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Faculty of Science

Budget approval

Before you can apply for research grants, you need to get your budget approved by the head of your department, most likely ForskerService-Økonomi (FSØ), and possibly also the Rectorate.

  • The head of your department will check that indirect costs are covered and that any co-financing paid by the department is in place.
  • FSØ verifies that the overall budget is in order and stays within the limitations of the call.
  • The Rectorate ensures that possible renovation or building of new premises will be covered.
  • ALL budgets - no matter the size - must be uploaded in forskerportalen.sdu.dk

Below, you will find a check list for how to get your budget approved. You will find more detailed information on each step below the list and a FAQ at the bottom of the page. Also, you will find a guide on how to operate forskerportalen.sdu.dk below.

Approval walkthrough for budgets

  1. Download the latest version of the SDU budget sheet and fill in project expenses
  2. Reserve at least 20% of your budget for indirect costs
    • If the foundation provides less than 20% for administrative expenses, use this guide to include indirect costs or contact Lea Bolander Krengel from NAT Economy. Bench fees eligible in budgets to the Novo Nordisk Foundation counts towards the 20%.

  3. Get your budget approved by the head of your department (even if you only are co-applicant). Please note that FSØ does not have to approve budgets below DKK 8 million
    • Upload your budget in forskerportalen.sdu.dk. The flow after submission is as shown below. You will get a notification from the portal when the status (approved/not approved) of your submission changes. In case the budget is not approved, you have to upload a new one. If your total budget changes, you have to start a new submission.

      Budget low

  4. For projects requiring construction of labs/offices or renovation of existing ones, you need approval to apply by the Rectorate
    • Download the preapproval form, fill in missing information and send it to University Director Thomas Buchvald Vind (tbv@sdu.dk) and his secretary, Tina Kortbek (tiko@sdu.dk). Include the signed form with your submission in Forskerportalen.

  5. Send all materialsrelated to your application
  1. Download the latest version of the SDU budget sheet and fill in project expenses
  2. Reserve at least 20 % of your budget for indirect costs
    • If the foundation provides less than 20 % for administrative expenses, use this guide to include indirect costs or contact Lea Bolander Krengel from NAT Economy. Bench fees eligible in budgets to the Novo Nordisk Foundation counts towards the 20%.

  3. Get your budget approved by the head of your department (even if only co-applicant) AND by FSØ
    • Upload your budget in forskerportalen.sdu.dk. The flow after submission is as shown below. You will get a notification from the portal, if the status (approved/not approved) of your submission changes. In case the budget is not approved, you have to upload a new one. If your total budget changes, you have to start a new submission.

      Budget above

  4. For projects with budgets ABOVE 25 million DKK or projects in general requiring construction of labs/offices or renovation of existing ones, you need approval to apply by the Rectorate
    • Download the preapproval form, fill in missing information and send it to University Director Thomas Buchvald Vind (tbv@sdu.dk) and his secretary, Tina Kortbek (tiko@sdu.dk). Include the signed form with your submission in Forskerportalen.

  5. Send all materials related to your application

 

Ressources for budget approval

Build your budget

SDU budget sheet

Budget approval

Upload your budgets in Forskerportalen

Budget approval

Preapproval form and email template for Rectorate

More information on ...

When you prepare the budget, you can use any format you like in order to outline the type of employees, number of employees, etc. For this purpose, you can use average wage rates from this scheme.
Please remember that at NAT, we only calculate holiday benefit/allowance for PhD students, not for any other types of employees. This is because the salaries are already set high enough to cover the holiday benefits.

When preparing large EU-applications, remember to include €7,000 for audit.

 
To get your budget approved, you must fill in the SDUbudgetsheet. We therefore recommend to use the SDU budget from the very beginning.
 
In our FAQ, you find detailed guidance on how to fill in the SDUbudgetsheet should. 
Note that while working with SDUbudgetsheet, you must save it in a “trusted folder” otherwise you cannot run the macros. You find a guidance for this below in the FAW. If you encounter problems, you can contact IT support on 6550 2990.
 
If the foundation does not provide at least 20% overhead, you must together with your Head of Department find out how to make the budget cover costs that are already on the department budget, e.g. salary for permanent employees (researchers, technical staff, administrative task), fees for software contracts, fees for service contracts etc. Each foundation has various rules on what type of costs they will cover and how much overhead they allow. You can find more information in our guidelines on indirect costs in this link.

