Q: Why does CTS-IT charge for REDCap projects?
While some of the costs for running the UF CTSI REDCap system are paid by grant funding, a large portion of those costs are not covered by funds designated for REDCap support. Charging a modest fee for each project each year is one way to generate some income to offset the costs CTS-IT incurs running REDCap for the CTSI.
The payments CTS-IT receives for running the REDCap service for the University of Florida also create data points to prove to funding agencies, both inside and outside UF, that the service has value to UF researchers. Proving value helps CTS-IT justify the funds it receives and make a case for receiving more grant funding, be it direct or indirect.
The financial support the REDCap service receives will assure its continued availability as a research tool at UF and allow improvements to the service to keep UF competitive with its peer research institutions.
Q: Why is CTS-IT changing the REDCap Project Billing policy?
The CTSI fiscal team asked CTS-IT to start billing after the service was provided. At the same time, the CTSI offered to handle some of the billing processes previously done only by CTS-IT. Those requests created an opportunity for the CTS-IT to rework the process.
CTS-IT also wanted to improve the process of identifying unwanted and abandoned projects.
Q: When does the new policy go into effect?
CTS-IT is revising the billing policy for Fiscal Year 22-23.
Q: What is the new price?
The remains $100/per project per year as it has been since 7/1/2018
Q: Are the REDCap invoices changing?
Yes, they are changing a great deal. The CTSI’s Service Billing Team will be managing the invoicing starting FY22-23. CTS-IT will tell the Service Billing Team who needs to be invoiced for which projects. The Service Billing Team will add the REDCap charges to the billing process it already runs for the CTSI. You will receive an invoice from CTSI that may have multiple service lines; REDCap will be one of those services you may be billed for.
Q: When will I see the invoice for my projects?
To ease the burden of charging for so many REDCap projects, the charges will be staggered based on the date the project was created. If a project was created in July and it is at least one year old, it will appear on the August 1st invoice. Projects created in August get invoiced September 1st, and so on. In short, each project gets invoiced shortly after its birthday each year.
Q: Can I see what I am about to be invoiced for?
Yes, we will send a notification of pending charges for your REDCap projects a month before the invoices are sent. We hope this affords you time to export any data and project designs for projects you no longer need so you can safely delete those projects. If you delete the projects before the 1st of the month, when the invoicing data is generated, you will not be invoiced for those deleted projects.
Q: How can I see when my projects were created?
If you have Project Design & Setup user rights, you can see the date your project was created on the Project Revision History page.
Q: Can I pay for all of my projects at once?
CTS-IT does not have a facility to group project charges together at this time.
Q: What happens if I don’t pay for a REDCap project?
If a project is not paid within 90 days, the project will be automatically sequestered. This will take the project offline. It will also take any open surveys offline. No one will be able to access the project in any way.
If the project remains unpaid for an entire year, the project will be automatically deleted.
Q: Can a project be unsequestered?
CTS-IT is happy to unsequester any project. Note that the project will be re-sequestered at the end of the month if its annual charge is not paid.
Q: Can a project be undeleted?
On the REDCap production system, deleted projects can be undeleted up to 1 year from the date of deletion. The process is quite simple for one of the REDCap Admins to do and it brings 100% of the project back in moments.
One year after deletion, a deleted project is completely purged from the REDCap system. At that point it can only be restored from disaster-recovery (DR) backups. As the DR system is not designed for restoring single projects, the process is slow and expensive.
CTS-IT charges customers the customer hourly rate to recover REDCap projects from the DR backups.
Q: What about unpaid invoices from FY20-21 and earlier?
The plan is to forgive those invoices. Integrating them into the new system is difficult and it is probably more trouble than it is worth. The new system is designed to address unpaid invoices going forward. It will automatically prove the project has value to someone or prove that it no longer has value to anyone.