19 Jan 2016

Horizon2020 Reporting

In the Horizon2020 Grant Agreement, the Commission have made it clear that Beneficiaries
may declare different costs from the budgeted costs at the time of reporting. The important
thing is that all the work has been done according to the Description of Work, and that there
are enough Eligible Costs collectively between the Beneficiaries to justify the Commission
payment.1

Most importantly NO Amendment is required to transfer indicative budget between

Beneficiaries.

Note: The Project Maximum Funding according to the Grant Agreement cannot be increased,
only the distribution can change between Beneficiaries.

Can I charge? Explanation:

Equipment depreciation costs Yes but only if the equipment has not yet been fully
bought before the Project depreciated according to your organizations usual cost
(Action) start date. accounting practices. In this case, the remaining depreciation
costs only for the portion corresponding to the project
duration and for the rate of actual use.
Costs related to preparing, No sorry.
submitting and negotiating
the proposal or follow on
proposals.
Costs related to drafting the Partially The Initial CA should have been signed prior to the
Consortium Agreement. Project starting, so cannot be charged. However, the CA can
be an evolving document and so any updates during the
lifetime of the project can potentially be charged.
Costs for reporting at end of Costs related to drafting and submitting the periodic report
the project for the last reporting period and the final report only are
eligible even if they are incurred after the project official end
date. Limit: 60 days.
Note: this does not include any of the actual work you were
supposed to do during the project.

1
Actually, this is the same for FP7. The Commission decided to be explicit in H2020 due to the misunderstandings
in FP7.

www.finance-helpdesk.org 1
Personnel Costs

In H2020 you do not have the option of using the Reporting Period duration to work out the
individual employees productive hourly rates. Rather, you have to use the annual personnel
costs and the number of annual productive hours for each financial year covered by the
reporting period concerned. If a financial year is not closed at the end of the reporting period,
the beneficiaries must use the hourly rate of the last closed financial year available.

Note: The last closed financial year available as far as this is concerned is referring to the
date and NOT when the accounts are submitted. This is because all the information necessary
to calculate the hourly rates in accordance to the GA is available at this stage.

If your financial year differs from your fiscal year, you may use the fiscal year instead of the
financial year for calculating the hourly rate for personnel costs. The method must however be
consistently applied and can NOT be changed within the same project.

Remember:
H2020 has introduced an easy option for the number of annual productive hours in a year of
1,720 hours pro-rata for part time workers. It is your choice if you wish to use this and avoid
having to calculate it the other allowable ways2. If you decide not to use it, and during an audit,
there is a mistake found that makes your calculated method ineligible, the auditors are
instructed to recalculate using the 1,720 and that will be what is counted as eligible.
Make your method choice carefully and be consistent within the same project.

Disclaimer
The aim and purpose of this and other leaflets is to raise awareness of the framework program
financial issues, and not to give legally binding advice. It is intended to provide relevant
information which may be of assistance to anyone with financial queries or concerns. This
leaflet has been produced jointly under the Finance Helpdesk which was started by the EU IST
Finance-NMS-IST project Contract Number: 015481, and by EFPC Ltd. Both The Finance
Helpdesk and EFPC Ltd. endeavour to deliver a high level service for this purpose.
Notwithstanding this, no guarantee can be given on the correctness or completeness of the
information provided and neither the European Commission, nor EFPC are responsible or may
be held accountable for any loss suffered as a result of this leaflet. Any information given does
not necessarily reflect the official position of the European Commission. In this regard, it should
be noted that the information provided is considered to be of a first line assistance and users
should contact the competent authorities, organisations, or private firms for more detailed
information or for advice on any course of action.

Author: Dana Remes Revision: V1 19 Jan 2016 EFPC

2
Covered in another Finance Helpdesk leaflet.

www.finance-helpdesk.org 2