Proposal submission

Cayuse 424 has been used since 2011 for grants.gov proposal submissions. Cayuse SP (Sponsored Projects) builds on and is integrated with Cayuse 424 to provide pre-award and non-financial post-award sponsored projects administration.

Cayuse SP provides a single point of entry for proposal data and any documents that are required for internal review.

Cayuse SP is the repository for institutional proposal and award data, with nearly twenty-five years of legacy data now available to NAU users. This extensive data repository will allow investigators to view and create reports on their pending proposals and awards; and chairs, deans/directors, and other administrators to view and create reports on pending proposals and awards in their departments/units and colleges.

A direct link to Cayuse SP is available on the Office of Sponsored Projects (OSP) home page. Select Cayuse to open a link to the NAU Central Authentication Service (CAS) page and enter your NAU user ID and password.  Under the Research Administration Modules heading, you have the option to select Cayuse 424 or Cayuse SP. Select Cayuse SP. You will begin and route all proposals in Cayuse SP. After all approvals are received, the OSP will submit the proposal according to the sponsor’s requirements.

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After you select Cayuse SP, a web page opens containing links to Proposal, Award, and Certifications/Approvals Dashboards.

The Proposal Dashboard provides access to create, edit, and view proposals.

Similarly, the Awards Dashboard provides access to awards for investigators, chairs, deans, and other individuals with appropriate authorizations.

The Certifications/Approvals Dashboard provides access to the PI Certification Inbox (for investigators) and the Dept. Approval Inbox (for chairs, deans/ directors, and other approvers). The number of actions in each inbox is indicated on the left side of the link (e.g., see the number “1” beside “My Proposals” in the Proposal Dashboard in the above figure).

If you are a chair, dean, or other approver (e.g., for cost share), open the Dept. Approval Inbox to review a proposal.

Note: Contact NAU-OSP@nau.edu for questions about your access level.

Initiating the new proposal file in Cayuse SP is the first indication the OSP has that you are preparing a proposal. That information is important for planning, to balance workloads, and to prepare for other situations, such as limited submissions where an internal review is required to select the proposal(s) that may be submitted.

Another benefit to starting the Cayuse SP proposal file is that the OSP can provide you and your team early assistance and useful information about preparing and submitting your proposal. Additionally, all administrators in the department(s)/unit(s) or college(s)/center(s), etc., who have “view proposal” access will be alerted that you are preparing a proposal and also able to assist you.

The university requires sponsored project costs to be funded to the greatest extent possible by the sponsor(s) and any cost share that is not required is discouraged. Types of internal cost share include tuition and/or fee waivers, cash match, and in-kind commitments of salary and wages. IDC waivers or reductions by the Vice President for Research are rarely approved.

If cost share will be proposed, request approvals (e-mail, memo, etc.) from each contributing office as early as possible and upload the approval(s) in the attachments section of Cayuse SP. The budget section of Cayuse SP includes space to itemize each item of cost sharing (internal and external). As each source of cost share is entered, the office providing the cost share is automatically added to the proposal routing chain. The Assistant Vice President for Research Administration will certify third party cost share based on the provided documentation.

In the case of cost share agreements among several university offices, the most common form of documentation is a cost share memo signed by each office. These documents should be uploaded in Cayuse SP.

Information about the proposal is entered in each of the links that appear in the item list shown to the left. Notice that the proposal number (in this case, 14-0129, next to the item list) is automatically assigned in Cayuse SP. This reference number will stay with the project from proposal submission through award closeout.

Complete the general information and investigators/research team sections. Information on these pages identifies the sponsor, investigator, and managing department. What you do next depends on whether you are Principal Investigator (PI) entering information about your own proposal, or you are entering information for the PI.

If you are the PI, we suggest you focus next on the compliance sections highlighted to the right: conflict of interest, regulatory compliance, export control, intellectual property, community benefits, and location of sponsored activities. These questions concern required certifications and/or contain information that is likely known only to the PI. The other sections can be completed by you or an assistant, including the budget, abstract, document uploads section, approving departments, notes section, and link to the Cayuse 424 Grants.Gov proposal (if applicable). As pages are saved, a green check box appears signifying that the requested information has been provided.

If you are entering information for the PI, we suggest you focus on the budget, subcontractors, application abstract, attachments, and approving departments sections and the Cayuse 424 Proposal (if applicable). Once the proposal is ready for internal routing, the PI can log on and complete the sections highlighted above at the same time that he/she certifies the proposal.

The information on any of these links can be reviewed and updated prior to submission simply by clicking the link. Be sure to save your changes before moving to a different section.

With one exception, all proposal information is entered in Cayuse SP. The exception is for grants.gov proposals that are submitted through the Cayuse 424 S2S interface; information for these proposals is entered both in Cayuse SP and Cayuse 424. See below, pp. 27-30, for detailed guidelines for preparing a Cayuse 424 grants.gov proposal.

When all sections of the Item List have green check marks, the proposal is almost ready for internal routing. Even though it’s very easy to enter and/or upload proposal information, wait to click the “Submit for Routing” link until after you’ve discussed the proposal with your OSP PRA/PAA. The reason for this is to avoid having to pull the proposal back from routing to correct errors.

Once the proposal is authorized for routing, all the information that’s been input and/or uploaded can be viewed by all internal approvers, including the PI and any other department/college/unit-level approvers. Once all approvers have certified the proposal, the proposal gets a final review by the OSP GCA, and if everything is in good order, is authorized by an Authorized Institutional Representative/Signatory (AOR) and submitted following the sponsor’s instructions.

The Office of Sponsored Projects requires that a complete sponsored project proposal package be received at least four (4) business days (six (6) days if sub-awardees are included) prior to the submission deadline to allow reviews for compliance with sponsor and University requirements and on-time submission to the sponsor.

Read more about late submission guidelines

One of the most common errors that we see is incorrect information about a faculty member’s title, department, and affiliation. We recommend that you review and update your information in the investigator’s personal profile (found on the people tab in Cayuse 424) at least once a year, or if you have a title or department change. This information is used to auto populate tables in Cayuse SP. The most important fields to update are the department, division, and title fields. The OSP will refresh the contact list on a daily basis for the next several months to assure that contact information is accurate.

Request a new or updated Cayuse SP account