Horizon Europe Master of Finance and EC Audits

Our 3-day exclusive, advanced training course will assist you in gaining a comprehensive understanding of the financial regulations and calculation and reporting protocols of the Horizon Europe programme, and their practical application in day-to-day operations.

Both the well- and less-known differences between Horizon Europe and its predecessor, H2020, will be emphasised, as well as their impact on internal record-keeping, planning, monitoring and bookkeeping processes.

Special attention will be given to the complexities of personnel cost calculation, concerning the actual cost, unit cost and of course the lump-sum protocols: distinction in reporting between the HE Pillars – a detailed overview on the effects of the different grants and funding schemes from ERC to EICs, Advanced Grants to RIAs to Pathfinders. Comprehensive analysis on the various daily rate calculations and their applications, diving into inconsistent rules, and the GA and Annotated GA descriptions. New protocols in purchase costs, equipment and research assets reporting. Additionally, the course will focus on internal invoicing and the calculation of research facility costs. Last, but not least: workshops, workshops, workshops – one on financial cost calculations and reporting, and another one on EC-driven financial audits will allow everyone to experience our unique learning by doing approach!

 

Agenda and topics covered:

Day 1 – Understand the Theory: Hands-on Introduction to Horizon Europe Financial Rules  

A full-day presentation in five parts on the financial rules and reporting protocols of Horizon Europe, highlighting the bottlenecks, changes, and their effects on day-to-day project management.

The presentation will include numerous examples, calculations, and scenarios to help attendees understand the importance of these rules, from basic eligibility conditions to changes in personnel cost calculations and the new research facility cost criterion – actual costs, unit costs, lump sums.

Day 2 – Experience the Practice: Workshop on Horizon Europe Cost Reporting  

In the morning, participate in the renowned and unique workshop of Europa Media. Attendees will receive a tailor-made package of timesheets, salary slips, invoices, contracts, per-diem certificates, and mission reports for a virtual Horizon Europe project. They will then have to calculate the eligible costs – personnel, subcontracting and purchase costs – and submit a financial statement with comparisons to Horizon 2020 integrated!

In the afternoon, the group will review the most optimal solutions from the workshop exercise, delving into issues such as timesheets, personnel cost calculations, other services versus subcontracting, unforeseen costs, and deviations from the budget. How to present deviations to your officer, potential triggers for GA amendments, handling reallocations, exceeding costs and/or PM efforts.

Day 3 – Learn from the Mistakes: Workshop on EC-driven financial audits

You will become an EC auditor for a day! Many of us are intimidated by financial audits, particularly level-2 audits conducted by EC(-appointed) auditors. Did you know that one way to overcome this fear is to try to see things from the "other" side?  

In the morning, attendees will be divided into groups of 4-5 and receive full-project documentation (invoices, reports, timesheets, contracts, etc.). They will act as a group of auditors, recalculating the reported costs and identifying deviations, errors, and misclaimed amounts. It's much more fun to find the errors than to make them! This will also be a competition to see which group finds the most hidden things.

In the afternoon, we will assess and discuss what should have been discovered, accepted, and/or rejected, and learn about how real-life audits are conducted, what to expect from the auditors, how to prepare, and what to do if different audits have different conclusions on the same things.

This will cover the full finance cycle from budgeting to audits in just 3 days!

 

Hottest topics covered by the course:  

• Step-by-step analysis of the different personnel cost calculation protocols in Horizon Europe, as compared to H2020  
  • Employees: current staff and new members? Monthly fixed salary and/or project-based remuneration?
  • Seconded persons: could it resolve missing expertise in staff?
  • In-house consultants: who is a natural person and a one-person company? Should it be foreseen?
  • Volunteers: could I charge unpaid personnel to the project?
  • SME-owners and natural person-rates: conditions and benefits?
• Internal planning and adequate budgeting of personnel costs
  • Setting up internal control systems with accounting and payrolls
  • How to deal with parallel running H2020/HE projects when the reporting requirements are quite different? Should you change the time-recording protocols? 
  • Why record time in hours if HE apparently has daily rates? 
  • How to optimize efforts, handle budget deviations, and monitor spending in reality? 
  • How to harmonize national accounting protocols with the HE Grant Agreement articles?  
• Backbones of the actual personnel cost calculation and reporting
  • Personnel cost reporting in lump sum projects
  • What is a day-equivalent, and what to do when one works part-time or is on sick/parental leave? 
  • Advantages and disadvantages of actual and unit-based personnel cost calculations? 
  • The all-new unit cost for personnel

• Internally invoiced goods and services calculation – how to make internal costs measurable, eligible for EC auditors, and still maintain sanity? 

• Subcontracting – should you be scared of it?

• Purchase costs – is it any different to the Other Direct Costs of H2020
  • Travel costs, daily allowance policies, unit-cost reporting in travel?
  • Equipment and research facilities – depreciation, usage rates, calculation routes, and full-cost options
  • Other goods and services

•  ...and many more! 

 

Why Europa Media?    

Europa Media is Europe’s leading provider of practical training courses on EU’s research and innovation programmes. We have 25 years of experience in developing and implementing projects under the Framework Programmes. Under Horizon 2020, we have been involved successfully in over 30 projects, coordinating six of them. Under the first work programmes of Horizon Europe, we are currently involved in 11 collaborative projects, coordinating one of them. Europa Media’s trainers are actual project managers, coordinators, and financial administrators of these projects, sharing their stories and providing you with hands-on tips based on their everyday experience. For the past 20 years, they have been supporting all the major institutions as well as several of the NCPs in the Member States and countries associated to the Framework Programmes.

This event, as always, has been designed based on our direct hands-on experience with EU research and innovation proposals and is, therefore, 100% practice driven. Our practical approach has attracted over 10,000 participants from all over the world in the past 15 years. Read more about our projects here.    

 

 Who is this course for?  

This course is suitable for a diverse range of participants, thanks to our unique "learning-by-doing" approach and workshops. Whether your project is financed from Horizon Europe Pillar 1, 2 or 3, ERC, MSCA, RIA, IA or Pathfinder, we will cover all. Besides that, the diverse financial backgrounds of the participants allow for a wide range of perspectives and experiences, making it an ideal learning environment for all. 

Feedback from previous participants shows that this course is equally useful for:

• Financial administrators and controllers to learn how to deal with accounting and reporting;
• Grants office personnel/research managers and advisors to learn different stages as budgeting, monitoring, reporting and ex-ante audits;
• Researchers, project managers and coordinators to gain understanding on how your project spending could be monitored;
• Finance NCPs to see the struggles from the “other side”;

Coming from any sector – public or private – as the same rules apply to everyone!

The maximum number of participants admissible is 30.

Our training courses also provide a great opportunity for networking, exchanging experience and establishing partnerships as well as disseminating your project results. On average, 25+ participants attend our face-to-face training courses, representing 15+ leading organisations from across Europe and beyond. 

Not ready to take the leap? Check out our recorded webinars and get a quick overview of some of the most burning Horizon Europe topics before joining us at this course! Check them out here!