Keeping Account
Confirm the transfer of funds from your sponsor and the Federal Work Study Program, when relevant, to your student internship program (SIP) account. Carefully track your expenses. If you do not have the infrastructure to support the administration of internship funds—that is, you do not have the capacity to set up an account at your institution—then your sponsor may have to pay expenses directly. This is not ideal, especially if you are not able to keep a detailed spending record, which is crucial to building institutional memory and being able to assess trends over multiple program cycles.
By administering the internship funds, you are also better able to ensure that you receive the full amount originally pledged whereas funds left in sponsors' accounts will remain there if not expended during the internship period. If there is a budget surplus, funds in your program's account could be applied toward extending the project. This is not necessarily the case with funds left in external accounts.
The most important benefit of establishing and managing your own internship project accounts is that it will minimize extra work for your sponsoring departments and reduce the risk of miscommunications and various other kinds of administrative problems.