FIS BULLETIN Number 20

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

May 11, 1998

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS

GENERAL: SCHEDULED FIS BANNER DOWNTIMES

Banner FIS will be unavailable ALL DAY on Sunday, May 24 for system maintenance.

FIS USERS MEETING:

Friday, May 29 from 10am-12noon in the Cowell Student Health Center Conference Room. Topics of discussion will include Distributed Office of Record and a new Draft Purchase Order capability.

ACQUISITIONS:

Period 01 of Fiscal Year 99 (otherwise known as July 1998) will be OPEN and available for use on documents as of Tuesday, May 12, 1998.

BANNER REPORTS: None.

OTHER FIS / BANNER ITEMS:

We STILL need your feedback! See Odds and Ends.

CALENDAR OF FIS / BANNER EVENTS

MONTHLY INTERFACE SCHEDULE (Financial data from other admin systems)
All interfaces begin running at 5:00pm; dates subject to change

FIS STATUS

DISTRIBUTED OFFICE OF RECORD (DOOR): The DOOR technical implementation went very smoothly, thanks to the hard work of many FIS, CATS ADS and A/P staff. The first "post-DOOR" checkwrite on May 7 produced approx 600 checks for the OR bank code. Jane Kling will be addressing various DOOR issues and questions on the fis_user list. Within the next 2 weeks, we will be sending updated Direct Pay Approval Queue Review forms to all Service Center managers reflecting any changes to approvals or input access in the post-DOOR world. And you probably all have this memorized by now, but just in case…once again, here's the URL for the DOOR documentation: http://www.ucsc.edu:80/ucsc/banner-manual/DirPay/DP_Content.htm

PROCUREMENT CARD (PROCARD): PROCUREMENT CARD (PROCARD): Final preparations for the Testing phase are underway. This month the 5 units involved in testing will be trained and given their Procurement Cards. Shopping will begin on June 1! Also during the June month, testing of the ProValue Software and the interface to Banner FIS will be completed.

FISCAL CLOSE: The fiscal close system test has been completed with a satisfyingly small number of issues to be resolved. While it is still an enormous amount of data to manipulate, we are confident that (on a technical level at least) we'll have a smooth fiscal close! The Fiscal Close calendar (last updated on May 11) is available on the web at: http://www.ucsc.edu/ucsc/banner-manual/FISQA/yearendclose.htm

ACTIVITY CODE CLEANUP: In the course of the fiscal close system test, we identified a number of Activity Codes that had been terminated or inactivated by Service Centers over the course of fiscal year 98 which still have encumbrance and/or budgetary balances. The year-end carryforward processes will attempt to post transactions in the new year for FOAPALs which contain these activity codes, creating problems because the codes are not active. Within the next couple of weeks, we will be contacting Service Centers who have Activity Codes in this category with specific info on cleanup options.

OLD OPEN ENCUMBRANCE CLEANUP: Another thing we noticed in the fiscal close system test was the significant number of open encumbrances that still exist in FIS that were originally created in fiscal year 96 (and have rolled forward every year since.) Many of these are probably blanket purchase orders that are still being used; however, it's pretty clear from the small dollar amounts that many of them are leftovers that could be liquidated. These encumbrances will continue to roll year after year, creating essentially useless data in our continually growing FIS tables, and taking up space on ledger reports. We encourage you to take some time to review your old encumbrances on the FZRPOEL Open Encumbrance Report, and liquidate any "dead" ones before June 30.

TIPS & TRICKS/QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

TIPS & TRICKS: None submitted this month.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:

An observant FIS User writes: "I've noticed some new indicator codes at the bottom of the FOIDOCH form; what's up with that?"

Keen eye! As of November of last year, some of you may have noticed this slight change on the FOIDOCH form. Amidst the various Indicator Translations at the bottom of the form, the following was added: (F or S) Final Reconciliation or StopPay.

This Indicator Translation applies to Checks. F is for "Final" and means that the bank has reported to us that they have cleared (cashed) the check. The payee has the money.

