November 19, 2024 | Edition #198
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New Notification Process to Reduce Project-Related Invoice Holds
UC San Diego’s Accounts Payable team has introduced an auto-notification system to reduce project/task-related invoice holds on Purchase Orders (POs). The system alerts requesters, submitters, and financial unit approvers when a PO’s project/task is close to expiration, allowing proactive action to prevent holds. Notifications include details about the PO, project, and task, along with steps for submitting buyer-initiated change orders or creating replacement POs.
Notifications will be sent from noreply-accountspayable@messaging.ucsd.edu, so please add this email to your approved contacts. Subject lines indicate urgency, with alerts at 30 days, 7 days, and upon expiration. Timely action on these emails will help streamline invoicing and reduce holds.
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Non-PO Payment Request Form Enhancements
To improve efficiency and reduce payment processing times, the Non-PO Payment Request Form has been updated and launched on November 14th. Key changes include removing unnecessary fields, adding instructions to avoid common errors, and refining payment type options to reduce the use of the “Other” category. New payment types have been added for clearer categorization, including Phone Bills, Real Estate, Refunds and Reimbursements, and Shipping/Freight. These updates aim to streamline the process and reduce the need for form revisions.
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Coming Soon: UCPath Projects: November Release
The following projects are scheduled to go-live in the UCPath system beginning November 25, 2024 as part of the UCPath November Release:
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Rewrite GL Assessments Phase 2: This project will consolidate, centralize, and streamline the generation of assessment information. As part of this project, UCPath will be updating assessments to calculate on rates of the original earning period (vs. current paycheck dates) for retro payments.
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Direct Entry Enhancements: The Direct Entry (formerly known as Hire Pilot) enhancements will allow Early Adopters from Central Offices to transact using the new Manage Human Resources tile before all transactors can transact within the tile.
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Automate Security Deprovisioning: This project will automate the deprovisioning of security when an employee transfers from one location to another. Only local UCPath Security Administrators will be impacted.
Refer to the UCPath November Release project page for more information.
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New DOPE Report Enhancements
The DOPE Report found in the Business Analytics Hub has been updated with several enhancements, listed below:
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The Program chartfield segment has been added as a searchable prompt to assist in researching defaulted payroll transactions.
- More specifically, you can now search by Financial Unit and the specific default Program code, including:
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FND (i.e. No funding for the position exists in UCPath)
- END (i.e. One or more funding lines in UCPath have expired)
- CMB (i.e. One or more elements of the chartstring are not compatible, including project-tasks that are outside of the earning period start or end date)
To review the full list of enhancements, click here.
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New Enhancements to Fund Manager Reports
The following enhancements have been made to various Fund Manager reports based on customer requests:
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Awards may be temporarily extended in Oracle to allow costs to post while waiting for an amendment. A Y/N indicator has been added to the top section of the Expanded Project Summary to indicate whether an award is in a temporary extension status. Fund managers must work with SPF to ensure that amendments are received and processed on these awards.
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Account 300000 has been removed from the GL transaction details on both the GL page of Expanded Project Summary and the Non-Sponsored GL Expanded Project Summary drillthrough from Faculty and Researcher Dashboard. Transactions on 300000 can be duplicative of amounts already posted to revenue and expense accounts, and inclusion of this account in the report was causing confusion.
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A prompt for Principal Investigator (PI) and Project Manager (PM) has been added to the UCPath-Oracle Salary Reconciliation report.
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A minor modification has been made to date filtering on payroll detail tables on financial reports in an effort to better align financial transactions with payroll transactions when searching based on accounting period. This has been implemented on Expanded Project Summary, Faculty and Researcher Dashboard drill throughs, Project Management Dashboard - DOPES, and UCPath-Oracle Salary Reconciliation.
Special thanks to Chelsea Van Pelt, John Lozano, Lauryn Philbrick, and Haoyue Xu for submitting enhancement requests.
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Who should have Concur Access?
