Permanent Equipment for Budgeting

The University definition for permanent equipment is:

Major Equipment

A non-expendable item having a useful life of two or more years that costs $2,000 or more per unit including delivery and installation. No overhead is assessed.

Minor Equipment

Items which have a unit cost under $2,000. These items are subject to overhead.

R & D Fabrication - Component Parts

Component parts costing less than $2,000 needed to complete the construction of a special purpose apparatus or system. The following conditions must be met:

1. The apparatus or system cannot function without the component parts.

2. The component part is NOT a self contained, or add on enhancement to an existing item of equipment. Examples of self contained components are test equipment, power hand tools, computer printers, monitors, disk drives, microscope lenses, etc. (However, when items such as these are purchased as a complete system on a single purchase order, they may be coded as permanent equipment.)

3. The name of the item of the equipment to which the component part(s) belongs must be clearly identified in the proposal and on any subsequent purchase order.

If any item does not meet the criteria listed above, it should appear under the supplies category of the proposal budget. This includes replacement parts for large items of equipment already capitalized by the University.

General Purpose Equipment

General purpose equipment is unallowable unless the item is used exclusively in the actual conduct of research. For example, a refrigerator is unallowable unless it is used to store samples only. It would have to be included in the budget and sufficiently justified.