Service Center - View or change rates
- Mike Zbrozek
Each year our laboratories service centers are required to review their rates. This event is often a response to the updated Facilities and Administrative (F&A) Cost Rates negotiated with New Mexico Tech.
Research institutions like the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology negotiate Facilities and Administrative (F&A) cost rates with federal agencies, often with one agency acting as the lead negotiator—here, the Department of the Navy. The F&A rate, also known as an indirect cost rate, reflects the institution’s expenses for supporting research activities, such as facilities upkeep, administrative support, utilities, and compliance with federal research standards. These negotiations ensure a fair rate that accurately represents the actual costs of running research programs.
When an institution like NM Tech secures a grant or contract, it can include F&A costs based on the negotiated rate. This rate impacts pricing for contract services on campus by:
Ensuring Cost Recovery: Institutions can recover indirect costs incurred from research activities, ensuring they have sufficient funding to maintain high-quality facilities and support.
Providing Predictable Rates: Forward-pricing F&A rates ensure that projects have stable, predictable rates over a fiscal year, simplifying budgeting for both the institution and funding agencies.
Enabling Competitive Pricing: With an established rate agreement, institutions can budget and price their research proposals competitively while still covering necessary indirect costs.
The negotiated rates thus ensure that research institutions are compensated fairly, fostering an environment where they can maintain infrastructure, attract researchers, and continue advancing their research mission without financial strain from administrative and facility costs.
Historic rate changes can be viewed here - Sponsored Projects Rates: New Mexico Tech
When new overhead rates are applied, all service rates will expire and need to be reassessed and approved by the NMT Cost Accounting office.
How to check and update your rates.
To check your rates, follow the steps below.
Login to your account at geoinfo.nmt.edu/login - Keep in mind that you must be connected to a VPN or on the campus network in order to access the login page.
Select “Service Center Invoicing” for your list of user authorized roles.
From the menu at the top menu, select “Rates / Constants “
On this page you will see a summary of all the current rates offered by your service center. Including the current overhead rate.
From here, select the “Rate Management“ tab.
From here, you can select a rate to edit, or create a new rate.
On the rate management page you will see a history of this rate, and their effective dates.
You can adjust the service parameters by selecting “Edit Service Parameters“
Update the quantity required for bulk discounts if.
# of analyses or time charged per invoice item
Most critical to this phase are the following lines:
Here you can update your rates, and set the effective dates. These dates often reflect the time of year where overhead rates are reset as discussed above.
If you are updating your rates to reflect the recent changes to the Overhead rate, you will need to create a new rate! See step 7
To update your rates and get them approved due to changes in Overhead rate follow these steps:
From the rate management tab, click “New“ - We will be copying these rates so that they will reflect the updated overhead rates, so be sure to select the service you wish to copy forward, otherwise select the “Add New Service“ button in the top right corner.
In the new page you can set a new rate for this service, or you copy the previous rate information and change the effective dates. These dates must overlap with the Overhead Service Rate discussed above. Set the effective date to “Today” and update the end date to 12/31 of the next calendar year. If you are updating this on 10/31/2024 change the effective dates to 10/31/2024 - 12/31/2025.
When new overhead and tax rates are added, the End Date of the current rates will expire the day before the new rates become effective. In theory, new overhead rates will be available at the beginning of each fiscal year. In practice, new rates are sometimes announced several months after that. In order to not have rates expire before new rates are in effect, the expiration date should be set to 12/31 of the following year. When new overhead rates are applied, all service rates will expire and need to be reassessed and approved by the NMT Cost Accounting office.
Click “Add New Rate“ when finished. See results below -
