stage indicator - manage your award

Reporting Requirements During Your Grant

As principal investigator (PI), you play a large role in preparing reports during your grant, though you don't submit them. Instead, you give information to your business office so it can send the reports to us.

Still, it's good practice to keep abreast of your due dates. That way you'll know when your business office will need information from you and when to check that your business office has indeed sent it.

Table of Contents

Ongoing Required Reports

Once your project is underway, you and your institution have these ongoing required reports:

  • Financial reports
  • Subaward reports
  • Invention reports
  • Progress reports
  • Audit requirements

In some cases, you may have additional requirements. For example

  • If you're working with human subjects, you need institutional review board approval every year and must send additional reports as described on Research Using Human Subjects.
  • If you're working with animals, you need institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) approval every 3 years and must send additional reports as described on Research Using Vertebrate Animals.

For a list of the most common reporting requirements, go to our table at Standard Reports on NIH-Funded Grants. Review your Notice of Award (NoA) and contact your business office for a full listing of all reports required for your grant.

Along with the items described above, your institutional business official needs to submit an Annual Report on Possible Research Misconduct to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI). ORI will impose a bar on your award if it does not receive this report.

Depending on its size, structure, tax status, and amount of federal funding, your institution may also have to report the total compensation of its five most highly-compensated executives for itself and subrecipients receiving $30,000 or more during the grant period.

You may also want to check the NIH Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act and Frequently Asked Questions on executive compensation, subaward reporting, and other requirements.

Know When to Submit Financial Reports

As a term of award, your business office has to report expenditures. Make sure you know reporting schedules.

Federal Financial Report

Your business office submits financial data to NIH using the Federal Financial Report (FFR) through the Payment Management System. The "Manage FFR" button in the eRA Commons also navigates to there.

After submitting the FFR, follow up on the status and correct and resubmit rejected FFRs.

Timing of this report depends on your terms of award. Most grants require one FFR within 120 days after your grant's end date. Some grants require more frequent reporting.

Check your Notice of Award for your reporting requirements, and contact your grants management specialist with any questions.

Additionally, send FFR inquiries to the Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration (OPERA) FFR Reconciliation and Financial Closeout Support Center at OPERAFFRInquiries@od.nih.gov.

For more information, go to the eRA Commons Federal Financial Report (FFR) page.

Report Subawards and Executive Compensation

As the primary recipient, check if you must report first-tier subawards and executive compensation based on the criteria in the NIH Grants Policy Statement (GPS) Section 8.4.1.5.5, Recipient Reporting of Subrecipient Data and Executive Compensation Information for Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA).

You must report if your grant or cooperative agreement fits (or previously fit) all of the following criteria:

  1. Was $30,000 or greater
  2. Was issued on or after October 1, 2010
  3. Was one of the following Types:
    • Type 1. New competing award
    • Type 6. Change of organization status (successor-in-interest)
    • Type 7. Change of recipient or training institution
    • Type 8. Change of awarding NIH institute or center (IC)

Once your award initially qualifies as described above, FFATA requirements continue throughout all subsequent Types of award actions. That includes any Type 5 or 9 noncompeting continuation years and Type 2 renewals.

For qualifying awards, you and your organization must complete FFATA reporting as follows:

  • First-tier subawards. Check the definition of subaward.
  • Executive compensation. 
    • Use the criteria and formula provided in NIH GPS Section 8.4.1.5.5. 
    • Compensation data must be in your applicant organization’s SAM.gov entity profile when you apply for an NIH award.
    • Your applicant organization can Update Entity Registration to answer or revise answers to questions in the Executive Compensation section.

Since FFATA is about accountability and transparency, note that the information you report will be public:

For more information, go to the following pages:

Invention Reporting

You must report any inventions made during your grant. Your business office must do the following through iEdison:

  1. Fully disclose an invention to us in writing within two months after you (the inventor) provide a written disclosure to your institutional official. Include the grant, inventor's name, and a complete technical description.
  2. When submitting a renewal or noncompeting application, include either
    • A list of all inventions conceived or brought to practice during the preceding budget period.
    • Certification that no inventions were made during the period.
  3. Submit an annual utilization report when you've elected title to an invention or begin to receive royalties or licensing fees from inventions that are not patented.

At the end of your project, submit a final invention statement and certification, HHS 568. Find instructions at Final Reports for Grant Closeout.

