In the CATS working time allocation system, project employees allocate their working time and, subsequently, their monthly salary to the agreed-upon project, order or cost centre. CATS does not affect salary payment but only the accuracy of financial reports. The system is not used for working hour tracking but for cost allocation.
Most funders require the allocation and approval of effective working hours on a monthly basis. A requirement for payments and an approved audit is that allocation reports can prove that the person has personally confirmed the allocation and that the principal investigator has approved it on time.
CATS administrators create the necessary allocation profiles on behalf of the project employees. The director of the cost centre or the principal investigator of a project receiving external funding reports the working time allocation needs to the controller of their home academy’s financial team.
Working time allocated to projects with external funding must be confirmed personally by each project researcher each month by the second weekday of the following month. The system sends out automatic reminders of unconfirmed allocations.
If an allocation is unconfirmed, it cannot be approved, in which case it is not possible to allocate the costs to the correct cost allocations. An unconfirmed allocation remains the cost of the person’s home cost centre, meaning that the costs cannot be reported to funders.
Research and teaching staff must allocate days off corresponding to holidays and other paid absences manually in the CATS system. If necessary, the administrators can add your absences in the system.
It is possible to confirm allocations retrospectively, but the confirmation cannot be made for future hours. If you know that you are away at the time of confirmation, you can confirm your project hours before your holiday. In principle, all absences are allocated to the home cost centre and these allocations do not need to be confirmed separately.
The principal investigator is responsible for making sure that researchers enter their working time to the project as has been agreed. In principle, the project’s principal investigator approves all hours allocated to their projects. They cannot approve their own allocations.
The person’s confirmed hours are visible to the person’s supervisor, the project PI, the person responsible for CATS profit centre at the profit centre as well as to the system administrators. Hours must be confirmed by the third weekday of the following month. It is not possible to approve unconfirmed allocations of project researchers.
The principal investigator approves the requests for payments that are sent to funders.
Person-in-charge for the university-level CATS system
Miia Putkinen
Sanna Tossavainen