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Costing and pricing

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We appreciate costing your project can be a daunting experience, especially if it’s your first time. You will find below advice and guidance on how to cost your proposal, along with the costing principles of full economic costing (fEC).

Costing

It is the University’s policy to cost all research projects regardless of the type of funder, using full economic costing (fEC). fEC is a government-directed standard costing methodology used across the UK Higher Education sector to produce accurate and consistent research project costs. fEC aims to capture all of the project running costs, including staff costs, recruitment, travel costs, consumables, estates, facilities, research data management, open access costs and any other day-to-day project costs.

It is important to understand the true cost of your research project in order to secure the correct level of funding. When costing your proposal you need to take into account the time it will involve, project management time, supervision of research staff, time spent preparing conference papers, writing project reports, and travel if required for the project. Whilst you can estimate some costs (consumables, travel etc.), others costs (staff, equipment) must be carefully costed.

All research proposals are costed using the University’s Costing Matrix.

Your Faculty/Department Accountant can assist you with the costings for your project. All the accountants work on a two-week lead time so be sure to contact them early on in the process. All proposals must be internally approved using Pure Award Management.

We have put together a handy List of Items to consider when costing your proposal or grant application. This will support you in completing the costing matrix.

Cost categories

fEC uses three cost categories:

  • Directly incurred costs – project specific costs (i.e. they arise from the conduct of a project), actual costs must be supported by an audit record (e.g. supplier invoices); staff costs, consumables, travel and equipment.
  • Directly allocated costs – not project-specific costs (i.e. they incur whether or not the project takes place) and are costs charged to projects on the basis of estimates rather than actual costs. They are costs of services used by the project where the services are shared by other activities (investigator time, technician time (where not directly incurred), estates, infrastructure and pool staff).
  • Indirect costs – represent the costs of central and distributed services shared by other activities that are not project-specific e.g. library services, finance, human resources, and IT.

Calculating your project’s full time equivalent (FTE) is dependent on a number of factors (researchers time, project duration, estates/infrastructure costs, etc). Please get in touch with your faculty accountant for support on this.

fEC Rates

The estates and indirect cost rates are calculated on an annual basis using TRAC methodology. External guidance on fEC and TRAC can be found at TRAC.ac.uk.