BILLING PROCEDURES

The Facility charges for all of its services. Limited services are available for proposal preparation and unfunded projects through the financial support from the College of Medicine Dean’s Office.  The major costs are for personnel, supplies, equipment (computer hardware and software used and maintained by the Facility), and computing time.  Every staff member keeps individual records of time spent on each project.

Personnel costs may be covered by listing appropriate percentages of Facility personnel in the salary line section of a project budget.  This is the preferred alternative for research efforts requiring longer term commitments of personnel when developing proposals for external funding.  Operational costs (computer use, supplies, xeroxing, etc) should be budgeted as well.

Alternatively, the project may budget operating dollars for Statistical Services (subcode 3772) and then be billed monthly for services rendered.  Effective 7/1/07, fee-for-service rates are $165/hour for consultation services of Dr. Ashikaga, Director; $110/hour for Ph.D. Faculty; $80/hour for Biostatisticians, $40/hour for Data Analysts, $35/hour for research support staff (interviewing, coding, direct entry/scanning).

Costs of project-specific supplies and equipment are billed on a monthly basis to: 1) projects listing salary line percentages of Facility personnel and 2) Statistical Services projects.   Billing is done on-line through the University’s Financial Records System (FRS).  Follow-up copies of the bills are sent to either the investigator or budget manager as requested.

As of July 2003, a Bioinformatics Support Fee has been instituted on contracts/grants including Facility Faculty/Staff listed as a percent salary line fte.  This Support Fee is based on non-attributable expenses such as: a) technical clerical support; b) data analyst/technical support for our Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) and Integrated Voice Response (IVR) computer systems; c) travel expenses for participation in professional workshops/meetings/presentations; d) relevant professional training; e) PC hardware purchase and maintenance; f) statistical software tools (SAS, SUDAAN, AMOS, SPSS, SYSTAT, etc.); g) other nonproject-specific expenses such as photocopying, fax, supplies (disks, paper, etc.).  The FY05 standard cost structure will be $12,209 per 1.00 fte and should be applied to any/all salary line Bioinformatics personnel (Ashikaga, Bunn, Callas, Single, Vacek, Badger, Kenny, Mongeon, Naud, Skelly, Thomas), increasing at 5% in subsequent years.