Costing and Pricing Tool terminology

Casual staff

Team member employed on a short-term or temporary basis, with irregular or flexible hours and no guarantee of ongoing employment (Employment Type in the Personnel record = Casual)

Consumable and Capital Items

Purchases or expenses for items directly attributable to the project

Consumables are purchases or expenses that are used for the project, such as stationery and other consumable items, equipment, travel, maintenance, and so on.

Capital items are high-cost assets purchased or used for the project for over a year that may be considered for tax deduction or depreciation, such as computers, equipment, machinery or cars.

Consumable and Capital Item Groups

 Consumable and capital items collected into a set according to similarity or area

Consulting rates

Charge for a consultant, used to calculate the price for consultancy projects

Contingency

Percentage used in calculations to account for the potential risk that the project may not be undertaken as planned

Continuing employee

Team member employed on an ongoing basis, either full-time or part-time, with regular hours and leave entitlements

Cost

How much is will cost your institution to undertake the research, reflecting all costs, both directly attributable to the project and indirectly, such as overheads

Cost multiplier percentage

Percentage used in calculations to take into account the true cost of research, defined in funding rules

Costing Status

A field you can add to an RPR eForm to display the costing status from CPT

Options are:

•        New - No costing has been created

•        In-Progress - Costing is under way and is not yet complete
For example it could be because a team member is missing a salary amount, a facility or consumable and capital item is missing a cost amount, or one or more pages display the Revisit indicator if details have been changed, as a prompt to check any impacts.

•        Valid - The costing has been successfully completed

Direct costs

Costs that are directly attributable to the project, such as salaries for staff and consumable and capital items

Direct cost recovery

Recoup of direct project costs from a fund scheme

External investigators

Researchers from outside your institution working on the project, added in an Investigator RIC in an eForm via a lookup, or a new external researcher entered into this RIC

External salary package

Outsourced salary package, for example, NHMRC, which may include forms of remuneration other than cash salary, such as car lease, equipment, travel benefits and so on

If defined in a Fund Scheme Level rule, this is used in place of HEW type salary levels.

Fixed term employee

Team member employed for a fixed term contract, either full-time or part-time, with regular hours and leave entitlements

HEW level

Higher Education Worker levels for salaries in the Australian higher education sector

Indexation percentage

Indexation is a method used to define dates and percentages for salary increases, for example, to match salaries to the inflation rate

The applicable percentage is used in salary calculations in CPT, as defined in the Indexation Percentages configuration page.

Indirect cost

Expenses incurred to support the project that are not directly attributable to it but need to be included in calculations to reflect the true cost of a project, such as overhead expenses, utilities such as electricity, gas or water, and administrative costs (HR, finance, offices, IT infrastructure, legal, security, insurance)

Indirect cost recovery (ICR)

Method to recoup indirect costs

ICR is not applied to in-kind amounts.

In-kind

Contribution that is not made directly in cash but that has a monetary value, which is allocated to the institution or funder for the project so that it can be accounted for in calculations

ICR is not applied to in-kind amounts.

Institution

Your university, institute or organisation

Institution salary direct cost

Cash and In-kind salary of all project team members who are or will be employed by the institution for the research project, with Include for Costing? marked in the eForm

This does not include cash or in-kind salaries of project team members from another organisation (externals or sub-contractors), or costs related to any relevant HDR student scholarships.

Internal fund scheme

A fund scheme that is linked in RME to the primary organisation (which represents your institution), for example, a foundation or centre that is part of your institution

GST is not applied to internal fund schemes.

Internal fund schemes are not included in project price calculations.

Internal investigators

Researchers within the institution working on the project, added in an Investigator RIC in an eForm via a lookup, or a new external researcher entered into this RIC

Margin

Factor to apply to the cost of a project to determine the total price

This is determined by your internal policies and set in funding rules. Some of the following may be considered to set the margin percentage: market prices/competition, personnel involved, risk, provision of intellectual property, and/or the nature of the research and whether it is unique.

New staff

Anyone working on the project that is added in a New Staff RIC in an eForm (either as a person or a position if the person is not yet identified)

On-cost

Costs related to employing research team members, aside from direct salary, that are difficult to define in simple monetary terms, such as overheads, long service leave, workers’ compensation insurance and so on

These can be defined for staff members working for the institution less than 12 months, more than 12 months or on a casual basis.

Other direct cost

Cost of non-salary items, both cash and in-kind, received and/or committed to by the institution

Non-salary items can include:

•        Consumable and capital items

•        Facility usage

•        Scholarships

•        Sub-contractors/staffing from other institutions

Price

How much funding to request, or how much a funder will provide

Researcher RIA

Margin +/- markup or discount

Step progression

Salary structure where employees automatically move up a salary step level every year

Total direct cost

Total cost of the project that only includes direct costs, not indirect costs

Displayed in the Project Cost page and the Totals panel

Total Indicative Cost to University (x%)

How much it will cost the institution to run the research project, shown on the Project Cost page of the tool

This is based on the defined Cost Multiplier Percentage from the applicable funding rule.