How to Certify a PCS Report in KFS

Federal regulations—including the U.S. Office of Management and Budget's Uniform Guidance - require universities to substantiate payroll expenses when they are paid with extramural funds from federal contracts and grants. UCI meets this requirement using a payroll certification process called KFS-PCS. Principal Investigators are a key part of the certification process. After a federal award's budget period ends, a financial analyst in each organization will prepare and submit a PCS Report document in Kuali Financial System (KFS). That PCS Report will then be routed to PI in KFS.

Instructions on how to certify this document are below.

Access the PCS Report from Your Notification Email or ZotPortal

There are two ways to access the Payroll Certification System Report you need to certify:

Click the link in the notification email: When a PCS Report is sent to you (PI) for certification, you can go directly to the document by clicking the Document ID Number link in the notification email. You will be required to log in with your UCInetID and password.

Log into KFS from ZotPortal. Detailed instructions for logging into the Kuali Financial System can be found on the KFS Login and Access page. In brief, you should:

• Go to ZotPortal, log in, and click on the Finances/KFS Tab.
• Look for the Tools & Support portlet and select KFS Action List.
• If you have a PCS Report e-document awaiting certification, it will appear in your Action List. Click on the Document ID Number of the PCS Report you'd like to review and certify.

Note: If you're off campus, you will be asked to log into the UCI Virtual Private Network (VPN) in addition to the steps indicated above.

Carefully Review the Award and Employee Information Tabs

The PCS Report provides an overview of your award's salary expenses for the budget period. You can see an example PCS Report at the top of this page. Just click the image to make it bigger. Pay special attention to the two following tabs:

Award Information Tab - This tab contains the non-financial information about the fund for which salaries are being certified.

Employee Information Tab - This tab contains salary information about the report being certified.

Verify that salary totals appear to be correct and are generally aligned with the project budget. If the information in these two tabs looks correct, move on to the next step.

Check the Box in the PI Certification Tab

The PI Certification tab includes language affirming that you've reviewed the Payroll Certification. The PI is required to check the box before approving the document.

Check the Certified box.

Certify the PCS Report

Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the e-document and click Approve.

After you click Approve, the PCS Report will be complete. No further action from the PI is required until the next PCS Report comes due.