Down To | General Ledger | Funds Management | Labor Distribution |
               | Accounts Receivable & Cash Management |
               | Purchasing & Accounts Payable |
               | Order Entry & Inventory | Reports & Data Warehouse |

ISP TEAM STATUS REPORTS
March 7, 2000

General Ledger Status
The General Ledger Team has made a first assessment of how data will flow into the
general ledgerfrom other Oracle applications and from non-Oracle systems as follows
(Print for better legibility):

The team is now working on a redesign of the chart of accounts. There will probably be
six or seven segments. Team members are researching how other universities have
designed their charts of accountsand discussing the University’s needs with the ISP
Advisory Committee and Executive Committee. It currently appears that the segments
will be:

·        Organization

·        Natural Account (what we now call Object Code)

·        Source (what we now call Account Code)

·        Project (required for reporting in a Project Centric environment)

·        A balancing segment

·        Purpose (e.g. research, teaching, public service, etc.)

The GL Team will work with the Reports Team to build a testing scenario for the proposed
chart of accountsto determine its reporting capabilities. A final decision regarding the future University chart of accounts willbe made in March or April.

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Funds Management Status
Funds Management Overview
The University will be project centric under the new Oracle system.  Project centric means all project costs and sponsored program revenue will flow through the Oracle Grants Management (GM) application.  Transactions will use a PTAEO (project, task, award, expenditure type, organization) to classify them under specific projects and awards.  Information from other applications and other University systems will be pulled into or pushed to GM, via interfaces, from various Oracle applications, the University’s internal billing systems (ITC, Facilities Management, research support operations, etc.) and other University systems. The current, conceptual, assessment of future processes is as follows: 

Oracle Human Resources (HR)/Payroll will provide GM with employee- and organization-related validation tables.

Oracle Labor Distribution (LD) will provide detailed labor costs and encumbrances by employee/assignmentto GM using PTAEO.  (See Labor Distribution flows)

The internal billing systems will provide journal entries  (formerly Inter-Departmental Transfers – IDTs) to GM.  The journal entry charge and credit information will be in the form of positive/negative entries againstPTAEOs.  Ideally, the internal billing systems will verify the validity of the PTAEO at the time the order or request for service is submitted.   This validation will include funds checking and comparison to the allowed
cost schedule to determine acceptable transactions.  Internal billing transactions could be from the following sources:

·        Parking & Transportation

·        Facilities Management

·        Printing & Copying

·        Bookstore

·        Housing

·        Catering

·        Athletics

·        Information Technology and Communication (ITC)  

·        Library charges

·        Organizational Development and Training (ODT)

·        Human Resources Temp Service

·        Shared research support units such as the Central Electron Microscope Facility in the School of Medicine

·        Miscellaneous departmental uploads (copy charges, etc.)

Oracle Purchasing (PO) and Oracle Accounts Payable (AP) will push all supplier invoices and purchasing encumbrances to GM using PTAEO.

Oracle Accounts Receivable (AR) will provide GM with customer information and invoice types, while GM will provide AR the billing information.  AR also provides Oracle General Ledger (GL) with billed revenue information.  Cash collection of the receivable is handled through AR. All sponsored programs revenue will be billed and collected via Oracle AR. Other revenues will be billed and collected via Oracle AR as well.

GM will handle the following:

·        Set Up Project, Task, Award (P.T.A.)

·        Project/Award Budgeting & Budgetary Controls

·        Labor Encumbrances

·        PO/AP Encumbrances

·        Manual Encumbrances (GM or Data Warehouse)

·        Expenditure tracking and reportings (replaces AMOPro and other subsystems and shadow systems)

·        *Journal Entries (internal cost transfers)

·        *Allocations (Fund Transfers)

·        Costing

·        Burdening (Fringe benefits  & indirect costs on grants )

·        External Sponsor Billings & Assoc. Revenue

·        Project Status Inquiries (PSI) and Award Status Inquiries (ASI). These are on-line status checks of projects and awards.

The Oracle Data Warehouse will receive information from GM and GL and may be able to be used for manual encumbrances.  Manual encumbrances would include situations where a department wants to reserve funds, such as for the future purchase of equipment, start-up funds for new faculty, funds reserved for future construction projects, etc. but does not have sufficient information to enter the information into an Oracle application to cause an automated encumbrance to be generated.

Note:  The term “data warehouse” is used to represent a variety of reporting tools that could be employed to provide user information.  The reporting solution will be determined during the detail design phase.

The GL Interface Table receives project costs, revenue and unbilled receivable information pushed from GM.  The GM and GL applications are linked through a set of auto accounting rules that provide a crosswalk between the transaction attributes in GM to the GL chart of accounts.  The GL pulls batches in from the GL Interface Table for processing.

Labor Distribution Status
Labor Distribution Overview
In Phase 1, Oracle Labor Distribution (LD) will be used along with the current Employment System, Online Personnel Action System (OPAS), and Human Resources System (HRS) prior to implementing Oracle Human Resources Management System (HRMS) in Phase 2.  As a result, entering human resource (HR) employee demographic data, to include total compensation information, and the distribution of salary and wage costs to one or more PTAEOs will be separate processes in Phase 1. The current, conceptual, assessment of future processes is as follows: 

LD will provide the following functionality:

·        Labor scheduling

·        Distribution adjustments

·        Encumbrances

·        Effort reporting

·        Reporting

Departments will continue to enter employee demographic data, including total compensation information, into the Employment System and OPAS, as applicable.  This data, along with a default funding account, will be updated in HRS, either manually or automatically, and then an interface from HRS will update Oracle Human Resource (HR) tables.  The HR tables will serve as employee- and organization-related validation tables to be used in LD.

