FIS BULLETIN Number 2

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

November 1, 1996

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS

GENERAL: None

ACQUISITIONS:

NEW BANNER FEATURE AVAILABLE - VENDOR TELEPHONE NUMBER FORM (FOATELE): All FIS Banner users have now been given inquiry access to the Telephone Number Form screen. This screen displays vendor phone and/or fax numbers where available.

Step-by-step instructions:
Type FOATELE into the "Enter Selection" field and type Enter or Return.
The cursor will be flashing in the Id: field on page 1 of the Telephone Form
To query for a vendor whose Id number is unknown type List (F10)
On the Entity/Name Search Form tab to the Last Name field
Type four letters of the vendor's name beginning with % sign and ending with % sign (e.g., %Palo%)
Type F8 (Execute Query)
Arrow down to the correct vendor name (e.g., Palo Alto Swim Shop) and type F11 (Exit w/Value)
OR if known, type the vendor number in the Id: field (e.g.: @00008822)
Type Shift/Page Down (Next Block) to view the business phone number & fax number (if available)

The "Phone Type" column will usually contain a "BU" (for Business) or "FAX" for FAX number. The "Address Type" column will usually also contain value "BU" or value "RE" (for Remit or Billing number.) Usually, you'll want the number which contains value "BU" in both the "Phone Type" and "Address Type" columns. If there are more than one "BU" numbers listed, choose one that has the value "Y" in the "Prim." (for Primary) column.

If you have any questions about FOATELE, or have any vendor telephone additions/corrections, please contact the Central Purchasing Help Line at extension 5555. If you have trouble accessing the screen itself, please contact Monique Leduc at extension 5133 or mleduc@cats.

BANNER REPORTS:

PROBLEM WITH ENCUMBRANCES ROLLED OVER FROM 95-96 ON MONTHLY TRANSACTION DETAIL REPORT (FWRDOLD): It was recently reported to us that the "Monthly Transaction Detail" report does not include line detail of encumbrances rolled over from 95-96, even though the amounts of these "invisible" encumbrances are included in the totals. This results in the sum of the detail amounts appearing on the report under the "Open Encumbrance" column to not equal the "Ending balance." We are currently attempting to identify the source of the problem and plan to have the necessary corrections made prior to running of the October 31, 1996 FWRDOLD report.

OTHER FIS / BANNER ITEMS: None

CALENDAR OF FIS / BANNER EVENTS

Please note that period close-related dates are estimated.

PROJECT STATUS

BANNER UPGRADE: Work continues on schedule to complete the upgrade of the Banner system by the end of December. Among the Banner "bug" fixes and enhancements as reported by Banner and to be tested by the technical team, here are some samples:

On the "Receiving Form"(FPARCVD), a receiver can be deleted before it is completed.
On the "Requisition Form"(FPAREQN), accounting percentage amounts were incorrectly set when a user exited the form and returned to it. This has been fixed.
Occasionally when a purchase order is created from a requisition, then canceled, the requisition is re-opened, but the budget reservation is not recreated, leaving the original budget reservation, with no means of liquidating it except through a journal voucher. This has been fixed.
On the "Invoice/Credit Memo Form" (FAAINVE), users were unable to make a partial payment against a PO that rolled from the prior year to the current year. The form is fixed to allow a partial payment on a PO that was rolled and that had a change order in the current year.

Documentation noting changes in functionality will be provided to FIS users prior to the implementation of the upgrade.

STUDENT WORKER ACCESS TO BANNER: Work also continues on developing "modularized" training programs for prospective Banner student workers. Once training plans are complete, a draft of the guidelines governing student worker access to Banner will be distributed to service center managers for comment from their units. We hope to do this within the next month.

PAYROLL ENCUMBRANCE MEETING PLANNED: We are planning to organize a meeting of representatives from service centers interested in having payroll encumbrances maintained. The meeting will consist of a discussion of how payroll encumbrances are calculated and where they appear in the ledger. In addition, a representative from a service center using payroll encumbrances will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using them. Contact Kirk Lew at kllew@cats if you are interested in attending. Please tell us who will be attending from your service center, their email addresses, and preferred days and times (morning, afternoon, or either) of the week to meet. We will get back to you with the date, time, and location.

TIPS & TRICKS / QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

TIPS & TRICKS: None

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

There are times at the beginning of the month when I am working after 5:00 p.m. on Banner and experience long delays in posting. Why does this happen?

ANSWER: The first six working days of every month are known as "Interface Week" for the FIS Production folks. These are the days where financial interfaces from various campus units are processed and posted into FIS Banner. On the seventh working day of the month, the current period is closed; therefore all interfaces must be processed by then.

Interface processing happens in the evenings, beginning at approximately 5:30 p.m. The system is up as usual during interfaces, but posting delays are likely, especially during large interface runs such as payroll (typically the 4th or 5th working day). You can still enter and approve documents; however, posting may be delayed for several minutes up to two hours on these evenings.

If we have an unusually large interface for a particular month, we will post a message on fis_user to inform you of the impact on posting.