Learn more about invention reporting at the NIH Intellectual Property Policy site.

On a related note, also ensure you are familiar with the latest final regulations of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 (officially Public Law 96-517; 35 U.S.C. 200-212). Under these regulations, federal funding recipients of grants, cooperative agreements, and contracts must, for example:

  • Disclose provisional patent applications to NIH through iEdison.
  • Electronically file in iEdison invention disclosures, election of title, and all Bayh-Dole compliance documents.
  • File a non-provisional application within 10 months after filing a provisional application unless there is an NIH-approved waiver or extension.

For more information, go to the Federal Register’s Right to Federally Funded Inventions and Licensing of Government Owned Inventions.

Understand the Annual Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR)

Make sure your business office submits your progress reports on time or risk a late award.

To maintain support of your research each year, your business office submits a Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR) to NIH before the beginning of each budget period.

As you prepare this report, remember that NIH places emphasis on rigor and transparency, so you also need to describe how your research ensures reproducibility. Read more on Enhancing Reproducibility through Rigor and Transparency at NIH.

In your report, summarize your accomplishments and products, citing relevant publications. You may also cite interim research products, such as article preprints, to demonstrate progress and transparency as explained in NIH's Frequently Asked Questions on Interim Research Products.

Your program officer reviews this progress report to determine whether NIAID will continue funding your project, and your grants management specialist evaluates your grant's administrative and fiscal status.

You have several ways to find out when your progress report is due:

Make sure your business office turns in your progress reports on time—late or incomplete progress reports cause late awards.

To find the "who, what, when, and how" of your reporting requirements, go to our table at Standard Reports on NIH-Funded Grants.

Prepare the Research Performance Progress Report

Access the RPPR through the eRA Commons. eRA automatically populates some information, but you should check for mistakes.

Follow the eRA RPPR Instruction Guide. It covers each section and includes supplemental instructions for specific grant types such as career development, fellowship, and small business.

Because the Project Outcomes section of your Interim and Final RPPR will be accessible to the public on NIH’s RePORT site, we advise you to write the section with a lay audience in mind. Do not include proprietary or confidential information.

For more information, go to the Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR) SOP and the NIH Research Performance Progress Report FAQ.

Report How You Share Data and Organisms

If you created a new model organism, your program officer will assess how you have shared it, so include the number of requests you've received and fulfilled.

Describe data, research materials, and other information resulting from research and how they may be shared with other investigators. We summarized the requirements at Create Resource Sharing Plans.

Progress Reporting for Renewal Applications

If you're preparing a competing renewal application, you must describe your progress in the application. Do so in the Research Strategy as a section with the header "Progress Report" so your program officer can easily find it. Learn more in the G.400 Research Strategy section of the application instructions.

In addition, you must submit a separate progress report for your existing grant. To determine whether to send an Interim or Final Research Performance Progress Report, refer to Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR).

Though you may use text from your RPPR in the renewal application’s progress report section, we advise you to edit your summary as needed. Pasting in the complete content from your RPPR could inflate your page count past NIH’s limits.

For more on renewals, read Apply for a Renewal. Learn more about Final Reports for Grant Closeout.

Meet Your Audit Requirements

Even if your institution is exempt, you still need to maintain your grant records in case NIH wants to review or audit them.

Your institution will be audited if it spends $750,000 or more a year of HHS award money.

Educational and other nonprofit institutions are subject to Uniform Guidance (2 CFR part 200, subpart F).

For-profit organizations can satisfy audit requirements with either of the following:

  • A financial audit. Check the Government Auditing Standards (the "Yellow Book").
  • An audit that meets the requirements of Uniform Guidance (2 CFR part 200, subpart F).

Audits are required annually. Recipients usually have 30 days after the receipt of the auditor's report to respond to audit findings.

Your institution should submit audit reports using the Federal Audit Clearinghouse's Internet Data Entry System.

If your institution is exempt from an audit, you should still maintain your grant records in case NIH needs to review or audit them.

Find more information online

When your award ends, you’ll need to file Final Reports for Grant Closeout.

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Have Questions?

For business and policy issues, contact your grants management specialist, found in your eRA Commons account or on your summary statement. If you have not been assigned a specialist, go to NIAID's Grants Management Program Contacts to locate one.

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