Starting in May 2020 American Heart Association (AHA) announced that it would be transitioning its proposal/award management portal from their own proprietary portal Grants@Heart to Proposal Central. As such, future reporting will need to be submitted in Proposal Central.

For financial reports for research awards, this transition presented some challenges to our existing internal workflow submission process as Proposal Central requires dual electronic signatures from both the named Principal Investigator (PI) & our institutional Fiscal Officer (Research: Grants & Contracts- RGC Operations) before the report can be sent to the sponsor.

RAS Post-Award is working in collaboration with RGC Operations to ensure PI’s have their own user accounts setup for Proposal Central. Upon financial report submission to RGC by RAS via Salesforce, RGC will enter the report into the portal and sign digitally. The assigned RGC Financial Manager will alert designated RAS staff that the report is ready for final review & e-signature by the PI. Once the PI’s e-signature is saved in Proposal Central & RGC is notified, RGC will submit the report to the sponsor in Proposal Central. Subsequently, RGC will notify appropriate parties that the report has been successfully submitted.

If PI’s encounter issues where the financial report is not available for their signature in Proposal Central or have questions about the new submission process, they should liaison with their RAS Post-Award contact for further assistance.