 

Also, you can contact Lea from the NAT-Economy for assistance with shaping your budget.

At the moment, only Novo Nordisk Foundation considers bench fees an eligible cost - and only in a call-specific manner. Be sure to read the call text carefully or reach out to us before including bench fees in your budget. Documentation of our bench policy is requested by the foundation in the form of a link to our policy or appending the policy as an attachment to all application. You can find our policy here.

Where applicable, the Novo Nordisk Foundation allows for a bench fee of 8,000 DKK per full-time month per academic employee working on the project. That is, you can include 96,000 DKK per year for each scientific person working full-time on the project. For only partial affiliation to a given project, you will have to scale down accordingly. If a person covered by the grant is working 50% of her/his time on the project, the eligible bench fee is halfed, that is 48,000 DKK per year.

Your Head of Department (HoD) has to approve the budget in order to make sure that the mandatory 20% of overhead is covered in the budget. We recommend negotiating with your HoD before submitting the budget in Forskerportalen.

Also, if you have included co-financing in the budget, your HoD has to acknowledge and approve the level of co-financing.

Please note, that some foundations also request a signature from the HoD in a Letter of Support or in a specific form. If a signature is not required by the foundation an email confirmation from your HoD stating the budget is approved is documentation is enough for the approval.
Please also remember that coapplicants at other departments at NAT must submit their part of an application budget through Forskerportalen. In this way, their HoD will approve as well.
All budgets > 8 mio DKK must be approved by FSØ (Forskerstøtte Økonomi) at the SDU Central Administration. FSØ will go through your budget and make sure the appropriate salary levels are used and sticks to the requirements of the foundation. To get an approval from FSØ, you must submit you budget in Forskerportalen. 
If your budget entails any new constructions (laboratory or office space) or any refurbishment of existing constructions or installations, you must get a signature from the Rectorate: Thomas Buchvald Vind.
If you apply for > 25 mio DKK, you must also get a signature from the Rectorate, independent whether the project it implies constructions/refurbishment or not.
To get the signature, download and fill out the preapproval form from this  link, send it to university director Thomas Buchvald Vind (tbv@sdu.dk) and his secretary, Tina Kortbek (tiko@sdu.dk).

You have to attach the signed form with your budget in Forskerportalen.

Collect all documents and send them for archiving to NATapplications@sdu.dk

You should collect following documents for archiving in SDUpro: 
  • Application (everything: project description, budget, CV, publication list, support letters, receipt from the foundation if this is provided etc.)
  • Signature on preapproval form from the Rectorate: Thomas Buchvald Vind
The reason you should provide all these documents for archiving is 
That SDU must provide statistics on funding for the ministry and off course also for our own use. 
Our Rector, Deans, Head of Departments, Economy Department, and Research Support must all be able to get an overview of how much funding is applied for and how much is granted. 
It is therefore of utmost importance that we all help keeping this information up to date.

 

FAQ

There is indeed.

You can find the text-version here.

There is a video-tutorial here with an accompanying PDFguide here.

And the FAQs for the SDUbudgetsheet is here.

Due to security-issues, it is not allowed to run macros on SDU computers. You can, however, put the SDUbudgetsheet in a trusted folder and run it from there. You can find a step-by-step manual on how to setup a trusted folder here. Another option is to fill out the budgetsheet on a personal computer.
Everything you have included in your application and the internal approvals. The budget approvals by Head of Department and FSØ are normally sent to you with NATapplications in cc, but please check in your email correspondance if this is the case. The electronic submission platforms often generate a compiled pdf of all submitted documents. You can send this to NATapplications@sdu.dk. Remeber to save it on your hard drive during the submission process. Some systems do not allow you to go back and download the compiled pdf.

We have listed the most often used below. If the number you are seeking is not on the list, you can find more here.
CVR-number - 29283958
PIC-number - 999904616
VAT-number - DK29283958
P-number (Campusvej) - 1003403113
EIN-number - 98-1058147

Bank account:
Reg - 4366
Account - 3574428645
IBAN - DK8130003574428645
SWIFT - DABADKKK

EAN-numbers
You can find a list of the unit's individual EAN-numbers  here.

 


Calls with special rules

Last Updated 29.11.2023