Payments Module Guide for Project Coordinators
- E.Kohen
Introduction
As PRIMA Section 1 project coordinator, you will see that in MEL “Budget” section, there is a new tab for the payments to be registered by the coordinator.
The tab aims to view these payment details:
Payments from PRIMA to the coordinator (will appear in the table as partner# 0, in the first row)
Payments from the coordinator to the partners (including the coordinator)
Payments Table
In this table, you will see the following columns:
Partner Number: The number of all partners in the partners’ list.
Partner Country: The country of all the partners.
Partner Name: The abbreviation of all the partners.
Concepts:
The types of concepts are divided to 4 categories:
Pre-financing payment: The payment done by the coordinator to the partner
organization in the beginning of the project. This category only applies if the initial 60% is paid in one instalment.
Interim payment: The payment done by the coordinator to the partner organization during mid-term reporting. This category only applies if the initial 60% was paid in one instalment and the additional 30% is received in a unique instalment.
Payment of the balance: The payment done by the coordinator to the partner at the end of the project.
Other payment: Other payments done by the coordinator to the partner organization
throughout the project only if not received the initial 60% and the following second 30% in two single instalments. Please note that there can be many “Other Payment” entries on the MEL Platform, as the coordinator can make various number of payments to the
partners.
Amount: The amount of payment with Euros and cents format. (E.g. the value 88,50 means 88 euros and 50 cents).
Percentage: The percentage is calculated automatically, and gives the percentage of that payment amount, to the “Maximum PRIMA Contribution” amount in the “Planning” tab.
Date: The date when the coordinator has done the payment.
Proof of payment: The proof of payment in PDF format, uploaded by the coordinator.
Confirmation year: Each year in January, the coordinator needs to “Confirm” the
payments done for that year. Please refer to “Confirmations” section in this document for more information. Once the confirmation is done, if any previous year is not confirmed, it/they will be automatically autoconfirmed.
Edit payment: There are two possible actions after a payment is added.
Edit button: Opens the details of an already saved payment and enables the coordinator to edit the already added payment. The coordinator can change the concept, amount of payment, date of the payment and the file uploaded with that payment.
Delete button: Deletes that payment information row from the “Payments” table.
Total payments: The sum value of introduced payments added for each partner, the total amount of the payments received by each partner.
Total percentage: The percentage of all introduced payments for each partner, to the “Maximum PRIMA Contribution” amount introduced in the “Planning” tab.
Actions: There is one button “New Payment”, where the coordinator will click to add payments for the partners.
Information on the “Payments” table
The “Payments” table includes the same order of the partners. Nevertheless, the first row and the last row of the “Payments” table is different.
First Row of the “Payments” table: Are to enter the payments from PRIMA to the coordinator for the whole consortium.
When the coordinator clicks on “Add Payments” button, the window will appear:
Concept: Concepts available here are:
"Pre-financing"
"Interim payment"
"Payment of the balance"
Note: Multiple payments with the same concept can be added.
Amount: A positive numeric value should be entered.
Note: If the concept is selected as "Payment of the balance", the amount can be a negative numeric value.
Date: The date of the payment.
Note: MEL will automatically order the payments in the table according to the date, the payment done in earlier date.
Proof of payment: A pdf containing the copy of the transfer has to be uploaded.
How to add Payments Step by Step Guide
Please follow Planning> Project> Manage buttons.
Please click on the “Budget” tab, and you will be directed to the “Budget” section of your project.
Please click on “Payments” tab.
Here, you will see the list of partners, in the same order as in the planning tab.
There are differences in the “Payments” tab:
Partner 0:
Payments done by PRIMA to the coordinator for the whole consortium.
Partner 1:
Amount received by Prima that corresponds to the coordinator.
Rest of partners:
Payments done from the coordinator to each partner.
Last row of “Payments” table:
The last row of “Payments” table shows the summary of the status of the payments recorded.
To add a payment, please click on “New Payment” button on the right side of the partner that you would like to add payments.
Clicking on “New Payment” button will open a window to insert the payment details, including selection of concept of the payment, amount, the date of the payment and proof of payment.
The concept of the payment will have the following drop-down options:
Please note that you can add payments. Pre-financing payment, interim payment and payment of the balance concepts can be used only once per partner. There is no limit to the number of “Other Payment” concept that you can add for the partners.
Please note that “Other Payment” will not be available for partner 0 and will be greyed out .
After starting to add the payments:
There will be a summary text showing you the difference between received payments and the distributed payments.
If the distributed amounts are higher than the received payments, this summary will show a negative value:
Confirmations
Each year, in January, a notification email will be sent to the coordinators as a reminder to fill-in the payments tab for the previous year and confirm it to PRIMA. The first reminder email will be sent on the 2nd of January and another reminder on the 21st of January.
For 2024, that you will receive the first email during February.
Important: before clicking on the “Confirmations” section, make sure that all the payments done
of the previous years are well introduced and that the distributed amount is correct.
The coordinator can click on the “Confirmations” section on the top of the “Budget” tabs.
Clicking on this section will open a window, which will show the available years of the project that should be confirmed:
Upon clicking on the year, you would like to confirm, a window appears asking if you would like to confirm the payments done up to that year.
After clicking on “OK” button, you will see that the confirmation is recorded, with the information
indicating the person confirming, and the time of confirmation:
Note: The system will allow confirming payments only during January, with the exception of 2024, for the previous year, and the system will close it afterwards. For confirming after this date, PRIMA Financial Team will have to allow you.
Auto-Confirmations
Confirming the payments of a year will auto-confirm all payments recorded for the previous years:
After a year has been confirmed or auto-confirmed, it is not possible to add a payment for this year.
If you would like to add a payment that belongs to a year that has already been confirmed, please contact PRIMA Financial Team.
Export Function
The “Export” button located on the top right corner of the table exports the information in the table in Excel format.
The downloaded Excel file has the columns below, and it is possible to click on the cells under “Proof of Payment”. Clicking here will direct to MEL, where you can download the proof of payment.
Principles & Logic of “Payments” Module
Proof of payment uploading:
When the coordinator will add “Payments” information for Partner 0, (the payments from PRIMA to the coordinator) the system will ask the proof of payment document mandatory to upload.
When the coordinator will add “Payments” information for Partner 1, (the share the coordinator takes for himself, uploading a proof of payment document is not mandatory.
When the coordinator will add “Payments” information for Partner 2 onwards, it is mandatory to upload the proof of payment.
Limit & Rules on Payment Dates:
-The earliest date to add a payment is one month before the project starting date.
The latest date to add a payment is up to 2 years after the project ending (extended date if the project is extended.)
Auto-confirmation Rule:
The system confirms the previous years upon manually confirming a year.
For example, for the year 2021 will be automatically confirmed, if 2022 is confirmed. The system will also show when the confirmation was made.
"2021 - Auto Confirmed by confirming the year 2022 on 2024-01-15 16:25:45 GMT"
Modifying a payment within a confirmed year:
The system blocks the payments in the confirmed years unless the year is amended. Showing the following message when saving:
"Cannot save, the payments for the year 2022 are confirmed. Please contact PRIMA Financial Team for assistance.”
Value of “Payment”:
The added payments should be a positive value with the exception of "Payment of the balance".
Notes:
In case of any questions, please contact mel-support@cgiar.org or PRIMA Technical Support Specialist, Elvin Carol Kohen E.Kohen@cgiar.org.