Date	Duration	Price
03 – 05 April	3 x half day (9.00-13.00)	€ 790

Experience Europa Media's unique "learning-by-doing" approach – learn from those who are dealing every day with the same issues, for which you are looking for the solution!  

We understand that not all of you have 3 full days to attend our flagship finance training course face-to-face. For that, we created a shortened version as a live webinar course to make you believe that the financial rules and reporting protocols of the Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020 programmes are not rocket science. That they can be taught and learnt easily the way they should be used in the day-to-day life. That you do not need special skills to be an expert in it – that it is just learning by doing. 

Gábor, our founder, Europe-renowned speaker and Master of Finances, will navigate you through all the relevant financial rules, from accounting and expense to reporting it as a cost. Each calculation protocol, method and cost category speciality will be discussed in detail. Changes between Horizon Europe and H2020 will be highlighted, as well as their severe effect on internal recordings, planning or bookkeeping. Special focus will be made on the lump sum funded projects and their special budgeting and reporting requirements, emphasising whether special internal protocols on cost recording shall or shall not be kept. Icing on the cake: the personnel cost calculation “chaos” – daily rates vs hourly rates, the inconsistent rules and description of the GA and the annotated GA, etc. -, as well as on the internal invoicing and calculation of research facility costs.  

The hottest questions covered by this webinar series: 

• Why reporting costs? What does the budget stand for if one reports actual costs? 

• How to get from accounting costs by national rules to reporting them based on rules set by the EC? 

• Why some of the real accounted expenses are considered ineligible? 

• What’s different if one is financed in a lump-sum grant? Which ruleset applies to you? 

• How to deal with parallel running H2020/HE projects when the reporting requirements are quite different? Should you change the time-recording protocols? 

• Step-by-step analysis of the different personnel cost calculation protocols in H2020, compared to the “one-and-only” option of the new Horizon Europe programme. 

• Why should the time still be recorded in hours if HE apparently has daily rates? Should I have them also in lump sum? 

• What is a day-equivalent, and what to do when one works in half time, or on sick/parental-leave? 

• How to optimise efforts, handling budget deviations and monitoring spending for real? 

• Internally invoiced cost and research facility cost calculation – how to make the internal cost measurable, eligible for the EC auditors and still stay sane? 

• ...and many more! 

Agenda and topics covered: 

Day 1 – Session 1: Budgeting the costs, Accounting the costs, Reporting the costs: Explaining the logic of the Grant Agreement (75 mins) 

Our first session is dedicated to make you believe that anyone willing to do financial management can make it happen. That one does not have to be an accountant or economist. Explaining that reporting is based on accounted cost, and how to apply the Grant Agreement’s rules of eligibility and on direct costs on them will tear down the first wall. In-depth practice-driven clarifications on what makes an actual, eligible, direct cost, followed by loads of real examples on how to improve your internal cost-keeping and recording systems. Deviations to your budget? Unforeseen expenses? Changes in personnel? All these and many more will be explained. 

Day 1 – Session 2: How about Lump-sum financing? A completely different cup of tea (75 mins) 

Most of your projects so far has been financed by the old-fashioned way of budgeting some cost, having them incurred while implementing the project, and reimbursed later based on the actual cost reported. Recently, Horizon Europe has increasingly used lump sum funding to simplify the program by removing the need to report actual costs. However, this has led to new confusions about the budgeting and internal cost reporting. In this session, we will discuss in detail how to define the lump sum breakdown in your proposal and the costs foreseen in the detailed lump sum budget table, including tips to define sufficient units for your costs. We will share best practices on how to distribute the work packages in your proposal and how it is linked to the payment system of lump sum projects. We will also look at how the EC evaluates lump sum proposals from a financial point of view, what budget changes can occur during Grant Agreement preparation, and we will provide an overview of the lump sum reporting process.  

30 mins for Q&A 

Day 2 – Session 3: Personnel cost calculations and reporting in HE/H2020 – Part 1. (75 mins) 

On Day 2, we are building a bridge over the troubled waters of personnel costs calculations. Starting with employees, we will introduce all potential scenarios and methodologies, like actual or average (unit-based) calculations, fiscal-year based versus the monthly ones, discussion the pros-and-cons of various productive hour definitions of the GA (1720/actual/beneficiary’s standards). While doing so, we are instantly comparing them to the HE rules, to see how difficult it could/would be to harmonise them. Daily rates forced by the new rules rise more and more questions, when considering part-time involvements, parallel works in HE/H2020 as well as keeping the first and second ceilings. 

