Summary
A Finance Director at a TRAC Peer Group B university approached Account-Ability with a serious concern: their existing Excel-based TRAC model was producing research cost rates and contribution figures that could not be explained or justified. These results were proving problematic when bidding for new research contracts and were raising internal questions about compliance with TRAC Guidance.
Running and updating the model was also highly resource-intensive, with significant time required each year and limited transferability when staff changed.
Account-Ability implemented its Sector Standard TRAC Solution in just 12 days, spread over four weeks, providing the university with certainty, transparency, and confidence in their TRAC return.
The implementation included:
- Configuring the solution to the university’s organisational structure
- Creating automated import routines from all TRAC data sources
- Importing and balancing one year of TRAC data
- Identifying and explaining differences from the legacy Excel model
- Highlighting areas of non-compliance within the previous approach
- Producing full model documentation and operational write-up
- Delivering three days of hands-on user training, including support for future structural changes
Client
Products & Services Supplied
How We Helped
The Challenge
The university’s legacy Excel TRAC model was generating research cost rates described as “above upper quartile,” negatively impacting competitiveness in securing research contracts.
The cost rates and contributions were difficult to explain, leading to:
- Concern about TRAC compliance
- Criticism and challenge from Heads of School
- A lack of traceability back to source data
- A slow, labour-intensive annual process
Project Goals
The Finance Director wanted to:
- Restore confidence in the university’s TRAC compliance
- Ensure clarity and transparency in cost rate calculations
- Improve traceability back to source data
- Reduce the time and internal effort required to complete the TRAC return
- Create a solution that could be easily maintained and transferred when staff changed
Our Approach
Account-Ability implemented its proven Sector Standard TRAC Solution, designed as an off-the-shelf system that can be rapidly configured for any university structure across TRAC peer groups.
With more than 40 successful implementations across the sector, Account-Ability was able to deliver the full solution within a fixed-price 12-day programme.
During implementation, we also uncovered several material errors and areas of non-compliance within the previous Excel model. Many of these issues had been introduced during earlier updates and were directly responsible for the unexplained and “wayward” figures that first triggered the project.
As is common in TRAC exercises, source datasets such as space data also required improvement, and these refinements contributed to more robust outputs.
Outcome & Benefits
The university now has:
- Full confidence in TRAC compliance
- Transparent, understandable research cost rates and contributions
- Clear traceability from outputs back to underlying source data
- Explanations for inter-school differences that satisfy Heads of School
- A far more efficient, transferable process that is resilient to staff changes
The end result was exactly what the Finance Director required:
A sector-standard, future-proof TRAC solution that is efficient to run and updated annually for changes in TRAC Guidance.
Client Testimonial
.png)
