Blog
How research funders count staff effort and money, taken from their own documents, and how to choose and justify the software to manage it.
Person-months: what they are and how to calculate them
A person-month, also written person months or PM, is one person's full working time for one month, and it is the unit most research funders use for staff effort. The formula, worked examples, and what Horizon Europe and UKRI actually ask for, taken from the funders' own guidance.
How to budget personnel costs for Horizon Europe
Horizon Europe costs staff by the day, not by the month. The daily rate formula, the 215-day ceiling, how the person-months in your proposal become a budget, and the 25 percent flat rate on top, each taken from the European Commission's own grant documents.
How UKRI full economic costing works
UKRI costs research grants on their full economic cost and usually pays 80% of it. What that means for your budget, how investigator time is charged, and a worked example, taken from UKRI's and the research councils' own guidance.
UKRI virement: moving money between budget headings on a grant
When a UKRI grant runs under on one heading and over on another, the terms and conditions decide what you can move, what you have to ask for, and what happens to anything left at the end. This is what they say, condition by condition.
The business case for research project management software
Someone has to sign off on new software, and they will want more than a feature list. This is the case in the terms a research group, a division or a department actually weighs: time, money at risk, the record, and where the budget comes from.
Project management tools for research teams, compared
A research group managing people across several grants needs something different from a team shipping tasks or an agency billing clients. This compares the tools research groups actually weigh up on the things that decide it, from each vendor's own published material. AllocBoard is our product, and it is in the comparison.
Research grant staff allocation spreadsheet template (free download)
Most research groups run their grants on a spreadsheet, and most of those spreadsheets were built in a hurry. This one is built properly: staff, grants and allocations in person-months, with each person's load and each grant's staff cost worked out for you. It is free, with nothing to sign up for.
How to cost a postdoc on a UK research grant
A postdoc is usually the largest line on a UK grant, and the one most often costed wrong. The salary is only the start: increments move it every year, the employer adds National Insurance, pension and the apprenticeship levy, and the funder has its own rules on inflation. This is how each part works, from the sources that set it.