Budget & Finance Weekly Digest - 12/12/2023

Announcements, Training & Support, Reporting

December 12th, 2023 | 151st Edition

Oracle Scheduled Maintenance on 12/15/2023

Oracle production environment will be down for maintenance from 7:00 PM Friday 12/15/2023 through 7:00 PM Sunday 12/17/2023.

PaymentWorks: Enhancements to Invitation Form

A new feature has just been released in PaymentWorks that allows campus clients to choose whether their payee fills out a registration form for a Purchase Order payee, or a registration form for a Non-Purchase Order payee. For more information about the changes, check out this video: PaymentWorks: Enhancements to Invitation Form.

In support of this new release, the IPPS Tech team will be in Office Hours on December 13th and 15th to answer any questions. Training and guidance are also available on the PaymentWorks Blink page.

Foundation Recurring Transfers

You are encouraged to set up a recurring transfer for your Foundation funds (fund number begins A-L). The available full balance will be transferred to your specified chart string monthly, reducing your administrative burden to submit individual requests. Any unspent balance will carry forward year to year, so there is no need to wait to transfer funds. This will also make seeing your full balances on existing BAH reports easier.

To make this request, complete a Foundation request for funds form leaving the amount field blank and checking the recurring box. Submit your completed form to UC San Diego Services & Support Portal, About: Gift Funds; Related to: Gift Fund Setup & Transfer; More Specifically: Foundation Requests for Funds Transfer.

Accounts Receivable: Receivables Invoice DFFs no longer drive accounting

Effective 12/09/23, the Miscellaneous (DFF) fields for Fund, Financial Unit and Location will no longer be used in the accounting of the invoice and will be read only. Invoice Accounting will be derived from user input on the Invoice Line Distributions. See step 18 here: KB0032814: How to Create an Invoice in Receivables.

Accounts Receivable Information regarding Restricted Party List - Export Control

Per the Restricted Party Screening Guide, personnel must only accept incoming payments from customers/countries that are permitted. Please ensure that requests from Foreign entities seeking wire instructions are not listed on the U.S. restriction list; this includes requests for new customers created in Oracle.

It is the department's responsibility to ensure their customers are not documented on the list; please be sure to monitor it on a regular basis, as it is routinely updated.

Cash & Merchant Services: Deadline

The deadline for providing checks to the Cashier's Office for final processing is December 22, 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).

Watch recorded office hours and more on our UC San Diego Budget & Finance YouTube channel.

ECERT Effort Reporting Office Hours
Every Wednesday @ 2:30pm - 3:30pm
Come get your questions answered, system access setups, or helpful hints on the effort report certification process.

Fund Management Office Hours
Every Thursday @ 11:00am - 12:00pm

You've heard of ChatGPT, OpenAI's generative artificial intelligence tool that can engage in intelligent conversations, provide insightful information on a wide range of topics, and adapt its responses to suit various contexts and user needs. Now get ready for TritonGPT and the Fund Manager Coach, UC San Diego's groundbreaking extension of this technology tailored specifically for fund managers. Designed to harness the power of generative AI, TritonGPT will offer an unparalleled level of expertise in the finance domain, empowering fund managers to ask targeted questions and receive knowledgeable answers, revolutionizing the way they navigate complex financial landscapes.

At this Fund Manager Office Hours, Antonio Nava from Operational Strategic Initiatives will be unveiling TritonGPT, providing an exclusive live demo of its capabilities, and actively seeking feedback from fund managers. Join us for an interactive session that puts you at the forefront of shaping the next evolution in fund management tools! (this message brought to you by ChatGPT)

Financial Operations Office Hours

Friday, December 15 @ 9:00am - 10:00am

Join the Financial Operations team this Friday for updates from Accounts Receivable, Strategic Design, Cash & Merchant Services and Equipment Management, Open Q&A. As always we will have open forum discussions, any updates we might have to share with you, and general Q&A sessions. We look forward to seeing you there!