Day 2 – Session 4: Personnel cost calculations and reporting in HE/H2020 – Part 2. (75 mins) 

Continuing with calculation scenarios, we will prove that it is impossible to answer the question on whether H2020 or HE rules give you higher reportable costs based on the same salaries. Reporting period-based calculation could create conflict with accounting, how to handle them? Is it worthy switching to unit-based personnel cost reporting? If yes, how to do that? What’s the difference between seconded employee and in-house consultants? Which contract qualifies for personnel costs? And many more…. 

30 mins for Q&A 

Day 3 – Session 5: Subcontracting, Third Parties, internally invoiced goods and services, Research Infrastructure and Other Direct (Purchase) costs (90 mins) 

Can you tell a regular service to be charged as other cost from a subcontracting service? An in-kind contribution from a purchased good? An internally invoiced cost from newly bought equipment? There is just an artificial difference between services – whether it is called subcontracting, external service or auxiliary service, it is just vaguely described in the GA how to handle them. Third party cost definition also confuses many, believing it is all subcontracting, though it is far from being true. Other direct costs and purchase costs? What’s the difference? What’s this new option to charge equipment full cost without depreciation? What does it exactly mean in HE to use the beneficiary’s existing methodology for internal invoicing? What shall be explicitly foreseen here if the GA says all cost must be foreseen? Travels, consumables, and many more are also covered topics. 

Day 3 – Session 6: Indirect cost reporting, funding rates, receipts and certificates on cost statements, exchange rates and payment modalities (60 mins) 

Our final session is for wrapping up and adding all other relevant topics to discuss. Indirect cost – should it be proved, accounted for at all, if it’s flat-rate? Do I get indirect cost on internal invoicing in HE? Funding rates – why do I get less than 100%? Certificates and level-1 audits: when, how, and by who? Exchange rates and payment modalities: what happens if costs are rejected? What if deliverables, results are rejected? How much the EC/Project officer can reject when non-complying with all promises? Feedbacks on financial reports, and their consequences to financing. 

30 mins for Q&A 

Why select us? 

We have 20+ years of experience in developing and implementing projects under the EU's research framework programmes. Under Horizon 2020, we have been involved successfully in over 30 projects, coordinating six of them, while in Horizon Europe we have already launched seven new projects. We have also witnessed 9 EC driven audits from the first row in the last 15 years. 

Therefore, what you can expect is real, hands-on approach on how in reality financial reporting and documentation should be done. We believe you can only understand – and teach – these rules if you also deal with them on a daily basis. Things changes fast – not the rules themselves, but the way how they are adapted by your Project Officer or your potential auditor! 

The speaker on this course is our CEO and founder Gabor Kitley. He has been managing EU projects since 2000 and delivering international training courses since 2004. His experience makes these financial courses unmatched in Europe.  

Who is this course for? 

Thanks to our learning-by-doing approach and the unique workshops, participants with different backgrounds will meet all their expectations. One of the strengths of our courses is the diverse financial backgrounds of the participants, which allows all to learn a lot from the many different approaches and stories. 

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

•    Financial administrators and controllers 
•    Researchers          
•    Research Advisers 
•    Project managers and coordinators 
•    Decision makers   
•    Finance NCPs   

coming from any sectors – public or private –, as the same rules apply for everyone!  

Who we are? 

Europa Media has been supporting public and private organisations to develop successful project proposals and effectively manage projects under the EU's research and innovation programmes since FP5. Over the past 20+ years, our team has been directly involved in writing successful proposals and coordinating and managing projects under different EU programmes. Since the beginning, we have been involved in over 100 projects as coordinators and partners, of which more than 30 are H2020, while 7 are funded already from HE.  

Our workshops and seminars are designed based on this direct experience we have gained from our own proposals and projects - we discuss and reflect on a lot of specific problems during these events. They are therefore, quite hands-on with real-life examples and stories. This practical approach has attracted over 10,000 participants from all over the world in the past 20 years.