If you have any questions about interface processing, please contact Monique Leduc at x5133 or mleduc@cats.

________________________
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 - Monique Leduc mleduc@cats
Other questions - Kirk Lew kllew@cats

INSIDER’S PEEK AT FIS

ANATOMY OF A UNIVERSITY ACCOUNTING SYSTEM

Part 2

Programs! Get yer Programs! Can’t Tell the Transactions Apart with out ‘em! - The Banner Program

In the last issue we discussed the complexities of University fund accounting. Now we will shift our attention to the Banner Finance accounting program which assists us in the collection and processing of accounting information (Well, at least most of the time). We will also discuss the importance of the "behind the scenes" workhorse, the Oracle database.

Banner works in conjunction with an Oracle relational database. Oracle is the company that designed the database application (and makes a lot of money selling it). For the inquisitive, a database is a repository on a computer storage system where data is collected and organized. A relational database consists of a collection of data tables. Each table contains categories of data. There is usually some relationship between a data element in one table and the data element in another. For instance, one Oracle table contains organization code data, which includes organization description and some other data elements having to do with the particular organization. Another table might contain purchase order transaction data that includes an organization code. It will not include the organization description because it can be determined from the other table containing the organization code and description. The Banner Finance system database consists of about 100 tables.

The Oracle database application stores, retrieves, changes, sorts, and deletes data elements, or "records," in each table based on it receiving a command, usually from some other application. In our case, Banner is that "other" application that performs the following tasks:

It provides input forms for users to input and edit data which is passed to the Oracle database.
It sends commands to the Oracle database telling Oracle how and where to store, retrieve, and organize the data.
It processes data stored in various Oracle tables, such as summarizing transactions in the Purchase Order tables to arrive at balances to post in tables, like the Encumbrance and Operating Ledger tables.
It retrieves and compiles information from Oracle tables for inquiry and reporting purposes.

In short, Banner is the "brains" behind the operation, and Oracle does the "heavy lifting." As you can probably tell, it is the Banner program that dictates how data is input and processed. By the way it does this, the Banner application attempts to organize and process data in a manner consistent with good accounting practices. In our case, good *fund* accounting practices.

HOW Banner gets and validates data from users, WHERE Banner directs Oracle to store and retrieve data, and WHAT data it asks Oracle to store or retrieve determine whether or not good accounting practices are being followed, at least as far the automated part of the accounting system is concerned. The HOW, WHERE, and WHAT translate into things like maintaining adequate internal control (applause from management and the auditors) and satisfying reporting requirements (applause from the regents, remember them from the last article?).

Banner is programmed by its creator, SCT, in such a way to meet the common accounting needs of institutions like ours. This unmodified, or "vanilla," version usually doesn’t meet the specific needs of each Banner customer. To put in features (the "how") and the additional information (the "where" and "what") that we need, modifications and enhancements ("mods") are made to the vanilla version of the Banner program by our crack team of campus user-analysts, programmer-analysts, and database administrators (working with many of you, of course). Which lead us to the perfect segue to the next installment...

In the next issue: Part 3
Filling in the scorecard. Who does what and how does it all fit together?

ODDS & ENDS

FIS / BANNER

THANKS TO THOSE OF YOU VOLUNTEERING TO SERVE ON AN FIS ADVISORY GROUP: Due to the light response to our request, we have decided to postpone organizing a formal group. Instead, we will retain the names of volunteers and call on them to occasionally meet with the Banner technical support team to discuss the functional aspects of various technical Banner matters.

REQUEST FOR FEEDBACK ISSUES

NEW REPORT: A report "Budget Summary - YTD Balance by Unit, Orgn, Fund" (FWRBBAL) was recently designed that we think might be of use to service centers. It provides the user with summary available balance information sorted at Org Level 4 by organization code then fund code as of the end of the month. To see a sample report, run for your service center, please contact Vicki Gutzwiller at vickig@cats. Let her know the name of your service center and the name of the printer to send the report output. After you have had a chance to review the report, Vicki (vickig@cats) would appreciate receiving your responses as to whether or not it is useful enough to you to be included as one of the "Big 5" monthend reports. Please be aware that the report can only be run on monthend balances. We are attempting to determine if a similar and, perhaps modifiable version, can be made available via the data warehouse and business objects which would overcome this deficiency.

LAST CALL TO SET UP SERVICE CENTER MEETINGS TO DISCUSS FIS-RELATED ISSUES: Thanks to the various service center staffs who took some time out of their busy days to discuss FIS-related issues and needs with Kirk Lew during the past two months. So far he has visited about a half dozen service centers, getting a better perspective of the needs and concerns of a variety of users. He is particularly interested in meeting with folks working in smaller service centers. If your service center is interested in setting up a meeting, please contact Kirk at kllew@cats.

Contributors: Kirk Lew, Monique Leduc, Karsen Jones, Vicki Gutzwiller, Doug Jackson
Your comments and suggestions are always welcome. Please direct them to the editor, Kirk Lew kllew@cats.

Financial Affairs | Accounting Offices | Campus Controller | FIS

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