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Cornell University

Facilities and
Campus Services

Facilities Inventory: Organized Research Red Flags

Last updated:  April 25, 2024

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The Cornell University Cost and Capital Assets office in the Division of Financial Services may review these scenarios to ensure proper coding of organized research space:

  • Large sets of rooms (entire departments or multiple departments) coded with the same functional percentages.

  • Program funding that is disproportional to assigned space.

  • Large swings in organized research space between years.
  • Spaces coded to 100% research.
  • Room type inconsistent with use.  General use space (meeting and conference rooms) recorded as organized research.
  • Visiting scholars, when not paid by Cornell, coded to organized research.  Use function code 7.2, Outside Agencies.
  • Spaces with undergraduate student occupants, unless exclusively paid by organized research funds, should typically have some portion of the rooms coded to instruction – i.e. labs.
  • Organized research space where no funding exists.
  • Organized research funding exists with no space coded to organized research.
  • Buildings that have been constructed in previous five years will likely be audited as they contribute significantly to the indirect cost rate.

The existence of these scenarios does not mean that the space is improperly coded.  It merely indicates that the coding and associated documentation should be reviewed.