Service Centers
A Service Center must follow budget and accounting protocols to ensure that rates are reviewed annually, set at a level to recover only reasonable, allocable and allowable costs and to ensure a break-even operation and are applied to users consistently and fairly based on usage. The Uniform Guidance on Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards (replacing OMB Circular A-21, Principles for Determining Costs Applicable to Grants, Contracts, and Other Agreements with Educational Institutions) defines requirements for recovery of allowable costs and cost accounting standards and states that rates must be applied uniformly when charging government grants and other users.
The following principles apply to all Service Centers at Rice University.
If a non-auxiliary department collects payment for a product or service, it is subject to the Service Center Policy.
Users or customers should be primarily internal to Rice although there may also be external users especially where the external users are in collaboration with the University’s mission and goals.
The rates for the goods or services, including any subsidy, should at a minimum recover direct costs.
Rates or fees must be based on actual costs and charged based on actual usage.
Internal users (including sponsored projects) must be charged the same rate for similar services.
External users are charged rates that are competitive with the market for similar services and include the direct costs and overhead costs. Departments selling to both external customers and Federal grants cannot charge Federal grants more than external customers.
Fees must be charged and collected regularly to enable monitoring of break-even status.
Business models are to be developed with the intent to break even over a twelve-month period to avoid generating a continuing surplus or deficit. Total accumulated surpluses should fall within 15% of annual operating expenditures.