ADMINISTRATIVE NEWS - December 2007
Accounting System Cycle Improvements
Shared Financial System - Powerpoint Overview / View as a web page
Status of SFS During Program Release 2008
Moving Purchasing Card to SFS Format
SFS Project Code ID Changes
Status of SFS During Program Release 2008
On February 8, 2008, SFS will be taken down to prepare for the Program Release. See http://www.vc.wisc.edu/ProgramRelease/ for more information about the full extent of the Program Release. We estimate the down time to be 2 weeks.
We understand that this will cause difficulty for the campus community and are working to minimize the impact as much as possible. During this outage, payment transaction processing including invoice payments against purchase orders, direct payments, TERs, PIRs and Travel Advances will not be available in normal processing mode. Emergency procedures will be available to make those payments on a limited basis.
Salary and non-salary cost transfer processes will not be available until SFS comes back up.
All procurement transactions will be available, including Purchasing Cards, MDS Prime Vendors, and Purchase Orders. Cash deposits will continue to be made during the down time. Revenue and Sales Credit transfers will continue to be processed. None of these transactions will appear in WISDM until SFS comes back up.
Financial information accessed primarily through WISDM will be available only in a frozen form as of the Program Release date, until SFS comes back up later in February.
More details on these matters including a grid of dates and deadlines and descriptions of new features in SFS after the Program release are available on the Business Services website from the Business Process Changes for the 2008 Program Release site at http://www.bussvc.wisc.edu/sfs/progrel/index.html. Please check this site often as new information is being added to answer frequently asked questions.
Moving Purchasing Card to SFS Format
Plans are underway to convert the Purchasing Card PVS Net funding fields from the UW-Madison legacy mainframe accounting system format to the Shared Financial System coding. See http://www.bussvc.wisc.edu/acct/coding.html for descriptions of both coding schemes.
The Purchasing Card staff is working with US Bank to convert the reallocation fields in PVS Net to the new layout and TSYS iSolutions (formerly ProCard) to create a new Mapper file that translates to the SFS fields. For more information please see the article, “Converting Purchasing Card Program to SFS Funding,” in this newsletter.
SFS Project Code ID Changes
The Program Release brings with it a number of changes to financial processes across campus. One of those changes is a change in the Project Code ID format.
We have been using two formats in the past for the Project/Account Code. In Accounting Legacy and Payroll we have been using a 4-digit Project/Account code in the past. With the implementation of the SFS accounting system in 2001 we adopted a 7-digit Project ID where the first 3-digits are the fund number with the last 4-digits usually sequentially assigned by either Research and Sponsored Programs or Accounting Services (e.g. Fund 133, Project 133X400). For the Payroll System we use the last 4-digits of the 7-digit project code as part of the funding string (e.g. X400) to identify the project or grant to which salaries are to be charged.
As of Program Release, all new project code numbers issued by RSP will start with “PRJ” as the first 3-characters with the last 4-characters for all projects being automatically sequentially assigned, e.g. PRJ12CB. All current, ongoing project codes will not change with the Program Release (e.g. 133X400 above).
In the Payroll System, we will continue to use the last 4-digits of the 7-digit project code. For example, project code 144MN08 will use “MN08” for payroll; project PRJ12CB will use “12CB” for payroll. Salary Cost Transfers will continue to use the SFS accounting string which includes the 7-digit project code.
The new external Requisition Generator process will use the 7-digit project code in conjunction with the SFS funding string.
Most transactions in the SFS Accounting System have already been converted to use the 7-digit project code. As of the Program Release, we will expect all accounting transactions coming into the SFS Accounting System to use funding strings with the 7-digit project number included. All accounting forms available on the Business Services website will be changed to reflect the 7-digit project code.