Department Manager Windows-based software is a grant management solution that supports the full life cycle of a research grant, from pre-award to post-award and compliance. It offers particular strength in grant financial management, easing the burden of administrators in colleges, universities, independent research institutes, and research hospitals.

Software modules include Grants, Accounting, and Personnel, and include special procedures such as Archiving and Year End tasks to ease fiscal reporting and data storage requirements.

Windows-based products are being uplifted into Web-based products that will offer enhanced functionality and access.

Related References

About Department Manager Modules

Department Manager is a full-featured system with various modules to serve your management needs. Existing modules include:

Personnel
Grant
Accounting,
Facility Management
Space and Equipment Inventory, and
Archived Data

Each module is accessible from the Department Manager main menu, which appears in the system tray when launched.

A brief description follows for each of the modules.

Personnel Module

The Personnel module is a comprehensive human resources management system. It tracks both general and financial information about faculty and staff, as well as students, post docs, temporaries, residents, and volunteers as required for day-to-day operations of a departmental business office. This module is often used with the:

Accounting module to project future salary and benefit costs
Grant and Space modules to generate comprehensive faculty profiles and reports for faculty evaluation

Grant Module

The Grant module is a macro-level management tool to help organizations track and manage active and pending grants. It is designed for organizations with significant grant funding.

This module tracks information such as PI (Primary or Principal Investigator) effort, budget and project periods, and total direct and indirect costs. It does not perform day-to-day accounting, which is handled via the Accounting module.

Accounting Module

The Accounting module is a powerful managerial accounting and reporting system designed for both central office and department-level administrators. It allows users to manage simultaneously both university-controlled Accounts (funds) and user-defined Cost Centers to track internally controlled budgets or special commitments.

Additionally, the Accounting module supports multiple account structures for organizations that need to manage budgets that combine funds from different corporate entities or affiliates such as universities, hospitals, and foundations.

When used with the Personnel module, a salary and fringe benefit calculator can project and encumber personnel transactions for individuals or groups of employees and accounts.

Facility Management Module

The Facility Management module is designed for organizations that operate various re-charge centers or research facilities that charge for services. This module generates invoices, tracks payments, and produces reports to aid in facility management.

Space and Equipment Inventory Module

The Space and Equipment Inventory module is a state-of-the art space and equipment tracking system. The Space component tracks information such as room square footage; room ownership by department, division, and faculty; room usage; and equipment locations by room. When paired with the Grant module, it can compare department faculty based on the amount of grant funding per square foot of research space.

The Equipment Inventory component records specific information about each piece of capital equipment used by the organization. Over 45 variables, including equipment description, manufacturer, origin of purchase, cost, location, and current status (missing, discarded, in use) are tracked for each item. When used with a bar code scanner, it can completely automate your equipment tracking process.

Archived Data

The Archived Data option allows access to archived data for each module. Data archival permits you to move infrequently used data out of the active database and into the archive database. Typically archived data include closed grants or data from a prior fiscal year. Archiving helps to keep the software operating efficiently, unhindered by large volumes of outdated or unused information. Archiving may be performed as part of year-end tasks.

All reports available in the Accounting Module are available in the Archive Module.

What's Next?

To learn more about the individual modules available within Department Manager, refer to Getting Started articles about each, as listed in Related References, above.