There may be funds that a PI uses for research they are performing that does not have a restricted or sponsored account associated with it. Startup funds or Department funds are examples of these types of funds. Because of limitations in Penn State’s Financial System, the PI is not automatically associated with these funds, and therefore these funds do not automatically appear within their iLab lab.
In order to use unrestricted or non-sponsored funds, the PI or Lab Manager must submit a request to have these funds appear. The request process within iLab is as follows:
- The PI requests access to the desired fund.
- The Fund Approver/Owner receives the fund request.
- The Fund Approver/Owner approves the fund request.
- The PI can now assign the fund to their lab members for use.
Please ensure that you request the LONG form of the account. This includes the full account information and the full name of the cost center. An example would be 0101234 HY10010/MYCOSTCENTER
Please note the following rules:
- Do not use an abbreviated version of the account or cost center.
- If there is a leading zero, it must be included.
- If there is a zero on the end, it must be included.
- There are no spaces around the forward slash (“/”)
- The first part of the account number (the budget) has 7 numbers in most cases. This would require a space between the final number and the campus code. Please ensure that there is a space between the budget portion of the fund and the campus code.
- The cost center must match exactly how the cost center is named in IBIS. Please ensure you have checked for spaces and special characters, correct spelling of names (if used), that a word you use to describe it was not truncated in IBIS, and you are not using a nickname for the cost center.
If the account or cost center entered does not match exactly the fund given to iLab by IBIS, you will receive an error.
The video below will give you a quick overview showing how to request a fund. Below the video, you will find step by step instructions for requesting the fund into your lab.
Please expand the video transcript for more information
Welcome!
In this video we will walk through requesting accounts and cost centers for your lab.
For this example, we will be logged in as the PI, Jane Smith.
When reserving time on equipment at core facilities, or requesting core services, a valid funding source must be provided to charge the work to.
If an account that you need is not already available for your use, you will need to request access to that account.
We will start by clicking on the “Membership Requests & Accounts/Cost Centers” tab within your Lab. Here on this tab, we can find all of the funding sources you currently have available to you as well as request access to others that do not appear in your lab.
Scroll to the bottom of this window, under the Manage Accounts/Cost Centers section. Click on the section header “Request access to additional Account/Cost Centers”. This expands that sub-section.
You will see some brief instructions and, below that, a text fill-in box labeled “Account/Cost Center”.
If you know the full and formal form of the account you would like to request access to, enter it in the text box labeled Account/Cost Center and click on the Request button. However please note that only the full and formal form, formatted appropriately, is recognizable to iLab.
To request access to a funding source, you will need to enter it in the format – the first part of the account number, space, campus code, and then the rest of the account number followed by a forward slash and the cost center.
For example, 0401234 space UP10010 slash SURCHARGE. Be certain to include any special characters, underlines, or spaces if they exist. Let’s look at another example. Start with the account 0101234 space UP12345 then a slash between the account and the cost center, then the cost center name. I will use Workload Funding with a space between the two words as the cost center name.
You may be given a fund number by your department that is in what Penn State calls the ‘short form’. Something like 41-234 followed by some text. Other forms may look like 43-143-14 or four character’s 4JAB. The problem with these is that these are not recognized by iLab. iLab only recognizes the long form for every Account/Cost Center. In order to successfully request access to an account, you will need the full set of numbers and characters, including any spaces or special characters; and, you will need to enter it with the slash between the account number and the Cost Center name.
If the fund entered is not an exact match to what IBIS gives iLab, then you will see a pop-up stating that what you entered does not match an existing Account/Cost Center and the request will not complete.
This means that the following will not work to request the above Account/Cost Center.
- 0401234UP10010/SURCHARGE (missing a space between 0401234 and UP10010)
- 0401234 UP10010 SURCHARGE (missing the slash between the account and cost center text)
- 401234 UP10010/SURCHARGE (missing the initial zero in 0401234)
You will need an exact match to what the financial system passes to iLab.
I will enter in an invalid account so that we can see what happens.
An error message pop-up. If you get this error message, your first step toward resolution is to speak with your financial representative and let them know that you need your account number in the long form to have an exact match to IBIS. You can provide them with the example in this video to help them understand your needs.
As a reminder, iLab does not recognize any of the abbreviated forms for Accounts/Cost Centers.
Please request the exact long form format for the account/cost center you need from your financial representative.
Once you have the correct form of the account/cost center, enter that into the field and click on the ‘Request’ button.
Your request will be listed below in a table displaying the full account/Cost Center name, along with its description; followed by the date you made the request, the current status, and the owner. All new requests have a status of ‘pending’. The owner is the fund owner as listed in iLab – the person who should be approving your request.
Once the fund owner has approved the request, it will appear on the “Membership Requests & Accounts/Cost Centers” tab for your lab. You can then grant access to this fund to any of your lab members as needed.
In our example, we now have a new column in the table because our request has been approved. The requested fund does appear and this allows us to assign or unassign the fund to lab members by checking or unchecking the boxes in the column under the account heading.
For more information please see iLab Support at help.agilent.com or Penn State’s training site at ilabtraining.psu.edu.
Thank you for watching.
To request a fund be added to your lab:
Navigate to your lab within iLab.
Go to the Membership Requests & Accounts/Cost Centers tab.
Under the Manage Accounts/Cost Centers section, expand the Request access to additional Account/Cost Centers section by clicking on it.
Next, enter your account and cost center into the Account/Cost Center field and click the Request button. Note that the Account and Cost center must be the full and correct account and cost center, separated by a forward slash. DO NOT use any abbreviated forms of the account and cost center as this will not be recognized.
If you do not enter the funding information in the exact format that was received by IBIS, you will receive an error. You may also receive the error if the fund does not exist in iLab. Some reasons this may occur is that the fund may have expired, or the fund was recently created and has not been transferred to iLab yet in the nightly feed.
Once you have submitted the request, the fund approver/owner will receive an email notifying them of your request. The request will be listed in a pending status below the request entry box and button. You will be able to see who the fund owner is, allowing you to contact them directly if the need for the fund is urgent.
Once the fund approver approves your request, the status will be updated to approved. The Resolved on date and Resolved by fields will be filled in with the approval date and who approved the request. Notes from the approver will appear in the Notes by Account/Cost Center Owner field.
If your fund was rejected for any reason, you can contact the fund owner to inquire about the reason.
When a fund is approved, it will appear in the funding grid on the Membership Requests & Accounts/Cost Centers tab within the PI’s lab. Note that you will need to refresh the page to see the fund. By default, the fund is not assigned to any members of the lab, including the PI. The PI can now assign funds to lab members.