Proposal Management and Grant Preparation

• The Grant Agreement Preparation process is now supported for:

  • Programme: Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM), Type of Action: Emergency Response (UCPM-ER), Type of MGA: Action Grant (UCPM-AG).

Proposal Management and Grant Preparation

• The Seal of Excellence (SoE) process has been updated and is now creating a task for the Coordinator, in the Grant Management Services application, to approve or not its publication. However, the conditions for generating the Seal of Excellence for the rejected low-funding proposals and the proposals from the reserve list which will not be funded remain the same.

Amendments

• An additional check on Amendments (AT56) has been implemented, for the case when the initial prefinancing (with MIM) has been already paid. Then, the following rules apply:
  • MIM cannot be decreased
  • if the initial MIM is increased then the initial prefinancing should also be increased by an amount higher than the increased MIM amount.

For more information about how to prepare an amendment, click here.

• For Horizon Europe Equity projects: amendments are not supported for any of the following amendment types: Consortium Requested (CR), Commission Initiated (CI) and Information Procedure (IP). For more information about how to prepare an amendment, click here.

Continuous Reporting

• For MFF 2014-2020 projects: in the Milestones tab, in the Continuous and Periodic Report, the following columns have been added to the table:
  • 'Work Package No.' between the 'Name' and 'Lead Beneficiary' columns.
  • 'Means of Verification' between the 'Lead Beneficiary' and 'Due Date' columns.

• For Lump Sum projects: in the Continuous and Periodic Report, updating the status of a deliverable included in a completed and accepted Work Package is no longer possible. For more information, see Completing the Deliverables.

Periodic Reporting

• From now on, a new naming convention will be used in the filename of an Affiliated Entity's Financial Statement(s) generated .pdf documents: the PIC of the beneficiary to which the entity is affiliated will be also mentioned in the filename.
• For MSCA-COFUND: if the beneficiaries declare, in the Financial Statement, that they have operating grants for the reporting period in case, the following warning text will be displayed on the screen: “Please note that the COFUND allowance cannot be used to cover any expenses covered by the OG”. 

Reporting and Payment

Periodic reporting

• The Periodic Report & the automatic generation of Payment letters have been enabled for:

  • Programme: Digital Europe (DIGITAL), Type of Action: Joint Undertaking - Grants for Financial Support (DIGITAL-JU-GFS), Type of MGA: Action Grants (DIGITAL-AG)

For information about the Periodic Reporting, please click here.

Beneficiary Termination Reporting

• The Beneficiary Termination Reporting is now available for the following programme and type of action:

  • Programme: Digital Europe (DIGITAL), Type of Action: Joint Undertaking - Grants for Financial Support (DIGITAL-JU-GFS), Type of MGA: Action Grants (DIGITAL-AG)

Audit Result Implementation

• The Audit Result Implementation is now available for all DIGITAL-JU-GFS-AG projects under the funding scheme of MFF 2021-2027.

In-Kind Contributions to Additional Activities (IKAA) workflow 

• Only in the context of partnerships with Joint Undertakings (JUs): The IKAA-Plan can be now amended after submission and acceptance by the EU (but only before the reporting exercise starts). The partner will follow the same steps as for planning to amend the IKAA Plan form. 

In-Kind Contributions to Additional Activities (IKAA) workflow 

• When the EU permits an organisation to modify its Plan as part of an amendment, then the LEAR and/or IKAA Reporter and/or the ACCAD will receive a PNS indicating that they can perform the amendment and a process and task will be displayed for them on the Portal in order to access the IKAA Amendment Plan form and complete it. Once the users have completed the modifications to the form as permitted in the Amendment case, they may submit it to the EU. If there are any issues, the users may receive another PNS requesting further modifications to the form that will also need to be done in the same manner as described above.
• For all IKAA processes launched in the context of partnerships with Joint Undertakings for planning, amending the plan or reporting: the name of the Joint Undertaking is now mentioned in the process details.

Audit Result Implementation

• The Audit Result Implementation is now available for the cost-based projects of the MFF 2021-2027. Unlike in the previous MFF, the calculation of the amount to recover after the payment of the balance is done individually, either for the beneficiary or for one of its affiliated entities.

Proposal Management and Grant Preparation

• The Grant Agreement Preparation process is now supported for:
  • Programme: Horizon Europe (HORIZON), Type of Action: EIC Equity Only (HORIZON-EIC-EQU), Type of MGA: Equity Investment (HORIZON-EQU).

General

• In the Communication Centre and in Process communications, it is now possible to select and copy the text of any message that has already been sent or received. For more information on informal messages, see How to access your messages.

Proposal management and Grant Preparation

•  A new tooltip referring to the "timing" has been added on the Reviews screen. In addition, several labels have been also updated in the table.

• The Budget Information Summary export functionality has been now made available for Proposal Management & Grant Preparation and for Amendments and it is applicable to all programs and types of action. This functionality allows the users to export the budget table to an .xlsx file from the Financial information tab.

Amendments

• The amendment type AT28 - Change of additional information has been made available for all Horizon Europe projects with amendments enabled. This clause allows the projects to add, remove or update additional information in the datasheet. For more information about how to prepare an amendment, click here.

• In the case of an existing Commission Initiated (CI) suspension for a project in the future, all Consortium Requested (CR) project suspension requests (AT35) must be done before the Commission Initiated suspension start date.

Continuous Reporting 

• If a deliverable is submitted while an amendment containing changes to the description of the deliverable is still ongoing and is not signed yet, the system will now warn the Coordinator that the submission of the deliverable will block the signature of the amendment. In this case, it is suggested either to postpone the submission of the deliverable until the amendment is signed or to remove the deliverable from the ongoing amendment. For more information, see Completing the Deliverables.
• For all Horizon Europe (HORIZON) projects with the Publications tab enabled: adding a publication manually is now made easier. If the DOI identifier is completed correctly, the system will now fill in automatically all the mandatory fields on the publication and will include a link to the publication itself. For more information, see Completing the Publications (Horizon Europe).
• For both MFF 2014-2020 and MFF 2021-2027: when the Project Officer reopens the submitted deliverable for revision, the Lead Beneficiary and the Coordinator Contact (in copy) are notified via a PNS. For more information, see Completing the Deliverables.
• For all Horizon Europe (HORIZON) and EURATOM projects: in case of UTRO, when the new beneficiary completes the Impact tab, the system will display automatically the data entered by the old beneficiary below the following question: "What mechanisms for citizen and/or end-user entity engagement have you set up and plan to maintain beyond the end of your project, or are planning to set up and maintain beyond the end of your project (per beneficiary)?". The new beneficiary can choose either to modify the pre-selected options or to keep them unchanged. For more information on how to complete the Impact questionnaire, click here.

Periodic Reporting

• For projects with multi pre-financing: for the first periodic report linked to the first interim payment/final payment (if only one reporting period)*, in the Financial Statement screen, it is much clearer now for which period the costs should be reported (i.e. for the period beginning with the start date of the project, covering also the period when a request for additional pre-financing has been submitted, if any). 

Project Monitoring

• In the case when the Project Monitoring process is linked to a Reporting Period, and the corresponding Reporting process was not yet launched, the Project Monitoring was unable to proceed and the submission of the report was blocked. However, new business rules have been put in place to prevent issues and warn explicitly the user(s) in case of inconsistency between the Project Monitoring linked Reporting Period and the launching of that period's Reporting process.