FISCAL ADMINISTRATORS MEETING October 14, 2009 Fiscal Administrators Meeting South Meeting Room, Newcomb Hall Opening Comments – Steve Kimata · Federal Stimulus Funding
Reporting – 1st upload to Federal Government last week…Sharon
Boyd stated that there were 130 contracts submitted, 124 direct, 6 subs. She thanked everyone for their
assistance and stated that this process will become more difficult and the
volume will grow. · Endowment Administrative
Fee – we will be executing the transfer this month hopefully, if not,
will be in November. Virginia Film Festival
– Judy McPeak · “Funny Business” –
theme of Festival this year. · Will be held November
5–8. · 80 films on 6 screens · Discounts for faculty
and staff for tickets over $6.50 · Will feature two “Silent
Films” · Family Day on Saturday,
November 7th · See website for more
information at http://www.vafilm.com/press-materials/ UHR Compliance and
Immigration Services – Timothy White
Need
to start process 8 months in advance USDOL: ·
The
required Labor Condition Application
(LCA), previously approved and issued instantaneously, effective July 1, 2009, is approved and issued
through the U.S. Department of Labor.
It is expected that such approvals will take at least seven (7) days. ·
Additionally,
effective January 1, 2010, all prevailing
wage determinations (an element of the LCA), currently sourced
instantaneously, are required to be processed through the U.S. Department of
Labor Chicago. It is expected that
issuance of a prevailing wage by USDOL will take thirty (30) days. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR H-1B VISA
PROCESSING AT UVA? ·
Submit H-1B Application Materials Early: These changes effectively add 40 days
to H-1B processing times. This
includes cases that are premium processed, as well as regular processing. ·
With
USCIS processing times for regular
H-1B petitions averaging between 3-5 months , along with the added USDOL
processing times above, it is recommended that H-1B petitions submitted for regular processing be submitted as
early as 8 months in advance. ·
For
H-1B cases that will be premium
processed with USCIS (15 calendar days processing time), it is recommended
that cases be submitted 4 months in advance. ·
Departments
should be certain to submit information in H-1B packet describing the minimum requirements for the
position. The position
requirements guide DOL in making a wage determination. POTENTIAL ISSUES FACING DEPARTMENTS AS A
RESULT OF NEW DOL REQUIREMENTS: ·
Prevailing
Wage Determination could return from USDOL with wage rate higher than was
offered by department for position. ·
Department
offer letter might need to be amended with higher wage information. ·
LCA
could be denied, need to be resubmitted. UHR – Sue Haas Take 5 for Five – Over the next
five months five BIG changes are coming for U.Va. employees. Please see our website for
details: http://www.hrs.virginia.edu/news/postings/take5.html
We have processed the
first two biweekly payrolls, they went very well…. · First – only had 9
that were not submitted, 2 not approved and 1 rejected out of all! · Second – had 11
that were not submitted, 6 not approved and 1 rejected Note: Benefit/Wellness Fair will be on
November 12, 9:00 am to 2:00 pm in the Newcomb Hall Ballroom Procurement Services Terry Butler The new Restructured Travel Policy is
in the final stages. We hope to roll
out in December or January. We are still following current State
rates. Please note that lodging
and meal rates have changed.
Incidentals are now $5.00 instead of $3.00. A new expenditure type will be coming
soon; we will be replacing the two current ones, Meals, Business (Non-Travel) and Travel, Business Meal, with Business Meals. Reminder – If you need to call a vendor to add
to a PO or change it, please complete a new PO, the vendor gets short paid when
this is not done. An email went out to vendors telling
them to switch to electronic payment, or they will be charged for paper
checks. The deadline will be in
the next couple of months. We will
not charge foreign vendors, individuals, students or parents. Dolores Hildebrand Check out the Hotel Certificates (free
program) on our website, usually there toward the middle of the month. You must request and receive them
before making reservations. New
forms on our website 1
P-cared dispute form – used to
dispute charge on purchasing card 2
Request to Prepayment for first night
lodging form. Must fill out form in order for Procurement to lift the
lodging restriction on your card for this one-time charge. Approved
from the State – P-card Reconciliations may be signed off by Award
managers, Project managers or supervisor. These people must be correct in
Oracle, we will verify. Updates to our website will be made soon to reflect
this. Treasury Operations – Jim Matteo · 4 New Treasury Policies – see website at http://www.virginia.edu/treasury/ · Moved to new location – 2400 Old Ivy Road · Hired new employee – Gene Crouch from Accounting
Services Accounting Services – Tommye Arnold · We will be working on cleaning up cash balance reports over
the next three months. Some
departments may be hearing from her with questions. · The Professional Development Program will be put on hold at
this time for budget cut purposes.
We will be revamping the Reconciliations class. ISDS – Shy Hicks · Ex Employee GL Approvers We are
finding some GL users with approvers that have left the university. Obviously this is not good and it
violates all internal control rules.
Please check each person in your department that has a GL responsibility
and confirm that their approver is someone who actually works at the
university, preferably in the school where the user works. Seriously, not having the correct
approver on GL journals is an audit violation and can result in a audit comment
which can jeopardize our status as
a restructured institution. So
please confirm these approvers as soon as possible. You can run the IS.GL Approval Hierarchy report to see who
is approving journals. · Project/Award Key Member Updates Another
internal control problem is keeping the project and award manager key members
updated. Again, we are seeing some
key members on projects and awards that have left the university. If you find more than 50 occurrences of
this on projects or awards, we can run a script to update these for you. If it’s less than 50, you can do it
faster than we can. But,
regardless of the number, please review these regularly. And the
good news is that Financial Administration and ISDS are working together to
implement a subsystem where you can review and update these fields on-line
without going into the Integrated System.
You will hear more about that at a future meeting but it will be much
more efficient than the current process. · Integrated System Award
Budget Workflow Advantages ✔ Linked awards and
projects remain active while new PTA linkage is in workflow. This should resolve most of the issues
with labor going to labor suspense projects. ✔ The PTA is not linked
until the combination is approved and baselined. ✔ If the linkage is
rejected, the funding and the budget can be deleted. ✔ Users cannot spend until
the budget is approved and the award is baselined. ✔ When the linkage is
approved by the UVA Workflow Approver, baselining automatically starts. This eliminates the step of clicking
the Baseline button. ✔ When a user creates a
new installment or modifies an existing installment and saves, the Award
Manager receives a notification showing the installment amount. ✔ When a user modifies an
installment, funding, or a budget on an existing PTA and clicks the Submit
button, baselining is automatically started and the user receives a
notification when baselining is complete.
The next Fiscal Administrators meeting
is scheduled for Wednesday, November 18, 2009, at 10:00 am in the South Meeting
Room, Newcomb Hall. |
E-mail comments to: Comptroller@Virginia.edu |