What is CRIS?

CRIS is an application used by staff in Central Administration, the School of Public Health and the Harvard Medical School to calculate indirect cost rates and develop the Facilities & Administrative rate proposals for sponsored research which are then submitted to the federal government on a regular basis.

The application is also used for other cost accounting functions, primarily for modeling the impacts of potential University policy changes on indirect cost recovery.

Features of CRIS

CRIS can utilize uploaded data that has been appropriately transformed for use by the application. These data sources include financial data from the General Ledger, Chart of Accounts attributes, and Payroll data, as well as information provided directly by university offices including interest on capital projects, and depreciation for equipment and buildings, space functionalization studies and library utilization studies. The system takes this information and uses it to create fiscal year models, pooling direct and indirect costs and allocating them to the various business functions of the University, as defined by OMB Circular A21. This information is then used to generate the three separate rate proposals submitted to the Federal Government which are used as a basis for negotiation and awarding the three rate structures used by Harvard University.