FIS BULLETIN Number 11

SPECIAL POST - FISCAL CLOSE EDITION

Announcements | Calendar | Status | T&T-Q&A | Training | Inside Peek | Odds & Ends

August 7, 1997

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS

GENERAL:

Fiscal Year 97 is now offically closed.

ACQUISITIONS: None.

BANNER REPORTS: None

OTHER FIS/BANNER ITEMS:

FZIABAL form is now available. More on this in the FIS Status Section

CALENDAR OF FIS / BANNER EVENTS

MONTHLY INTERFACE SCHEDULE (Financial data from other admin systems)
All interfaces begin running at 5pm; dates subject to change

* Please note that there will not be any Physical Plant or Fleet Services interface for July.

FIS STATUS

FISCAL CLOSING PROCESS: All FIS fiscal close processes have been completed successfully. There are still a handful of report and new year setup processes that are still underway, and these should be completed by 8/15/97. Congrats and thanks to all who contributed in making our second fiscal close with Banner FIS go so well!

INVENTORIAL EQUIPMENT DATA CONVERSION: Data from the old EQ system has been successfully converted and loaded into the Banner FIS Fixed Asset tables. Approximately 40,000 historical and current records were loaded. Materiel Management staff are now able to input, query and run reports from the data in FIS. Work is still in progress on various reconciliation processes and reports. Kudos to the FIS programmer/analyst team (Leon Derman and Karsen Jones) and the Equipment Administration staff for a project well done!

FIS PRODUCTION AND TUNING PROJECT: We continue to work on ways to streamline report and repetitive processing. Currently, we are distributing three standard monthly reports by remote printing (directly to Service Center printers) which saves on time and mailing costs. We are also working on ways to streamline the production of the monthly financial reports that are used by Central Accounting and Planning & Budget offices. In addition, our database administrators are investigating ways to optimize or "tune" the FIS database which should result in better response times and more efficient processing overall.

THE FZIABAL - "STEALTH" AVAILABLE BALANCE QUERY FORM APPEARS!: The new FZIABAL (UCSC Available Balance Status) form is now up, running and ready for use! Paper documentation was sent to all Service Center managers via campus mail on 8/5/97. Access to the new form was automatically granted to all FIS Users who have access to FGIBDST (Organization Budget Status). The same organization security which applies to FGIBDST also applies to FZIABAL. If you need more information or have questions about the form, please contact Monique Leduc (mleduc@cats).

FIS PLANNING: The list of FIS-related projects for 97-98 is in the final stages of review. More on this will appear in next month's edition of the FIS Bulletin.

TIPS & TRICKS / QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

TIPS & TRICKS: None

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:

How many TOEs and TOFs were input by Service Centers in Fiscal Year 97?

Roll out of the distributed TOE/TOF process to the Service Centersbegan in mid-March, 1997. As of the close of fiscal year 97, you all did: 11,065 TOE transactions and 4,956 TOF transcations. Several Service Centers have told us that being able to do their own TOE/TOFs greatly expedited their fiscal close processes; what do you think?

What is this I hear about a period 14 ledger? I thought period 12 was the last accounting period of the year.

There is a period 12 and period 14 accounting period. Period 12 is the final accounting period for Service Centers and units to make adjustments to the ledger. Period 14 is used by the Central Offices to make many special closing-related budgetary and financial entries. Because most of these period 14 entries rely on there being final, unchanging balances in ledger, no ledger adjustments by Service Centers and units are allowed during period 14.

You can liken period 14 to a process of clearing out things from the old year and preparing for the new year. Many of the entries involve preparing the campus ledger balances to be incorporated in the master UC ledger maintained by OP. As such, things like balances in intercampus accounts need to be adjusted, and certain balances need to be transferred to OP-controlled accounts (or what we call FOAPALs). In addition, OP provides us with entries that we need to post to our ledgers.

In terms of using FIS query forms, it's usually best to enter the fiscal year and leave the period blank in order to get the final balance information. As some of you might have experienced, on some forms, entering a period will give you totals for the period only. On other forms, balances from the beginning of the fiscal year to end of the requested period are presented.

FZIABAL Q&A - UCSC Available Balance Status Form

Since the implementation of the FZIABAL query form, we have received a number of questions which we have attempted to answer below. Some interesting background behind the FZIABAL process is included at the end of this message.

