Dear Campus Community,
As we welcome everyone to the new academic year and as SUNY emerges from the COVID 19 pandemic, we’d like to introduce you to new staff, reaffirm new processes, and make you aware of the many fiscal challenges for the System and SUNY New Paltz that remain. To that end, many System Administration wide restrictions on spending and travel will continue until further notice and are highlighted below.
In addition, all travel, purchasing and accounts payable documentation should continue to be scanned and emailed to the appropriate inbox when you return to campus. Please do not revert to filling out paper forms and mailing them to the offices. We have made great inroads in “virtually” managing the workload and would like to continue doing so. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.
Travel
I am pleased to announce that Tammy Gray has joined the finance and administration team as the travel coordinator. She will be a resource for faculty and staff with all logistics prior to trips and will be responsible for auditing and processing all travel reimbursements. All questions regarding travel reimbursements can be directed to her attention as can all reimbursement forms and receipts. Please be sure to always use the most up to date forms by locating them on the Forms page of mynewpaltz.edu. Tammy will also be the campus contact for the travel card program (similar to the campus P-card program) which will eliminate your need to charge expenses to your personal credit card. Her contact information is 845-257-3178, grayt@newpaltz.edu
Work-related travel will be very limited this year and will continue to require pre-approval by the Provost or the divisional Vice President. International travel is banned until further notice. As of this time, the state of New York has lifted the travel ban across the United States but it will be your responsibility to remain current with any updates by regularly visiting the NYS COVID 19 Travel Advisory website.
All pre-approved travel requisitions must be submitted to the travel office prior to your travel taking place. If travel is not pre-approved, it will not be reimbursed.
All Travel and NET cards have been deactivated to discourage fraudulent activity. When your travel is pre-approved, we will activate your travel/net card for use.
You no longer need to mail original forms and receipts to the travel department, All documentation and receipts can be scanned and emailed to the Travel Office at travel@newpaltz.edu.
Purchasing
As a reminder, all purchase requests at this time should be related to health and safety concerns or should be purchases that cannot be delayed due to programmatic requirements. Discretionary purchases that cannot be made at a later date will require an explanation as to why the delay would have a negative impact on the college.
All purchase requests continue to require review and approval by the divisional Vice President (or designee) before being forwarded to the purchasing office. All P-card purchases should also have the Vice President’s (or designee) approval as part of the documentation. In order to facilitate our current requirements for expending funds, we ask that you use the FY 21-22 Purchase or Contract Expenditure Approval Form and submit it to the purchasing office along with your requisition justifying the need for the purchase during this time. This form should also be completed and retained with all p-card support documentation.
For those of you that utilize university wide accounts (U-wide accounts), please note that pre-approvals are still required from System Administration for purchases over $250.00.).
Managed Print Initiative
The Chancellor’s office has directed SUNY to dramatically change the print landscape across the system and their goal is to reduce print and paper volume. In order to reach this goal, we have been asked to eliminate all local (non-networked) devices and stand-alone fax machines. This means that we will not approve purchases for new individual printers and/or stand-alone fax machines going forward. Scanner purchases will require review and approval by IT Services and we ask that paper purchases be kept to a minimum. Requests for larger departmental multiplex machines will be carefully reviewed and System Administration will approve such purchases going forward.
We ask that departments work with a neighboring department to share printers (for small jobs) or with the campus print shop (for larger jobs). Maintenance agreements are also being scrutinized at this time and if approved, will be for a 6 month or 12 month maximum. In many instances they might not be approved and the department will be required to phase out the maintenance of the printer/fax. We understand that this may impact the way the department is accustomed to working but this SUNY initiative stands to save our campus approximately $280,000 per year and over $13,000,000 for SUNY as a whole. A campus team will be convened over the summer that will manage this initiative for the campus. Further information will be forthcoming regarding this project.
Please contact myself or Michele Halstead halsteam@newpaltz.edu if you have any questions. Thank you for your time and your continued cooperation!
Sincerely,
Julie Majak
AVP for Administration
