Calculating payroll and indirect expenses for the university and university college sector

The TDI full costing methodology is a common model used by the university and university college sector calculate the total costs of externally funded projects.

The Research Council will only fund a portion of the payroll and indirect expenses calculated for organisations in the university and university college sector. For more information, please see Rates for funding of researcher time in the university and university college sector and for health trusts. For technical personnel and research assistants who are not included in the TDI model's basis for calculation, the actual payroll and indirect expenses must be budgeted. The amount sought from the Research Council cannot exceed the lump sum rate for research personnel. Any difference between the calculated costs and the Research Council’s rates must be covered through own or other financing. This will be clarified in each call for proposals.

The same rates and budgeting principles for covering any differences also apply to health trusts for projects that include researcher time for academic personnel.

Costs for supervision of research fellows 
When the project manager or other project participants supervise research fellows funded by the project, costs relating to academic supervision of these research fellows may be entered as project costs. Supervision costs must be based on the supervisor's hourly rate/man-year cost and be entered together with other researcher time the supervisor has in the project.

Collaboration with research organisations in other countries

When a partner is an organisation in the higher education sector in another country, you may calculate payroll and indirect expenses in one of the following two ways:

• using the respective organisations’ own budgeting models;
• using the actual salary costs (including social security costs), with an added overhead of 25 per cent to cover indirect expenses.

The Research Council's rates for funding of researcher time in the university and university college sector and for health trusts also apply to funding of researcher time for collaborating research organisations in other countries. Any difference between calculated costs and the Research Council's rates must be covered through own or other financing.

If the research organisation in another country supplies R&D services to the project, the price is not subject to any restrictions. The costs of such services is to be entered under “Procurement of R&D services” in the grant application form.

When the grant application includes a research stay abroad or in Norway

Costs relating to research stays abroad for Norwegian researchers (Overseas Research Grants) or research visits to Norway for researchers from other countries (Visiting Researcher Grants) must be calculated according to the designated rates. These are to be entered under “Other operating expenses” in the cost plan in the grant application form. These rates also determine the basis for calculating funding from the Research Council. Actual costs relating to the research stay are to be documented in the final accounts.