Only current UC San Diego employees (including student employees) and Sponsored Affiliates can log into Concur with Single Sign-On using their Active Directory credentials. If you do not have a UCPath employee ID, you will not have access to Concur.
For newly hired employees, it may take up to two weeks to gain access to Concur.
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Gift Card Pick-up Best Practices
- Provide a strong business purpose for each gift card request.
- Review the Request Timeline for approval tracking / request status.
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Email paymentservices@ucsd.edu 5 business days after the final approval is granted to schedule your gift card pick-up.
- We are not able to accommodate same day pick-ups/walk-ins.
- Gift Card pickups can only be scheduled on Tuesdays - Fridays, between 8:30 AM to 1:00 PM
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Cash & Merchant Services: Deadline
The deadline for providing checks to the TritonPay Office for final processing is December 20, 2:00 p.m. prior to campus closure.
The separate dropbox has no time limit, and can be accessed 24/7 using the expanded slot (to accommodate large envelopes).
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PPM Invoices Reverting to Draft status
Due to an Oracle issue we are continuing to experience, several submitted invoices are being reverted to "draft" status after submission. Please report when this happens. If you're able to wait (even a day) for ITS to research, please hold off on further action. If it's urgent, we understand, please review these invoices and resubmit for approval; if the invoices are already resubmitted, please ignore this message. We are appreciative of your efforts and patience as we work to resolve this issue immediately with ITS.
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PPM Invoice Transfer Rejections
Due to a recent CIPERB contact update project, an uptick in PPM invoice transfer rejections is occurring; our team is working to resolve these transfer rejections daily. If you receive an email regarding one of these transfer rejections, please be aware that it will be resolved before EOD.
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PPM Contract Amendments: Reminder
To prevent acceptable Contract Amendments from being rejected, please notate the changes when submitting the contract amendment.
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Financial Operations: Announcement
Financial Operations will not have Office Hours for the month of December.
Office hours will resume on Friday, January 17.
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Logistics Operational Update
Please note there may be delays in the services provided by IPPS Logistics November 20-21st due to strike-related staffing shortages. Please visit this Blink Page for the most up to date statuses for all Logistics services. We appreciate your patience and understanding.
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NEW & UPDATED VERSION OF THE DATA GLOSSARY IS NOW LIVE
Over the past six months we've been working on cleaning up and remediating the BI & Financial Reporting Data Glossary. Its previous version was outdated and had many missing/duplicated fields. All the definitions have been cleaned up and vetted by Subject Matter Experts.
This Data Glossary contains definitions for all the fields contained in the Budget & Finance Financial Reports. There you can look up any column that you might need information about, which will help you understand the report you use better.
If you find something in a report that is not defined in the Data Glossary, please submit a ticket here.
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All Fund Management Office Hours recordings and FinOps video content has been moved to Mediaspace. Mediaspace is a UCSD-owned and managed video repository protected by single sign-on. Cloud recordings of your Zoom meetings are automatically saved there, which streamlines content management (no downloading/uploading).
We have leveraged a really great AI transcription software called Notta to generate summaries of everything that was discussed in the recording, including timestamps. Those summaries are included in the description of each video, and Mediaspace's search functionality then allows users to search for any keywords that might be found in the descriptions.
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New Finance Training Series Now Live!
The second and third series in the Finance Training Program are now available in the UC Learning Center!
The second series, Accounting in Oracle for Non-Accountants, provides an overview of governmental accounting at UC San Diego and introduces some of the basic accounting concepts that are unique to governmental entities. The three courses which make up this series include:
- Financial Statement Basics
- Overview of Financial Accounting
- Additional Topics in Accounting and Managerial Reporting
The third series, Intermediate PPM Concepts, builds more mastery over the information found in PPM, managing projects, and understanding your portfolio. The three courses which make up this series include:
- Costs and Committed Costs
- PPM Cost Transfers
- PADUA and Managing General Projects
The Finance Training Program aims to establish a foundation of knowledge, so those with finance-related responsibilities can achieve long-term success. More information about the Finance Training Program, including a roadmap of future courses, is available on the Budget & Finance Training Blink page. If you need assistance, check out our services & support portal (Service: Training and Engagement Support; Service Offering: General Financial System Training Inquiries).
