Wasn’t the tolerance level 25% at some point?
No. You may be confusing report accuracy with changes in committed effort. Depending on a sponsor’s guidelines, they may allow a PI to reduce an effort commitment by up to 25%. This is a revision of budgeted effort – either sponsor-funded or cost-shared effort. Ex: A PI commits a 15% level of effort on his project. 25% of 15% is 4%, so the PI may be allowed to revise his effort by 4 percentage points without prior approval. (i.e. he could go as low as 11% without written permission). This is a change in effort as budgeted only.
