Researchers can raise "non-travel cash advances" from their research project accounts. Cash advances can only be paid to academic staff, i.e. not to PhD students etc. If you received a Small Project Grant as a PhD student, your supervisor must raise the advance under his/her name.

Raising a cash advance

To raise an advance, contact your local school admin with the following information:

• Name
• UNSW Staff ID
• Reason for the advance (e.g. "Experiment payments - <Name of the experiment to be conducted>")
• Research account to be debited (most importantly the project code starting with either "PS" or "RM", ff you have the full chartfield (fund and dept id) include this information as well)
• Total amount requested
• Settlement date (should not be further than 90 days from the date the cash advance was requested)

Your local admin person will then contact Accounts Payable at the Chancellery in order to initiate the cash advance. You can request a cashable cheque or a transfer to your personal bank account. The latter is faster and easier. If a cheque is requested, the Chancellery finance unit will draft a negotiable cheque in the amount of the request and will notify you via telephone when it is ready to be picked up at the Cashier office. The cheque will be payable in cash at a specific branch of ANZ Bank. If you require small change for participant payments, it is recommended that you fax this branch a day in advance of stopping in to cash the cheque, and advise them of the denominations you will require.

Note that you bear responsibility for the safekeeping of the cash that is disbursed to you. If at acquittal time the total amount of human-subjects payments plus cash left over is less than the amount disbursed to you, then you must personally supply the deficit. The lab provides a safe in the lab admin room for storing cash.

Acquittal

During your experiments you collect receipts from the human subjects when paying them in cash. You are strongly encouraged to use the attached receipt template, which is accepted by Accounts Payable.

Receipts should be grouped by session and scanned to PDF. Additionally you fill in a settlement form like the one shown below, listing all individual payments. To acquit the advance, you provide your local admin with the receipt PDFs and the settlement form. If there is remaining cash, your admin will give you a L20 form which you use to pay back the remaining cash to your research account at the Cashier office in the Chancellery. Give the L20 receipt slip to your admin.

Your admin will then send off all acquittal documents to Accounts Payable. After they have accepted all documents and confirmed acquittal, you may destroy the original cash receipts as confidential waste. However, as all documents relating to human-subjects research, the PDF receipts have to be stored electronically for a period of 7 years.

Human-subjects payment summary/settlement form template

Notes:

• Transaction date should be the date of the session (the date of the payment, respectively).
• Description of Expense should be within 30 characters.
• Total amount should be the amount paid to the subject.
• GST should be always "$0.00".
• GST EXEMPT should be always "Yes - code FRAO".
• For me, the account code was always "6671", in any project. Don't ask me why.

Downloads

• Receipt template
• Settlement form (xls)