Actual Cost vs Lump Sum: Mastering Horizon Europe Finances from Budgeting to Audit

This two-day intensive training unpacks everything you need to know about managing Horizon Europe project finances — whether your project follows the Actual Cost or the Lump Sum funding model. From building a realistic budget and ensuring financial compliance, to preparing reports and surviving audits, this course takes you through the full financial life cycle of Horizon Europe projects. 

Through hands-on exercises, real project examples, and case studies, you will learn how to design cost-effective budgets, manage partner finances, handle reporting requirements, and prepare for financial checks. The course will also clarify the key differences, advantages, and risks of Actual Cost and Lump Sum projects, helping you make the right choices and manage both models with confidence. 

 

Who should attend:

Project managers, financial officers, grant administrators, auditors, and anyone responsible for budgeting, reporting, or financial coordination in Horizon Europe projects. 

 

Key takeaways:

• Understand the financial rules and logic behind Actual Cost and Lump Sum models; 

• Learn how to build compliant budgets and allocate costs effectively; 

• Gain practical skills for reporting, documentation, and internal monitoring; 

• Be audit-ready: what to expect and how to prepare; 

• Compare models to identify what fits your organisation best;

 

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. In the first half of Horizon Europe, we are currently involved in 15 collaborative projects, coordinating or co-coordinating three 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 25 years. Read more about our projects here.