Service Center FAQs
Personnel
Include the entire salary in the spreadsheet, indicating the percentage of time the employee spends working on the service center, and indicating any portion that is either subsidized or not related to the service center in the columns provided. That will ensure you only include the billable portion in the rate.
That is considered a “subsidy.” The salary should be included in the rate worksheet as a subsidy so that we can see the true cost of the service.
Equipment
By including depreciation in your rate, you are collecting replacement cost based on usage. You can collect this amount in a separate budget to be used to purchase new equipment at a later date.
No. However, equipment can be “purchased” through the establishment of an Equipment Reserve Account (ERA). By establishing an ERA, future purchases of equipment can be “funded.” The ERA is built up by charging actual amounts of depreciation each fiscal year. Use of the reserve account is limited to the purchase of service center equipment.
Once you contact ui-service-centers@uidaho.edu, we will provide you with an equipment list for your department which we have received from asset accounting. This reduces the number of requests to asset accounting.
Yes, OSP will review for this so include all equipment used in the center, even if it was purchased with federal funds. We will include those items in the “unallowable” column so we can see what the true cost is. This may include new equipment that is not listed with asset accounting. That’s okay; OSP will help sort it out.
Indicate on the spreadsheet the percent for this service in the appropriate column, as well as the portion of use unrelated to the service center. Please include all equipment used in the service center in the appropriate column. That will ensure that you only include the portion that should be included in the rate.
Allowability
Yes, but only to internal customers using non-discriminatory rates for all internal users. The fully costed rate must be charged to all external customers.
A year end surplus should not exceed 15 percent of working capital. A surplus or deficit shall be included in the calculation of the subsequent year’s rates. See APM 20.20, C-4 and C-7.
Volume discounts or other special pricing mechanisms are allowable but they must be equally available to all users who meet the criteria (volume) and must not be subsidized by other users. See APM 20.20, C-2.
See list of unallowable costs at APM 20.20, D-2, i.
- Activities that compete with private enterprise
- Activities involving services or products that qualify as unrelated business income (activities not substantially related to the exempt from tax purposes of the UI)
- Activities that can be produced by another UI or private enterprise source
- Activities that will create harmful intra-University competition
- Activities that have low customer demand and comparatively high operating costs
Miscellaneous
Local service primarily serves external customers; a Service Center is primarily to serve internal customers.
Service Centers are operations created within university units that provide products and services to other university departments, often at an overall cost savings to the university or college over what each unit could obtain the services on their own from outside of the university. An example would be telephone services. It is much more cost effective to have one centralized campus telephone service rather than each department obtaining their own service, working with the phone company and receiving individual billings. Another example is a departmental photocopier providing copies for many users. It is more cost effective to have one copier to serve many. Service Centers do not exist to make a profit. The financial objective of a service center is to break even by matching recovered costs with expenditures.