The KC budget tool automatically ‘groups’ assigned personnel by cost object; meaning that if you add two project persons as Summer Faculty, for example, three rows, one for each person, appear in a cost object group of the same name. Each person will have their own line with a detail button, but the cost object group has a single Details & Rates maintenance window. Any edits in the cost object group affects all the persons in that group. Thus the Group tool is used to override the default object code grouping and used for two (2) distinct purposes:
1. To isolate one project person so that they will not be automatically grouped to the default object code group so you can edit the Details and Rates for only that person. A common scenario is to override the budget category, such as to make a Postdoctoral Staff person appear in the Senior Personnel section on S2S Budget forms.
2. To collect added personnel in different object codes to a designated group so that edits to the Details and Rates will affect all the project personnel in that group. This could be used to designate the group as all Off-Campus Rate by unchecking the ‘on campus’ checkbox for an on-campus rate cost object.