Joint Appointment (JA) program is in place between Tufts University and Tufts Medical Center (TMC). When an employee of one institution is contributing measureable intellectual effort to a sponsored project at the other institution, the joint appointment mechanism rather than a subaward mechanism is used to transfer commensurate salary support between entities when all of the following conditions are met:

• Individuals on the JA must be salaried and employed at the level of .7 FTE – 1.0 FTE – hourly employees are excluded from the JA Program.
• JA recipient is committing measurable effort to a sponsored project ≤ 25%. (Exceptions: T32 fellows & CTSI support may be less than 25%).
• No project-related costs other than salary/fringe support are associated with the effort.
• The JA Period of Performance must be executed within the Tufts University Fiscal Year (July-June), e.g. cannot extend beyond June 30 for any given period of support.
• Fringe is reimbursed based on the Tufts University sponsored project fringe rate, regardless of funding source. The sole exception is a joint appointment on an NIH Training grant (T32), which only allows reimbursement of health fees.  In this situation, the health fees of the institution providing the support are applied.
• There is no reimbursement for overtime or termination pay.
• If an individual uses earned time off during the period of joint appointment, the joint appointment will be paid in accordance with the recipient entity’s paid time off policy.
• JA charges for past months are posted to the award/DeptID accounts in the month when they are processed.  The system does not allow for retroactive postings to previous accounting periods.

Effort on a project in excess of 25% and/or involvement requiring expense coverage other than salary/ fringe, requires the execution of a subaward/subcontract. Effort on Tufts CTSI award cannot be paid via an invoice regardless of the effort threshold.

Teaching and service efforts, as well as projects that are not funded by extramural funds do not use the JA mechanism and are paid upon receipt of an invoice from the department. A sample invoice template is available here. We recommend that the check with a deposit slip would be sent to the department to ensure that the DeptID on the check is correct prior to forwarding to the Bursar’s office for deposit.

Requesting a Joint Appointment

• Initiate the JA process by submitting a request through eServe. Then send a signed Joint Appointment Support Form to  TSS in order to change the employee’s profile to include the JA line. Post-Award is not able to complete this function in the HR system. The form I-9 must be submitted for TMC employees new to the JA process or rehired after termination.
• After TSS processes the JA request on their end, the signed Joint Appointment Support Form accompanied with the signed PAF is forwarded to Post-Award at postaward@tufts.edu for the manual payroll entry processing in the General Ledger.

Requests sent from Tufts University email address will receive an automated notification from postaward@tufts.edu with the case number that can be checked at any time for case status updates. All requesters will receive a confirmation when the case has been processed.

Submitting the JA in eServe Workforce Portal

Labor Distribution:  DeptId: U000001
Percentage:  0%

The JA accounts are used for processing of the paperwork:

JA1135: Tufts Employee working at TMC
JA1136: Tufts Employee working at TMCPO
JA2127: TMC Employee working at Tufts University
JA2128: TMCPO  Employee working at Tufts University

It is helpful to provide a short description of the action in the comment/remark section of both the JA form and the PAF. Note the JA DeptID and the percent effort.

• Example 1: Professor XYZ is a Tufts University Employee on JA1135 & DeptID M123456. TMC will reimburse Tufts University for 10% effort supporting XXX project.
• Example 2: Doctor MPH is a TMC Employee on JA2127 & Tufts University will reimburse TMC for 10% effort for time supporting XXX project.