Internal Controls & Accounting Office Hours

Canceled session Wednesday, December 27th due to campus closure

Internal Controls & Accounting office hours are held the last Wednesday of each month, but will be canceled for December 2023 and will resume in January 2024. In addition, we will be offering 1:1 zoom sessions with ICA team members in the new year. Happy Holidays!

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).

Click to access the Event Calendar on Blink, which showcases a consolidated view of Office Hours, Instructor-Led Training sessions, and Hot Topics. Be sure to try out the different calendar views in the upper right corner!

Cognos Reports & Dashboards - Prompt Page Redesign

We heard you! Thanks to your feedback, the layout and design of all financial Cognos report prompt pages have been refreshed. Changes were made to modernize and standardize the look and feel of the prompt pages across all financial Cognos reports. Specific changes that were made include:

Section headers: Prompts are now grouped categorically so that they are always nested under the same section for every report
Standardized buttons:
- Direct links to services, support, and documentation for extra help are now consistently available
- Reset and finish buttons are now at the top and bottom of every report
Standardized prompts: All prompts are now consistent with each other on every report

These changes have been applied to the following reports:

Project Management Dashboard
Transaction Details
Expanded Project Summary
GL Project Balances
GL Fund Balances
GL-PPM Reconciliation
Department Operations
Default Project Payroll

For all other financial Cognos reports not listed above, these changes will go into effect in the following months.

Extra special thanks to those who participated in the prompt page redesign focus group: Tom Bernal, Gaye Hill, Jeff Woods, Thomas Joyce, Janice Wu, Diane Girling, Teresa Wassum, Hannah Van Etten, David Grayson, Kim Nguyen Wong, Taylor Benarieh, Janice Wu, Janessa Goncalves, Shan Poon, Fritz Leader, Angela Robles, and Katy Schoeneweis.

Enhancements Release: Transaction Details Report

We have made significant enhancements to the Transaction Details report that will improve the user experience. Changes to look out for:

New PPM High-Risk Ledger Review report display: The new report display allows users to conduct their high-risk ledger review in fewer clicks. The following changes have been made which will greatly reduce the number of rows to review:
- Excludes transaction number, expenditure batch, and original transaction reference fields. As a result of this change, you will only see one row per invoice line distribution. To drill through to view all transactions for a PO or Invoice, click on the new “View Transactions” field.
- NGN, HSIT, General Liability, Tuition Remission, and equipment are no longer considered to be high risk expenditure types on sponsored projects.
- Automatically excludes net zero items (transactions that have been transferred off the project-task)
PPM Full: The following fields were added to streamline travel expense review: Expense Report ID, Expense Report Name, and Expense Report Submitted by User.
PPM Commitments: For commitment numbers starting with “KRS”, the supplier is now the subrecipient of the subaward.

Enhancements Release: Expanded Project Summary

The report is now searchable by award to enable users to seamlessly view details for an award with multiple projects.
Use the optional table selector on the prompt page to limit the tables shown on the GL page as well as on the PPM page.
A box for Project Notes has been added to the upper right of the page. Review KB0034618: How to Add Notes to a Project for instructions.
A new Subaward Details page helps you review subaward invoicing progress.
See at a glance whether an award has animal or human subject protocols in place with the Y/N indicator at the top of the report.
A new summary for clinical trials will focus on revenue- and cash-based balances rather than budget-based balances.
Cost Details can now be filtered by Expenditure Category or Expenditure Type to narrow in on specific types of costs.
A Transaction Invoice Receipt Amount column has been added to the Revenue Details table to show whether invoices have been paid.
A financial unit column has been added to the summary on the GL Page.
A column for Cost Transfer Code has been added to the Payroll Details table.

Enhancements Release: Project Management Dashboard

New pages/buttons:

Payroll projections: View payroll projections for the entire portfolio at once
High-risk ledger review: One click to the Transaction Details High-Risk Ledger Review for your selected portfolio.

New on-page prompts allow you to adjust settings without returning to the prompt page:

PI/Project Manager/Task Manager
Period end date

New download option:

A button has been added to download an unformatted version of the Summary page to Excel.