How often do I need to calculate the rates for my 3E service center?
I am not familiar with rate calculations. How detailed do they need to be?
If you manage a 3E service center, a formal, comprehensive, rate calculation is required to be performed every 2 years. This is not only a University policy requirement, but also a Federal Uniform Guidance requirement. Reviewing your rates on an annual basis is a recommended best practice.
Reviewing your rates on an annual basis is a recommended best practice. This will help you manage your service fund and identify any significant changes in expenses, revenue, or customer base before the fund gets too far over or under recovered. The annual review also assists in trying to normalize rates and address dramatic fluctuations as soon as possible so that your customers are not surprised.
In addition, rate calculations must be based on actual historical costs, adjusted for any known increases or decreases in costs or base, and supporting documentation must be maintained on-file by the department.
These are just a few of the many requirements for service centers. To help you learn the various requirements for service centers System Government Costing offers several training programs. Two of our most trainings are Service Activity Basics and Service Activity Advanced.
Service Activity Basics
It is a web-based interactive program designed to provide basic information to those new to service activities. It is self-paced and only takes 3-4 hours to finish. It includes requirements for setting up service centers, billing and revenue considerations, and questions on fixed asset depreciation.
Service Activity Advanced
This is an instructor-led training over 6 sessions. This course reviews the detailed requirements for managing service centers, and the participants will perform a full rate calculation based on real scenarios. The Service Activities Basics training is a prerequisite Service for this course. Some of the topics covered include data retrieval, usage base, salaries, depreciation, and adjusted fund balance. After the training participants can keep many reference materials to assist them with calculating compliant rates.
Some participants have described the Service Activity Advanced training like this:
- “Absolutely phenomenal training!”
- “The training team was so helpful and made this easy to understand.”
- “Highly recommend.”
Use this link to apply today!
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If you have questions about calculating service activity rates feel free to consult System Government Costing’s “Who to Ask” list to find an expert who can help.
