Kuali Research – Office of Sponsored Programs

Kuali Research (KR) is the software system used by CSU in support of proposal, award, and subaward management. KR addresses the full sponsored projects lifecycle, providing a single resource for all proposal and award information, and allows for complex workflow as part of the proposal review and approval process. Together with the Kuali Financial System (KFS), KR provides award management from development to closeout.

Links & Tools

Kuali Research Production environment (the Real World)
Department Contacts List and KR PD Stakeholders
Sub-recipient Object Code Calculation Tool
Person-month to Percent Effort Conversion Tool
CSU Financial Aid website: Tuition & Fees

Training

Small group (4 people) or one-on-one training and assistance can be provided by appointment. Contact Chris Carsten to coordinate.

CSU Modules for Sponsored Programs

Kuali Research Proposal Development (KR PD): KR PD allows users to construct and route a proposal and related budget information for department, college, and OSP review, approval, and submission.

Kuali Research Institutional Proposal (KR IP): Summary data of all proposals that have been reviewed and approved by OSP is contained within the KR PD Institutional Proposal (IP) module. An IP record is created by OSP from the KR PD record. IP records are searchable by unique IP#s and information is reportable by requested budget, start and end dates, and sponsor information. Once a proposal is funded, IP data is linked to the existing award.

Kuali Research Negotiations: Incoming new awards and modifications for existing awards are tracked using the Negotiations module from receipt in OSP through setup of a new award/account or modification of an existing award/account. OSP also uses Negotiations to track activities related to ‘unfunded’ agreement types such as MTAs, NDAs, Data Use Agreements, etc., that are managed through OSP.

Kuali Research Award (KR Award): Funded proposals are managed from award setup to project closeout in the KR Award module. A unique award record is set up to record obligated funding, payment terms, sponsor terms & conditions, and reporting requirements. Award information, department administrator, and budget information are fed to KFS to create the sponsored project account, where expenditures are managed.

Kuali Research Subaward: The Subaward module contains records of agreements with external organizations to perform a portion of the work under a sponsored award and facilitates CSU’s subrecipient monitoring responsibilities.

KR PD Access & Stakeholder Assistance

KR PD Production Environment: Clicking here will open the Kuali landing page in a new tab. This application requires Shibboleth authentication with a CSU NetID login. Choose the Research Home tile to get to the Kuali Research Dashboard. Use Common Tasks in the Research Home left navigation menu to go to the page where the option to Create Proposal is located.

Kuali Research is a web-based application that requires a current version of a supported browser application to work as intended.
– Windows: Chrome, Edge, or Firefox browsers are supported. Internet Explorer is not supported.
– Mac: Safari and Chrome browsers are supported.

Pop-ups must be allowed for functionality to work properly.

Department Contacts List and KR PD Stakeholders: Representatives of CSU’s colleges who participate in decision-making about KR PD functionality and serve as college-level resources for department administrators regarding use of KR PD.

KR Quick Guides

Reference
Proposal Types – Definitions and Use Cases, UPDATED SEP 2025
Activity Types, UPDATED September 2023
Kuali Research Cloud Navigation, UPDATED March 2024

Proposal
Creating a Proposal Record (Updated May 2022)
Add Principal Investigator
PI Certification (includes instructions for during routing and before routing)
Attachments
Adding Subrecipients (includes budgeting instructions)
Animal, Human, Biosafety Compliance Entry
Assign Proposal Access Roles (with table of roles/descriptions)
Using ‘Send Notifications’ in KR PD

Proposal Hierarchy
Basics

Budget
Creating a Budget Version
Modify Budget Rates
Change Budget Settings
Personnel Budgeting – Appointment Type
Personnel Budgeting – Groups
Cost-share Budgeting
Budgeting Salary Cap or 1% minimum effort
Using Budget-SoW Update proposal type

Navigation, Workflow, Approvals
Basic Navigation
Pre-Proposal with Detailed Budget (new Feb 2025)
Approval Routing (updated Feb 2025)
Pessimistic Lock

KR PD Training

KR PD Training Environment – This link will open the new Kuali cloud SBX (sandbox/training) environment. Choose Research Home to navigate to the Sponsored Programs modules. Access requires Shibboleth (CSU eID login) and DUO 2fa authentication. Chrome and Firefox browsers are recommended.