Project monitoring

While the project is running you would be well advised to keep a close eye on the finances. Your research office will probably provide you (or you can get from your finance system) monthly expenditure reports. You should always check these (as you would with your own monthly bank statements). Are there things missing that you expected to see? If so, this may mean that the expenditure has been miscoded and as it will doubtless appear on your project account sooner or later, it is better to sort it out sooner. It could however be something worse than miscoding, for example your order for a piece of equipment may not have gone through due to some procedural irregularity that you were not aware of - if left unchecked, this could adversely affect the delivery date and hence your project.

It is also possible that there may be items of expenditure that you do not recognise. Again these are likely to be miscodings, but the sooner you sort these out the better; the longer you leave them the more effort will be required to put things right.

You should also regularly review your expenditure against the budget. Are you going to over spend or under spend? Neither is normally desirable.