Business Matters August 2004

BU$INE$$ MATTER$

P-CARD: P-card transactions posted through August 13, 2004 are in your August reports.

MEETING: Campus Financial Meetings have been scheduled as follows:

Wednesday, September 29, 2004 from 3 - 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, October 27, 2004 from 3 - 4:30 p.m.

All meetings will be held in the Human Resources and Training Center room 141/145. If you cannot make it to the meeting, please visit the web site at: http://www.finance.ohiou.edu/campusfmtg/ for access to information discussed at the meeting. This information is usually posted by the end of the day on the Friday following the meeting.

AUGUST BUDGET AMOUNTS: The budget amounts in your August reports should represent your purchase order carryforward budget and your original budget load. We hope the carryforward budget load will take place in September. You will be notified via email once the carryforward budget is in the system so you can use the OU Funds Available View to access this information.

CARRYFORWARD FUNDS: Effective fiscal year 2005 expenditures and encumbrances will not be permitted in the carryforward fund. A Budget Transfer form should be used to move budget dollars from carryforward accounts. This form must be accompanied by a detailed explanation of how the funds will be utilized.

RI ACCOUNTS: Research Incentive accounts will be brought up to date in September for FY 05 activity. This will include your budget allocations for the months of July, August, and September. We also hope to have carryforward budgets loaded as well.

M210 REPORT MODIFICATION: The M210 report has been modified to show the true end date of the project. Before, there had been 90 days added to the end date to permit final costs to be processed, but the report has now been modified to display the true end date.

OU FUNDS AVAILABLE VIEW: You may have noticed some enhancements made to the OU Funds Available View. These enhancements include:

- addition of the Segment Value Listing button to easily link you to a listing of valid segment values for the chart of accounts

- addition of a “Total Obligations” line on the Cost Center Detail screen to sum all the 100000 through 999999 natural accounts similar to the M100 report.

- an email will be received when generating an income statement even when no data is found

- the income statement “YTD Amt” now includes the “Encumb” amount

- a “YTD” total was added for each month on the Detail Ledger Activity screen

- there is now an icon to drill down to the other views

- the project description now populates the spreadsheet when the Cost Center Summary screen is downloaded

- there is now a “Select All” check box on the Cost Center Summary screen

- this view can now be used to query balance sheet accounts

If you have any problems or questions regarding this view, please contact Frontline at 7-8000 or frontline@ohio.edu

PA ACCOUNT RECIPIENTS: Beginning in September, recipients of the Project Accounting module accounts (Grants, Contracts, and Plant Fund accounts) will receive e-mail alerts entitled “Project/Task Status Notifications”. The e-mail, which will include an attachment, will be sent to Key Members of the projects, Budget Unit Managers, and Organization Managers. It will notify you when 80%, 90%, or 100% of the project budget is spent or if it is overspent. It will also notify you when the project/task is expiring in 90 days, 30 days, or has expired. The process to run the emails will be submitted weekly.

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE – PAYING RESEARCH SUBJECTS: Guidance for paying research subjects is now available in the Accounting Manual web pages. It can be found using the following link: http://www.finance.ohiou.edu/accounting/index.htm and clicking on “RESEARCH SUBJECTS, PAYING” in the list of topic names.

Please contact Ruth McCall-King at mccall@ohio.edu with comments or suggestions for the Accounting Manual web pages.

TRAVEL REMINDERS: A revised travel policy has been approved and uploaded to the web. It can be found at: http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/policy/41-121.html.

All employees traveling for business purposes should be familiar with this policy prior to making travel arrangements. Upon completion of the travel, each employee should submit the appropriate documentation (conference agenda, meeting invitation, recruiting log, etc) attached to the Travel Expense Report (TER) or monthly P-card statement, whichever is applicable.

STUDENT HIRES: All necessary forms to hire student employees are now available on the web at: http://www.finance.ohiou.edu/forms/index.htm#student These include the Direct Deposit form, I-9, PERS Exemption, Student Employee Information Sheet, etc.

CHECK RUNS: Payment Services will be changing the days for check runs from Monday and Wednesday to Tuesday and Thursday. This change will take effect the second week of September.

EQUIPMENT INVENTORY: Equipment Inventory audits were sent out via email and campus mail the week of August 2, 2004. This is the first time the inventory list has been sent electronically. The inventory list was attached in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet along with instructions and the “Certification of Movable Equipment Inventory” form. When the Excel spreadsheet is opened, the columns and print format will need to be adjusted before printing.

If the department chair did not receive the inventory list or someone needs to be added to the email list, please contact Michelle Schall at schall@ohio.edu. In the future, Equipment Inventory will be sending the quarterly reports out via email and the year end (June 30^th) reports by hard copy and email. The “Certification of Movable Equipment Inventory” form is due back to the Equipment Inventory Office on October 31, 2004.

We are excited to offer the inventory list to everyone in an Excel format and hope this will make it easier to track the department's equipment. A big thank you goes out to Lisa Conatser for her assistance in making this happen. Please feel free to email me at schall@ohio.edu with any feedback you may have. We are trying to make this process as easy as possible for all involved.