16 / 07 / 2020
EARTO Publishes Technical Paper on the Calculation of Personnel Costs in Horizon Europe
EARTO publishes a new Technical Paper in view of the practical implementation of the Model Grant Agreement (MGA) provision on personnel costs in Horizon Europe. If adopting a unified corporate approach for the MGA requires moving to daily rates for personnel costs in Horizon Europe, EARTO hereby recalls its main recommendations and details its financial experts’ understanding of the daily rate and day-equivalent methodology laid down in the EC non-paper on this topic. This paper especially focuses on the three options proposed by the EC to convert hours into days. Those options will be used by all EU FP beneficiaries whose usual cost accounting practices are based on efficient and reliable hour-based time recording systems, including RTOs. They should therefore aim to deviate as little as possible from those beneficiaries’ usual cost accounting practices. This would help to limit the extra administrative burden that this conversion of hours into days will automatically generate. The technical analysis presented in this paper aims to explain how the remaining open questions regarding the hours-to-days conversion methodology would be best answered according to beneficiaries’ usual cost accounting practices, including how to:- Calculate personnel costs in Horizon Europe using day-equivalent for a full time employee
- Calculate the denominator for the daily rate demonstrating that the number of 215 days per year cannot be used as a fixed denominator and needs to be adapted in specific circumstances
- Convert hours into day equivalents under the 3 options for full time employees
- Convert hours into day-equivalents under the 3 options when an employee (incl. part-time) has a change of contract during a reporting period
