Overhead Costs
November 19th, 2007 — fp7discussionI have heard from two other organisations that the Commission will not allow the inclusion of “marketing costs” in the calculation of overhead (indirect costs). I don’t understand this, because the FP7 rule is that you should use your usual “accounting principles and practices”. It is usual practice for my organization to include our marketing costs in our overhead: I can prove from our accounting system that we charge all our customers some overhead including marketing costs. So is it safe to charge the Commission in the same way or must I expect that the Commission will refuse to pay?
November 30th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Cost relating marketing are not eligible for EC funding. Also those related to selling (often called bid costs in the academic community), and others such as non-recoverable VAT, provisions for bad debts, revaluation of capital assets (as part of depreciation) and many more. Any of these will be removed by EC auditors, or yours if you need to provide a financial certificate for your costs.