S is for "Stop Pay/Stale Dated" and means that the check has not been cleared (cashed) and is no longer negotiable at the bank. This can be due to a "Stop Pay" being placed on the check, but is usually due to the check being "Stale Dated" and made non-negotiable because it was not submitted to the bank for payment within six months of being issued. For checks with the S Reconciliation Indicator, a re-issued check can often be found via the Vendor Detail/History Form (FAIVNDH). Enter the Vendor ID (@00...) and look for the Stop Pay/Stale Dated check number (less the leading two zeros) in the left-hand "Vendor's Invoice Number" column; or look for a paid Invoice having the same amount as the Stop Pay/Stale Dated check as well as a Paid Date later than the issue date of the Stop Pay/Stale Dated check. Confirming information that the check is a re-issue will likely be found by looking at the Invoice detail. X for "Canceled" means that the check was issued in error and has been canceled in Banner. It too is non-negotiable at the bank. If a corrected payment has been made, usually the re-issued check will also be shown on FOIDOCH for the same Invoice.

Note that due to the Reconciliation Data coming from the bank only monthly, the Reconciliation Indicator can easily remain blank for up to 2 months. A blank reconciliation indicator means that the check has been issued and its status at the bank is yet unknown to Banner.

FIS TRAINING SCHEDULE

To enroll, email controller@ucsc.edu and include your name, your service center/unit, phone number, email address, the Class Name and Class Date. A registration confirmation will be returned to you. If you are unable to attend a class, please email or call 459-3274 to cancel your registration. Classes with four or less students may be cancelled.

________________________
Questions or problems regarding Banner FIS 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)
FIS Training Content, Schedule - Nancy Miller (njmiller@cats)

INSIDER'S PEEK AT FIS

BANNERSLUG'S 90 SECOND ACCOUNTING LESSON

INSTALLMENT 3

LESSON #3: Slugs are priceless.

Well you made it this far, so you might as well continue the journey. Besides, as you probably found out, there's no escape from the Kingdom of Accounting. Two more accounting principles for you:

COST PRINCIPLE ("You get what you pay for" Principle):
Assets should be measured on the basis of total cost incurred in their acquisition. Example: the campus purchases the Modular Buildings for the Student Housing "Village" for $2.5 million and adds improvements which cost $1 million. The recorded value of the asset on campus accounting records is $3.5 million, even though the Village might have a fair market value of $5 million (because of its spectacular beauty?). For those of you paying attention to all this (besides my commendations): This principal is related to the Objectivity Principle which appears in the next installment.

SIDETRIP - ASSETS: Resources owned by the entity. This might include cash, student billings generated by SIS, Lick Observatory souvenir inventory, everything listed on the campus equipment tracking system, and the Village and the land it sits on. Unlike Costco, most of the assets belonging to the campus are not for sale.

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO ME: Probably not much unless you work in UCO Lick which fabricates equipment, or in Plant Accounting or Planning Design and Construction which process and account for many separate costs to build buildings and install building improvements. The value of the finished product in the campus' ledger will be the sum of all costs (and not the selling price or fair market value).

MATCHING PRINCIPLE ("You don't get something for nothing" Principle):
All of the expenses incurred in generating revenue should be matched with the revenue generated, period by period. Example: the Chemistry department is billed in July for 10 tanks of helium it received and used for research during June and for which the campus received research grant monies for the purpose in June ("...but I swear, Donald Duck works in that lab"). The expense must be recorded in June to match the recognition of revenue in June.

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO ME: It's important to remember at fiscal year end, that if a good or service is received in the old year, and payment is not made until the new year, the expense must be recorded in the old year. It doesn't matter which year includes the budget to cover the expense. (The inhabitants of the Kingdom of Accounting turn up their noses at anything having to do with budgets. I'll bet some of you wish you could do the same.)

Luckily, in most cases where significant amounts of money are involved, the FIS Banner system automatically records the expenditure in June provided the receiving information is input in a timely manner. (Gadzooks, we found yet another benefit to using FIS Banner. Who would've thunk?) Now that wasn't so bad, was it? These two principles are pretty tame stuff. We're at the halfway point. There's more fun to be had (At least if you're interested in the esteemed world of accounting or just wannabe a wannabe. If not, too bad.). Stay tuned.

ODDS AND ENDS

REQUEST FOR FEEDBACK ISSUES:

Please let us know if you have any topics you would like discussed during the breakout session of the next FIS Users Meeting on Friday, May 29. Send your ideas to mleduc@cats. Thanks!

Contributors: Rich Apple, Nancy Barr, Karsen Jones, Jane Kling, Kirk Lew, Monique Leduc, Nancy Miller
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