Reports & payment requests

Under Article 19 and Article 20 of the grant agreement (GA), the coordinator must submit to the Commission technical and financial reports, including requests for payment - specifically:

• deliverables identified in Annex 1
• periodic report (both technical and financial) within 60 days of the end of each reporting period (including the final one), including requests for payment
• final report at the end of the project ('action'). It consisting in a summary for publication and it is generated automatically by the IT tools.

Reporting functionalities

• Continuous reporting functionality in the Funding & Tenders Portal:
  it is activated at the time the project starts and it is continuously open for the beneficiaries to submit deliverables, to report on progress in achieving milestones, to follow up of critical risks, ethics issues, publications, communications activities, and the answers to the questionnaire on horizontal issues.
• Periodic reporting functionality in the Funding & Tenders Portal:
  following the end of each reporting period the functionality of periodic reporting will be activated. While the periodic reporting session is open in the grant management system, each participant will be able to:
  • complete on-line their own Financial Statement (and the financial report of their Third Parties, if any) including the explanations on the use of resources
  • upload the narrative, free text part (part B) of the periodic technical report as a pdf document
When the coordinator submits the periodic report, the IT tool will capture the information from the continuous reporting module in order to generate the Part A of the periodic technical report. The IT tool will consolidate the individual financial statements and it will generate automatically the report with explanations of the use of resources and the periodic summary financial statements, which corresponds to the request for payment.

Continuous reporting

As a beneficiary, you can and should use the continuous reporting functionality as soon as the project starts to submit information about the progress of your project. This includes:

• deliverables
• progress in achieving milestones
• updates to the publishable summary
• response to critical risks, publications, communications activities, IPRs
• your answers to the questionnaire about the economic and social impact of the project.

All this information is automatically compiled to create part A of every technical periodic report, at the moment the coordinator and beneficiaries finish the preparation of the given periodic report.

Periodic report

Structure

The periodic consists of the periodic technical and financial reports:

1. Technical report (in 2 parts)
   • Part A structured tables from the grant management system:
     • cover page
     • publishable summary
     • web-based tables covering issues related to the project implementation (e.g. work packages, deliverables, milestones, etc.)
     • answers to the questionnaire about the economic and social impact, especially as measured against the Horizon 2020 key performance indicators and monitoring requirements.
   • Part B the free text, core part of the report that you must upload to the grant management tool as a single PDF document with:
     • explanations of the work carried out by all beneficiaries and linked third parties during the reporting period
     • an overview of the progress towards the project objectives, justifying the differences between work expected under Annex I and work actually performed, if any.
2. Financial report
   Consists of structured forms from the grant management system, including:
   • individual financial statements (Annex 4 to the GA) for each beneficiary (and third parties)
   • explanation of the use of resources and the information on subcontracting and in-kind contributions provided by third parties, from each beneficiary for the reporting period concerned (if applicable, for example it is not applicable to lump sum pilot projects)
   • periodic summary financial statement including the request for payment.

Processes for submitting a Periodic report

Continuous reporting > Preparing your periodic report > Approving partners' reports > Submitting the report to the Commission > Acceptance or rejection by the Commission > Payment

Once the periodic reporting function is activated at the end of each reporting period, you can start preparing your next report in the grant management system:

Continuous reporting update

As the information in the continuous reporting is part of the periodic report, make sure first that all your data in the continuous reporting module – namely your deliverables, milestones, publishable summary, questions on different activities and questionnaire about the economic and social impact – is up-to-date.
This information in the continuous reporting is then automatically compiled to create part A of every periodic technical report, at the moment the coordinator and beneficiaries finish the preparation of the periodic report in the grant management system.

• The technical report (both parts) is first 'locked for review' by the coordinator before being officially submitted. Any entries into the continuous reporting you make after this point will not be included in this periodic report.

Preparing your periodic report

When you receive a notification that the reporting is opened, go into the grant management system of the Portal through 'My Area' -> My Projects -> Actions -> Manage Project

1. Completing your Financial Statement
   All beneficiaries - including the coordinator - must fill in their own financial statement, electronically sign it and submit it to the coordinator.
   • Users who can fill in the statement: Participant Contacts, Project Financial Signatories, Task Managers
   • Users who can electronically sign & submit the statement: Project Financial Signatory (PFSIGN) only
   Make sure you have assigned an FSIGN user role to your project in your organisation.



2. Completing the technical part
   Part A - each beneficiary should update the tables on an ongoing basis in the continuous reporting module. The information in the tables is then automatically compiled to create part A.
   Part B - you must prepare this outside the grant management tool. You will be able to download the template to be used for your project from the periodic reporting functionality in the IT tool.
   When done, save it as a single PDF file and upload it to the grant management system (the Technical report contribution section - the Report Core tab).
   Part B can be uploaded by any beneficiary (not only the coordinator). If any changes to part B are needed, you must delete the current pdf file and upload a new one.
   When both parts are ready to submit, the Technical part can be finalised by the Coordinator's Contact Person clicking Accept & Include.

Approving partners' reports

Coordinator - you must review and explicitly approve the periodic report. If needed, you can send back a financial statement to a partner for further changes, or unlock the technical part of the report for editing.

Coordinator Contact Person - before submitting, you must include the partners' financial statements.

Missing statements
Sometimes you may decide to submit the report without financial statements from certain partners (e.g. if a beneficiary cannot submit its individual financial statement on time).
If this happens, the coordinator will be asked to confirm that they are aware of this and that therefore these costs will not be considered for the current payment. That beneficiary's costs will be considered 'zero' for this reporting period, though they can declare their costs in the next financial report (for the next reporting period).

Submitting the report to the Commission

Coordinator - submit all parts of the report together, in a single transaction:

• all the individual financial statements
• part B of the technical part

by clicking on 'Submit to EU' button.

The system will do the rest. (It will automatically generate the report with explanations of the use of resources and the periodic summary financial statements, which includes the request for payment.)

Acceptance or rejection by the Commission

The Commission will either:

• accept the report and start preparing the payment or
• ask for changes to it - which means that the process described above starts again.

Payment

When the Commission approves the eligible costs declared for the period in question, it will pay the amount due to the Coordinator within 90 days of receiving the report (Article 20.3 of GA, except if Articles 47 or 48 apply).

The total amount of pre-financing and interim payments must not exceed 90% of the maximum grant amount set out in Article 5.1 of GA.

The Commission will send a letter to inform about the payment. After receiving the letter, the Coordinator has 30 days to submit observations, if needed. The Commission will send a letter to state its final position, if applicable.

Final report

For the final reporting period, in addition to the submission of the periodic report of the last reporting period, a final report is generated automatically by the IT tool.

The final report consists of 2 parts - both of which must be completed in the grant management system (no need to upload any documents):

1. Final technical report:
   publishable summary of the entire project (giving an overview of the results, their exploitation and dissemination, and the conclusions about the project and its socio-economic impact)


2. Final financial report:
   final summary financial statement that is automatically created by the system and corresponds to the request for payment of the balance.
   In some cases (and for beneficiaries/linked third parties requesting a total contribution of €325 000 or more) it must be accompanied by a certificate on the financial statements (one certificate per beneficiary/linked third party).

Report about beneficiary termination

It can happen that after the project launch, one of the beneficiaries has to leave the consortium and finishes its participation in the elaboration of the project. In this case the coordinator has to send a termination report (technical and financial part) and a report on the distribution of payments to this beneficiary through the reporting functionality of the grant management system.

See the detailed steps in the wiki pages about how to report in case of beneficiary termination.

You can also find more information on how to launch a Grant Agreement Termination request.