- Getting credit for each series requires that you pass the final assessment with a score of at least 80% at the end of each series.
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Both of these series first require the completion of series 1.
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Electronic Wire Request Form Webinar
Familiarize yourself with Payment Services' updated electronic foreign wire request form for both travel and non-travel wires. We have reconfigured the wire request form to minimize mistakes, reduce input fields, and streamline processing. Learn how to submit travel wire requests and receive an in-depth explanation of how to request foreign currency payments, and more!
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Get Ready for Digital Gift Cards!
Join the Payment Services team to learn about the upcoming Digital Gift Card Programs for Human Subject Compensation and Employee and Non-Employee Gifts and Awards. We’re adding two new pre launch webinars in December. Stay tuned for registration.
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BDP Training and Office Hours
Last week the UCPath Budget Distribution Page (BDP) was launched. As a reminder, the BDP will be used to identify the faculty and staff positions to be included in a department's core recurring staffing list that will drive the compensation expense budgets in EPBCS. CBO will hold several instructor-led training sessions this month in support of the launch, although we recommend gaining access to BDP before you attend.
Starting this week, CBO will also be hosting weekly office hours on Zoom every Thursday from 11am to noon. Please bring any questions you have about BDP to this weekly meeting from October 3 through the end of the year.
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Fund Management Office Hours
Every Thursday 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
At this week’s office hours, we will continue our Uniform Guidance Training Series with a focus on the composition and classification of costs as direct or indirect and discuss how costs should be allocated to awards. Click here for a full schedule (subject to modification).
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ECERT Effort Reporting Office Hours
Come get your questions answered, system access setups, or helpful hints on the effort report certification process.
ECERT OFC hours for the rest of 2024: Join using this link
- Nov 20, 2024 Wednesdays @ 2:30pm
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Dec 3, 2024 Wednesdays @ 2:30pm
- Dec 18, 2024 Wednesdays @ 2:30pm
ECERT OFC hours for 2025: Join using this link
- Once a month beginning January 8, 2025 and every first Wednesday of the month.
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IPPS Office Hours
IPPS holds weekly Office Hours to help with all of your questions related to Procurement, Accounts Payable, Travel and Entertainment, Procurement Card, and Tax & Account/Supplier Setup. This is our schedule:
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ICA 1:1 Sessions
Sign up for 1:1 zoom session with ICA team members!
- Payroll Financial Management team 1:1 sessions have moved from UCPath to ICA.
- Register here for help with Salary Cost Transfers, Direct Retros, Payroll Reconciliations, UCPath Funding Transactions, Composite Benefit Rates (CBR), General Liability (GAEL) & Vacation Leave Assessment (VLA).
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General Ledger Financial Management team
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Register here for help with General Ledger, Capital/ Fixed Assets, Detail Code setup, ITFs, Internal Controls, Oracle Role questions and more.
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Reporting 1:1 Sessions
Sign up for a 1:1 Zoom session to meet with a member of the BI & Financial Reporting team who can answer your specific questions about financial reporting and dashboards/panoramas in the Business Analytics Hub (BAH).
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The Support Framework: Your Guide to Finding Help
Learning all there is to know about budget & finance can feel daunting.
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The Support Framework is designed to help the Budget & Finance community, including faculty or staff with financial responsibilities, identify their resources based on the following questions:
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What can I do on my own?
- Where can I get help?
- Who can help escalate?
- How do I suggest enhancements?
Bookmark or download a copy for quick links to various resources available to you.
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Each Tuesday, the Weekly Digest provides important updates related to
Budget & Finance, including Oracle Financials Cloud and Concur Travel & Expense.
Our goal is to deliver timely information that matters to you.
Not sure where to find answers? Get started using our Support Framework.
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