Guidelines for Grant and Contract Management
401B. Account Freezes
An award’s Financial Accounting System (FAS) accounts can be frozen at the 6 or 10-digit account level. Except for a few specific transactions that the FAS Manual describes (see the Manual’s Entry Code 16 description), transactions can not be posted to a frozen account. Attempts to post a transaction to a frozen accounts results in one of two things: If the transaction is a cash disbursement transaction such as a payroll or a vendor payment, FAS will post the transaction to a suspense account; if the transaction is a non-cash disbursement transaction such as a cost transfer or a recharge center billing, FAS will reject the transaction.
The freeze transaction can be a useful tool in award management, particularly when all appropriate charges have been posted to a 10 or 6-digit account level yet the account is still active in FAS. The freeze prevents an errant transaction from being posted to the account. Account freezes, however, should be requested only if sufficient time has been allotted for human resource, recharge center and procurement personnel to process accounting distribution changes that affect the account being frozen before the freezes are made effective in FAS. For example, if human resources is requested to change a faculty member’s current month salary account distribution on the 15th of the current month, that is too late to effect the change in that month’s payroll. So, the 10-digit account freeze for the faculty payroll subaccount should not be made effective until the subsequent month. Similar situations exist for recharge centers.
Local Business Centers (LBCs), BSD Dean’s Office, Medicine, BMB, Ben May, Pathology, Cancer Research Center and CALGB may enter or remove an account freeze instruction through ACCTS (Account Create and Cost Transfer System). Other departments may request an account freeze transaction by contacting their Post Award Administrator in the Restricted Funds Section of the Comptroller’s Office.
