In order to “decline” a proposal for funding, a funding opportunity administrator can select the check box for "No Award for this Project" in the Offer Award section of the Award Funding page.

No. Students receive no notification of preliminary awards. They are only notified (via automated email through SAFE) when an award is final.

If you have decided not to offer an award, you should record an award of $0 and click Offer Final Award on this Project. This will inform other funders, and the student, that your decisions have been made and they need not expect funding from your opportunity. We recommend that you briefly explain to the student why you are not offering an award in the "Student Comments" field.

• View a sample of the student award notification email.

Yes. There are many reasons why a final award would need to be modified. Final awards can be changed (increased, decreased, or changed to $0). Go to the Projects tab, search for the student's project, select the Award Funding action, then scroll down to the orange Reopen Offered Award button. This will open the award funding page and allow you to change the award amounts. Please use the Student Comments field to explain to the student why you are making the change. When you have completed your modifications and comments, click the Offer Final Award on this Project button. The student will then receive another, new award notification email and will be prompted to view and accept or decline the award.

Yes. SAFE will not restrict a funder from offering any amount as their award. However, you may ask the student to upload a revised budget to their application (by using the upload documents action) and/or an explanation for the increase in requested amount either in the "project changes" field on their application or in a document which they upload to their application.

It is the funder's responsibility to verify that the student has completed all of his/her obligations as required by University policy before releasing funds. If the research involves travel, the funder must verify that the student's travel request has been reviewed (which occurs when they submit a request in Concur on the University's Travel and Expense site and it is reviewed by an administraator). Undergraduates are required to submit requests for domestic and international travel outside of the New York City/Philadelphia corridor; graduate students are required to submit requests for international travel. In addition, the student must submit proof (via uploaded documents to SAFE) that they have obtained IRB, IACUC, and EHS approval (if applicable). Some funders withhold final payment until students have fulfilled their additional requirements such as uploading summary reports and receipts.

Yes. Awarding and Paying are two separate processes in SAFE. Please indicate the total amount you will be giving the student as the Award. You may create payments in SAFE in whatever installments you prefer.

SAFE has a process for Awarding and a process for Paying. Awarding is the process of a funder informing the student of how much of an award they will be receiving. Awarding must take place, in SAFE, prior to the student's departure. When a student applies for and receives an award through SAFE, they are compelled to comply with terms and conditions of the award as a condition of payment (i.e. registering their travel in Concur; obtaining travel waiver, IRB approval, IACUC approval when applicable). In addition, by awarding via SAFE, other funders can consider what funding a student has already received when making their award decisions. By awarding a student in advance of the travel, the student knows exactly how much they are receiving and how they may spend it. It is, therefore, imperative that students seek and receive funding prior to their departure and not after.

Paying is the process of actually releasing funds to the student's account. Paying can take place in many ways: all payment up front prior to departure; installments over time; upon the conclusion of the trip; etc.

There are many reasons that students create multiple projects in SAFE but the outcome is always the same--confusion and added work to correct the records. Multiple projects for the same activity or same time period are problematic because funders cannot easily determine how much a student needs and how much she has already been given.

Visit Duplicate Projects for more information about duplicate projects.

No. When the funder selects "Save AP Payment" or "Save GL Journal", the actual record is saved into the SAFE database. Every day at about 4:00pm, saved records will be transmitted to the AP or GL system as appropriate.

Entering today’s date on the transfer record will mean the record will be transmitted today at 4:00pm. If the funder enters the record after the 4:00pm time and still use today’s date, the record will be transmitted tomorrow at 4:00pm. For more information about Paying Awards in SAFE, please visit the SAFE Administrative Users Reference Guide.

Deleting Payments--If a payment has not been transmitted, the funder can “delete” it. In that case, the payment record is simply removed and there is no history of it.

Reversing Payments--If a payment has been transmitted, it can no longer be deleted. Payments made directly to students must be repaid to the university by the student. For information about how to do this, please contact the Financial Service Center. For GL journals, the funder can “reverse” a payment. Clicking the “reverse” link will create another payment record that has the opposite (negative) amount of the original payment. This payment record will then be transmitted the next time 4:00pm comes along. This will essentially “reverse” the original payment. A reversed payment can still be “deleted” if it has not yet been transmitted.

Note: An ‘original’ payment can only be reversed once.