Organise access rights and roles

All Beneficiaries need access rights in order to prepare their grant data in the system and sign the legal documents (declarations of honour, Grant Agreements and Accession Forms). The contact persons of each organisation indicated in the proposal will automatically receive access rights during grant preparation:

In addition, if your organisation has already been validated, the LEAR will normally also already have been appointed.
Other persons and roles (especially LSIGNs and FSIGNs) will have to be appointed first by the LEAR ( My Organisations > Click the three dots button > Edit Organisation Roles > Add Roles ) and then assigned to the project by the CoCos and PaCos ( My Projects > Click the three dots button > Project Consortium > Edit Roles ).

The minimum setup of roles that you need to prepare and conclude the Grant Agreement are the following:

• for the Coordinator:
  • Primary Coordinator Contact (PCoCo) — already appointed
  • Legal Entity Appointed Representative (LEAR)
  • Project Legal Signatory (PLSIGN)
• for other Beneficiaries:
  • Participant Contact (PaCo)
  • Legal Entity Appointed Representative (LEAR)
  • Project Legal Signatory (PLSIGN).

The same person can fulfill several or all of the above roles.

 Our system allows for only one signature on your side. If your internal rules require several signatories, you must give an internal mandate to one of them and ensure that the electronic signature in our system is executed only after all the necessary internal authorisations were given. These authorisations must be collected, stored and kept by you in line with your usual management practices (usually paper-based) so that they can be provided to us in case of EU controls, checks or audits.

More details about nomination are in the Roles and access rights section.

Make sure all participants are registered and validated (PIC)

All Beneficiaries and Affiliated Entities must be registered and validated in time for grant signature (see section on Registration and validation of your organisation).

Associated Partners need to be only registered (have a PIC); no validation is needed, because they will not receive any grant money.

Prepare and sign a consortium agreement (always recommended; in many cases mandatory)

Consortium agreements are mandatory for many EU programmes. But even if they are not, it is highly recommended to have arrangements in place to cover consortium-internal issues that may arise during the project (e.g. decision-making procedures, resolve conflicts, safeguard intellectual property rights, etc.) The consortium agreement should be signed before the Grant Agreement. For details, see AGA — Annotated Grant Agreement, art 7 and the How to establish your H2020 consortium agreement .

Enter the structured information into the system (Part A of the DoA)

Go to My Projects > Click the three dots button > Manage Project > Proposal Management & Grant Preparation > Grant agreement data preparation and transfer the information from your application form (Part B) to the Work Packages, Deliverables, Milestones and Critical Risks screens.

You can move work packages up and down by drag & drop to position them in the order of your preference. When a work package is moved to a new position, the numbering of WPs (and also the relative numbering of deliverables) is automatically adapted.

Enter the other grant data into the system

a) Set the project starting date

Set the date on which the project is to start (starting date of the action) on the Project Summary screen.

The options may vary depending on programme and type of action (see call conditions), but generally there are 2 options:

• the first day of the month after entry into force (signature by EU) — default option
• if needed, a fixed starting date may be agreed — this should be the first day of a month and normally after grant signature (unless authorised otherwise by the Granting Authority).

 If you enter a fixed starting date, you will be asked to justify your choice. If you chose a starting date before grant signature, you must explain why your project requires this. Please note that the starting date can normally NOT be before the date on which your application was submitted (unless explicitly allowed in the call conditions). Please also note that any project activities taking place before grant signature bear the risk that the grant may finally not be signed.

b) Check the project reporting periods

The reporting periods will be pre-filled for each call on the Reporting Periods screen.

To minimise administrative burden for you, we will choose the smallest possible number of reporting periods. On average, most programmes tend to have reporting periods between 12 and 18 months.

c) Check the prefinancing for the project

The standard prefinancing percentage will be pre-filled for each call on the Project Financial Information screen.

The final prefinancing amount for each project will however be fixed only later, once the budgetary information is completed from your side and the Granting Authority has examined the results from the financial capacity assessment (see section Financial capacity assessment). The prefinancing may be lowered in case of low financial capacity.

d) Complete the legal and administrative information for the participants

Fill in the missing information for each participant on the Partner Summary screen and complete the Affiliated Entities and Associated Partner screens.

e) Define the budgets for the participants

Fill in the budget for each participant on the Partner Financial Information screens.

Make sure the budget details match the proposal and the GAP invitation letter (and the detailed budget table, if required).

f) Provide the banking details for the Coordinator

Select the bank account to be used for payments from the drop down menu on the Coordinator's Bank Account screen.

 If your preferred bank account is not listed, you must ask your LEAR to add the bank account in the Participant Register ( My Organisations > Click the three dots button > Modify Organisation ). Once the new bank account has been validated (this may take a few days), it will appear in the drop down menu and you will be able to select it.

g) Enter other information as prompted

Upload Part B of the description of the action (DoA)

Upload Part B on the Documents screen. Follow the instructions from Portal Reference Documents.

Sign the declarations of honour (DoH)

For each Beneficiary, the PLSIGN must sign a declaration of honour (DoH) directly in the system (grant declaration).

Affiliated entities also need to sign a DoH. For them, the responsible Beneficiary must download the template from Portal Reference Documents, ask each entity to complete and sign it (blue-ink), then upload the scanned DoHs for their linked third parties.

Joint and several liability of Affiliated Entities (if required)

If the Granting Authority requires joint and several liability of an Affiliated Entity, the declaration on joint and several liability must be submitted together with the Accession Form.

The Beneficiary must download the form prepared by the system, ask the Affiliated Entity to sign it (blue-ink) and upload the scanned declaration when signing the Accession Form.

For more details, see AGA — Annotated Grant Agreement, art 22 .

Prefinancing guarantee (if required)

If the Granting Authority requires a prefinancing guarantee, you need to obtain this from a bank or approved financial institution (using the template available on Portal Reference Documents), send a scanned copy through Portal Formal Notifications ( My Projects > Click the three dots button > Manage Project > Launch new interaction with the EU > Formal Notification ) and the original by registered post with proof of delivery to the mail address of the service responsible for your grant.

For more details, see AGA — Annotated Grant Agreement, art 23 .

Submit grant preparation to the Granting Authority

Assessment by the Granting Authority and finalisation of GA data

The Project Officer will enter the EU grant preparation data (GA options, etc.) and check the data submitted by the consortium. If needed, they will send back the session to the consortium for changes/addition information (ping-pong).