Labor Scheduling
Departments will establish and maintain labor schedules in LD.  The labor schedules will define the distribution of an employee’s payroll charges to the PTAEO(s) that will support it. Labor scheduling will define how an employee’s payroll is distributed on a percentage basis by the user-specified time period and PTAEO(s).

Departments will enter prospective funding information in LD; however, a time lag of perhaps one day will occur due to updating the Oracle HR tables, as noted above.

Using the default funding account, payroll will be processed as it is today in HRS, generating the Expanded Earnings History file (EEH).  Labor costs will be posted from the EEH to a high-level clearing account in the Oracle General Ledger (GL). 

The information in the EEH will be interfaced to LD for distribution processing (i.e., matching payroll data to labor schedule data).  After LD processing distributes the labor costs to PTAEO(s), the labor costs will be recorded as expenditures by employee/assignment and PTAEO(s) in GM.  Fringe benefits and other burdening will be applied during GM processing.  Finally, the labor costs will flow from GM to GL using auto accounting rules.

Timekeeping
Similar to today, the existing automated timesheets will be printed using HRS data, but modified to include LD funding information (PTAEOs).  Any changes to funding information pertinent to the current payroll cycle and/or future payroll cycles will be entered both on the automated timesheet and in LD.  These timekeeping-based payrolls will then be processed similarly to the other payrolls as noted above.

Distribution Adjustments
Payroll will enter retroactive adjustments that do impact an employee’s pay (i.e., incorrect hours), based on communications from the appropriate identifying party (i.e., departments, employee, HR), in HRS.  These adjustments will then flow to LD similar to regular payroll transactions.

Departments will enter retroactive adjustments that do not impact an employee’s pay
(i.e., funding change/correction) using LD’s distribution adjustments feature. There will be
policies in place regarding the nature and timing or retroactive LD adjustments.

Regardless of whether or not the retroactive adjustment impacts an employee’s pay, departments will continue to enter employee-related changes in the Employment System and OPAS.

Encumbrances
LD will generate labor encumbrance transactions using available HR/Payroll and labor schedule data.  These encumbrances will flow to GM similar to other labor expenditures, but will not flow to the GL.

Effort Reporting
Distributed costs in LD will serve as the basis for the University’s effort reporting process.  Thus, all distributed labor costs and distribution adjustments will be included in the reports.  The standard effort report is by employee and assignment, showing labor costs by project and award.  Online certification is a desirable goal for this process.

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Accounts Receivable & Cash Management Status
The Accounts Receivable/Cash Management team has identified, at a conceptual level, future process flows. In the area of accounts receivables, these include the standard processes of:

·        Creating a customer

·        Preparing an invoice

·        Entering the invoice into the system

·        Creating a receivable and recording it in central accounts receivable

·        Crediting payment to an account

Questions Currently Being Considered

·        What are the dividing lines of responsibility between departments and central offices, (e.g. who creates a customer and can modify information regarding the customer, and who renders charges?).

·        Which University activities, in addition to all sponsored programs, will be billed through Oracle Accounts Receivable in Phase 1?

Cash Management Process Flows

·        Bank reconciliation

·        Daily and future cash forecasting

·        Reimbursing the State for deposits received on the State account

·        Requesting reimbursement from the State

·        Payment of vendor invoices by the State on local account

·        Month-end settlement with the State

The team is currently identifying potential gaps between these processes and the functionality of the Oracle applications and possible solutions to any identified gaps.

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Purchasing & Accounts Payable Status
Team is currently being formed.

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Order Entry & Inventory Status
Team is currently being formed.

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Finance Reports & Data Warehouse Status
The Reports Team met with deans and other process owners to determine reporting needs and requirements for the Oracle system. Most of the University’s reporting needs will be accommodated through the use of a new Oracle-based data warehouse. The following reporting tools will be available:

·        Standard reports – All Oracle applications are bundled with a standard set of reports that can be requested by an authorized user at any time. Standard reports have a fixed format and layout, but their content can be focused each time the report is submitted by specifying selection parameters.

·        Oracle Discoverer – Discoverer offers the capability of accessing the database with an interface that allows users to generate informative, decision-ready reports. Templates for instant report layout, seamless connectivity to the databases, and point-and-click query construction provide a simple mechanism for users to retrieve information.

- The User Edition enables users to create reports, query, and graph results. Users perform drill-and-pivot analysis and can publish the results to the web. The User Edition is available in a Windows and web-based environment.

- The Viewer Edition enables users to run and view reports created by users of the User Edition. The Viewer Edition is available only in a web-based environment.

In addition, Oracle Grants Management contains two tools that will be useful for reporting:

·        The Award Status Inquiry (ASI) is a feature that enables users to quickly review actual and encumbered transactions, invoices, and budget and expenditure data at the award, project, resource, or task level.  This feature allows users to view financial data at the award and project levels for all projects funded by an award.

·        The Project Status Inquiry (PSI) is a feature that enables users to quickly review the current status of their projects and then drill down for more detailed expenditure data at the resource or task level.

Both ASI and PSI data can be exported into a spreadsheet for further analysis.

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