In response to a detailed inquiry about some mismatched finance report data, here are responses from the Finance team. Please pass this along to your managers, deans, supervisors and budget holders if relevant:
1) Those looking at budgets are used to looking at the whole picture, revenues and expenses up to the same date. In some cases there are a few charges that have not been sorted out and we are wondering how/when will these charges be posted in FIS?
- Finance understands this can and has been challenging. Some areas are still sorting out processes and we are working hard to catch up and then better synchronize entries.
- Regarding context for the YTD budget vs actuals, for labour the 2021-22 budget was staged as per payroll calendar, with 2 periods of 3 pays. The rest (revenue and expense) followed the 2019-20 pattern of actual activity by month, which was that if it wasn't available then it would be prorated at 1/12. Actual values from FRS were posted into FIS in June, so the quarterly reports may be easier (for some) to read. The staging for budget values will become more closely aligned with actual patterns once the internal processes are all finalized.
- Up to the end of Q2 the budget office has been sending monthly reports from transactions that balance to the statements so you could see what went in/out and when. They also delivered workshops (recordings on the Finance training page under Budgets and on the Finance Reports training page under External User reports) to explain how these spreadsheets work and how to create them yourself. The Budget office will be sending out quarterly reports, but no longer monthly reports. We are aware that addressing your concerns will assist you to explain variances to the budget (or forecast) in the timeframe we need. Please send your specific budget variance queries to the budget office at budgetoffice@viu.ca.
2) Why are Printing and Phone charges only posted up to June?
- They were to be posted in November, but due to the small dollar values and the backlog of larger items to resolve, charges for ‘as yet unposted’ phone or printing costs will not be processed this fiscal year. Plans for next fiscal year are still TBA (please also see this Bulletin).
3) How will Facilities work orders be transferred to our Work Orders?
- Finance recently met with the Facilities department and there was discussion around a modified approach for this year. The conclusion was that internal charges for services provided by Facilities would not be charged to the various Work Orders. However, a review is being done by Facilities to determine if they have paid for third party expenses that should be reallocated back to the departments. Finance will reallocate any expenses over $500 to the appropriate Work Orders so if a department had smaller value charges (under $500) they should not expect those to be charged to them in this fiscal year. Nor will the departments get charged for any from now until Mar 31. A process for allocating these charges for next fiscal year is still TBD.
4) What is happening regarding internal payroll transfers or VIUFA PD fund transfers to general research accounts?
- Salary reallocations and VIUFA PD transfer JVs from the Payroll Department have been delayed since go-live due to staff shortages, "lights on" processing priorities and JV template development. Once staffing stabilizes (likely early next year), synchronizing these transfers with the pay period that the transfer relates to will be the expectation.
5) When will Work-Ops transfers be done for July onwards since they have only been done till end of June?
- A new process was developed for this and an entry for these transactions was prepared and posted to the GL in November.
6) Why don't we see Commitments in FIS for supplies that were ordered but not delivered yet or on blanket PO?
- Commitments are not yet part of the Income Statement reports. They are planned for inclusion in new reports that will be developed in the next phase of implementation. Regarding what reports are planned for supplier information for the end users, here is what we can share.
- First off, the PO only has a status of Ordered when the PO has been ordered (i.e. sent to the Supplier) and there is no status to show that it’s been received or partially received. The next status the PO has is “Finished” and that’s when the PO has been fully paid. If there is any remaining on the PO it will still have a status of Ordered.
- There is an area where you can see high level information, but only look at each PO individually. This is covered in the Goods Receipt training materials (PROC 16: How do I enquire on a Goods Receipt). There is an Order Info report tucked in behind the PO# in this screen that you have access to and it provides all of the activity against the PO.
- If we look at a snapshot (below) we’ll see in the “Amounts” area at the top of the report it shows the original $ amount ordered $7500, the amount delivered $4459.50, the amount posted for payment $4459.40, and the amount left to invoice $3040.50. Then all of the transactional data is listed below. In this case, they would probably still have $3,040.50 committed against this PO.
- FYI, if an AP open item is reversed (error in billing, etc.) the reversal process does not update the PO commitment. This has proven problematic when we want to re-process the corrected invoice. This may lead to a situation where the committed amounts on the PO are not correct. We have a ticket into Unit4 to query this behavior, but have not had a response to date.
7) Regarding Supplies, the current report only shows some supplier names and some are just labeled "supplies" and we can’t click on it from the report to review the actual invoice/receipt details etc.
- The producer of the report can click on the Transaction number when in FIS (not the exported report) to find more details about the transaction, including whom the vendor is.
8) The Tuition revenue-budgets part is unclear. Some departments are questioning the Actuals since they do not make sense when looking at current enrollment and collected tuition.
- This may relate to the change in timing (staging) of the estimated revenue budgets. If this is the case, it's important to remember that the change from centrally held tuition to the new distributed tuition model only began this fiscal year. The budget timing and staging is an estimate that will become more precise as we begin to have more actual trend history in the system.
- For the Actuals, tuition revenue is recognized (posted) to the Accounting period that it is earned in. This means that the total collected tuition will not be shown in the first month, but it will be posted over the months that the course is delivered.
- Finance is aware that there is a reporting issue with the Cost Recovery Course Fee tuition report and is working to resolve the issue. There is no current timeline on resolution, however Finance is also looking at alternative options to retrieve detailed information for you.
9) How can we view Salaries amounts details other than total amounts charged? We don’t see actual names – all we can do is look at total charged. This is fine if the amount is less or close to the budgeted amount, but if it is very different we can’t see details or how to translate it to the forecast for the rest of current year.
- We are in the process of identifying the users who have a business need to view employee names in the general ledger and will be distributing access once approval has been received from Wendy Young, AVP, Financial Services. We hope to complete this process early in the new year. In the meantime, for significant labour variance concerns and investigations, please reach out to the Budget Office (budgetoffice@viu.ca) and for resource information related to external contract billing of resource costs please reach out to General Accounting (generalaccounting@viu.ca).
10) Two new items for report users!
- You now have the ability to use the zoom in function in the “Your ordered reports” screen to help you troubleshoot your report errors. In some cases you will find that your report is finished, but the report icon is greyed out. You can now click on the zoom icon and it will open a window to let you see what the parameters where that you asked for. This is important as you can determine if you made an entry error in your query:
- The Terminate and Park options have been removed for individual line items in the Sales Order screen as this was causing Workflow issues. If necessary, you can still Park the entire Sales Order by using the Status dropdown in the top left of the order. This has been updated on the training website. As always, it is best to have all of your info at hand before creating a Sales Order (or a Purchase Requisition).