Do you have an ETA for "Stealth 2: The Sequel"? (The C&G FZIABAL screen that will not include Revenue Budget Pool Account Codes)

Work has begun on developing a clone screen of FZIABAL that will exclude Revenue Budget Pool Account Code data. Like its sibling, it's unplanned and work is being performed as time allows. Bettors may want to put their money down for September implementation.

Is there a chance we could have a FZIABAL from which we could inquire on an *Activity code* level? (All our divisional research and seed accounts are designated by activity codes.)

The data calculated for the FZIABAL is calculated at the pool account level. Query at an activity code level would involve a whole new effort which would likely be more complicated due to the level of detail involved. This suggestion will be added to our list of requests.

I was taking a look at the new query form and have a question--it is not reflecting my B09000 available budget amount? On my prelim ledgers I am showing a balance of -34335.59? Are these amounts yet to be entered? Thanks

Because the data is updated daily to reflect the prior day's balances, any activity from fiscal year 1996-97 will not be included, except for budgetary and encumbrance balances carried forward to 1997-98. The method your service center selected to have its budgetary balances carryforward determines which pool account code the balances will appear in.

________________________
Questions or problems regarding the Banner system can be directed to:
Acquisitions, Accounts Payable - Karsen Jones kjones@cats
Ledger Reports, Fiscal Closing - Vicki Gutzwiller vickig@cats
Banner Security, Access, Other - Monique Leduc mleduc@cats

INSIDER'S PEEK AT FIS

EDITOR'S CHOICE:

SOMEWHAT INFORMATIVE, ALWAYS AMUSING INSIDER ABAL "STUFF"

The story goes that the inspiration for this method of providing data originated on a cold, cloudy morning in Philadelphia at the annual SCT-Banner User's Convention. While contemplating a stale, hard hotel bagel during a slow, boring presentation, the thought came to mind that not having something fresh might be ok for stuff like data, but that it definitely would not work for bagels. It's okay, in most cases, for data to be day-old stale since it's still useful. So the notion emerged that since the SCT-supplied available balance screen couldn't deliver fresh bagels, er, current data (any data for that matter), why not simplify things by having the data calculated as of the day before and rig up our own UCSC query form to access the data. It wouldn't be state of the art, but it would be easy. Thus emerged the FZIABAL - UCSC Available Balance Status Form. (It's true, all true. I swear it.)

There was only one problem. A very big problem. How can we do things in such a way that we can:

Provide useful data in a straightforward manner
Provide data quickly
Keep the user interface intuitive and simple
With minimal support available, keep behind-the-scenes maintenance to a minimum
Roll out the new functionality quickly

and most importantly (you've probably heard this one yourself)

Get it done using as resources the blood from an already-squeezed stone

What resulted is a "no-frills" but useful tool that we feel will be of general benefit to the campus. Data is computed each night at about 9:00 p.m. with the exception of Sunday night and stored in a table. (Usually, very few users input and process FIS data on Sundays, and, perhaps more importantly, processing time is limited on Sunday night due to the running of various system maintenance functions). The data in the table gets replaced with each update (Significantly simplifies programming and the user interface, but doesn't allow for queries on anything other than data as of the day before, except on Monday when the data is current as of the end of Saturday.)

Because the FZIABAL query searches for pre-calculated balances and does not have to calculate balances on the fly, like FGIBDST, results are obtained within seconds. The tradeoff is that drill-down (i.e. <F10> list) functionality is not possible with this form (the detail behind the pre-calculated balances is not kept, which also simplifies programming and overcomes problems related to limited disk storage space).User testers thoroughly tested the form and reviewed documentation, making many helpful suggestions that have been incorporated into the form and the user documentation. On the whole, they were pleased with the functionality of the form. We hope you are, too. Ah, the power of a bagel.

ODDS & ENDS

FIS / BANNER: None

REQUEST FOR FEEDBACK ISSUES: None

Contributors: Kirk Lew, Vicki Gutzwiller, Monique Leduc
Your comments and suggestions are always welcome. Please direct them to the Editors, Monique Leduc mleduc@cats or Kirk Lew kllew@cats

Financial Affairs | Accounting Offices | Campus Controller | FIS

Comments to: controller@ucsc.edu - Maintained by FIS, Updated