configuration page |
CPT022 |
Price |
Used to view the price of the project It displays the price calculation parameters, the price calculation, and the total price, with and without GST. |
CPT018 |
|
Used to view the automatically-calculated project price with a breakdown, as well as options to adjust the price |
CPT028 |
||
Project details |
Read only Used to view project overview details for reference |
CPT012 |
|
Quotations |
Displays if an applicable Project Type Level funding rule has both of the following settings marked as Yes: Use Pricing for Consultancy Projects? and Use Quotation Builder Used to enter quotation details to generate a quotation for a funding organisation |
CPT029 |
|
Team members Salary allocation |
Used to allocate the salary cost for team members to the relevant funder/s It displays details for both investigators and new staff that were entered or selected in the eForm application. You cannot add or delete team members. |
CPT014 |
|
Totals |
Read only The Totals Summary panel displays at the bottom of the left panel of all pages for the tool. It provides an overview of the project totals. |
CPT019 |
• CPT Configuration - page for specific CPT settings
Product key: Costing and Pricing Tool
Page ID: CPT_Introduction.htm