Cost Share Within the PACE Cost Accounting Model

The new cost accounting model brings expanded opportunities to use PACE in cost sharing arrangements. Cost sharing may be accomplished in two ways.

Traditional cost share based on Worktag

The easiest way to utilize PACE resources as cost share is to do so based on a monetary commitment from the Institute.  This would involve creating a new Worktag that is funded with a specified number of dollars according to the cost share commitment.  PACE will associate a new MAM Account within our workload scheduling software with this cost share Worktag, and then draw down as PACE jobs are charged to this MAM Account.

In-kind cost share

This method involves more work on the part of the PI and users of the PI’s account(s).  However, it allows the PI to claim jobs run via a free tier account, the backfill queue, or other MAM accounts (such as one associated with a startup package) as cost share.  To use this method, users will need to include a specially formatted tag in the job name at submission time.  Along with the usual monthly statement, PACE will provide a detailed statement, in spreadsheet form, that shows a breakdown of all jobs.  [TBD: PACE is working with early adopters of this method to establish best practices for job names.]  The PI, in concert with their departmental accounting office, will be responsible for identifying which jobs are to be applied as cost share against which projects, and ensure that no jobs are counted as cost share more than once. If you plan to use in-kind cost sharing, please contact pace-support@oit.gatech.edu a few weeks before your utilization starts. An In-Kind Certification form signed by the PI and back up support must be provided to the Grants and Contracts Accountant in the current quarter it was used.  The Cost Share Certification and Cost Share Requirements and Certification forms may be found at https://grants.gatech.edu/policies-and-procedures/standard-forms/.

Detailed monthly usage statements

Upon request, PACE will provide a detailed monthly statement of all jobs run within a given MAM account. Based on historical usage, we have had instances with as many as 200,000 jobs in a month.  Much more commonly, we see on the order of 20,000 jobs/month as an upper bound.  Among other data elements, the detailed monthly statement will include the following information for each job:  unique job ID number, name, cost, size, length, and the class of hardware utilized.