An auditor's certificate required when a beneficiary claims above a threshold of actual costs, commonly €430,000.
A Certificate on the Financial Statements is an independent auditor's report on the costs a beneficiary has claimed. It is required from each beneficiary whose claimed contribution reaches a threshold (commonly €430,000 of actual and unit costs) and it is submitted with the FINAL report rather than at each period.
The threshold is per beneficiary, not per project. In a consortium of ten, three partners may need certificates and seven may not, and each is judged on its own total across the whole project. Partners routinely fail to notice they crossed the line until the final report is being assembled.
The auditor works to a prescribed procedure with specified findings rather than giving a general opinion. They test samples of personnel costs, time records, procurement and other categories, and they report what they found against a fixed template. It is not a friendly review; a qualified certificate is a signal to the Commission to look harder.
The cost of the certificate is itself an eligible cost, so budget it (a few thousand euros per partner) at proposal stage rather than discovering it in the final months when there is no budget line to put it against.
Its real function is preventive. Beneficiaries that assemble the evidence as they go pass without drama; those that reconstruct three years of time records for the auditor find the problems then rather than at a Commission audit two years later, which is the cheaper of the two moments to find them.
| Actual costs | The default costing method: you charge what you really spent and prove it. | |
| Eligible costs | Costs that may be charged to the project: actually incurred, during the project, necessary, identifiable and recorded in your accounts. | |
| Personnel costs | The cost of your own staff's time on the project, usually the largest line in the budget. | |
| Reporting period | A block of project time (often 12 or 18 months) at the end of which you report technically and financially. |
Also mentioned under Single audit.
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Check my fit
