Financial Administration Offices Closed after 3 p.m. on January 17   back to top

On Wednesday, January 17, the following Financial Administration offices will be closing at 3 p.m. to allow staff to attend our annual holiday party. As in past years, limited staffing will be present in some departments where uninterrupted services are needed by the Harvard community. If you anticipate a special need (or if any emergency arises), please phone the number listed below no later than 2 p.m. on January 17.

A Reminder about the Fiduciary Responsibilities of Authorized Approvers
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Each year, Harvard's Director of Procurement, Bill Hoyt, issues the following reminder regarding the responsibilities -- under federal law and University policy -- of Harvard faculty and staff members authorized to approve purchases and reimbursements:

"By designating you as an authorized approver on one or more accounts, your school or department has given you the responsibility to oversee certain financial transactions (accounts payable and travel) relating to those accounts. When you approve a web voucher, web expense, or STAR transaction, you are certifying that:

1) The purchase was made in the conduct of University business;

2) The goods or services have been received and are satisfactory;

3) The transaction has been properly prepared for payment and adequately documented;

4) The expenditure has been charged to the proper account coding; and

5) To the best of your knowledge, the purchase was made in accordance with University conflict of interest policies as well as any applicable guidelines and regulations promulgated by the federal government. This includes the Anti-Kickback Act of 1986 (41 U.S.C. § 51 et seq.), which prohibits the solicitation, acceptance, and attempted acceptance of any kickback in connection with a federal contract.

The University has a flexible, decentralized purchasing system. Slow payment by one or two departments can damage vendor relationships for everyone. We rely on you to insure that payments are processed in a timely fashion.

We also rely on each local business unit to keep the status of authorized signers current. If you are aware of the planned or recent termination of an authorized approver in your department, notify your local unit security administrator or Financial Administration Applications Administration at appadmin@camail2.harvard.edu.

To achieve savings and improved service, the University has entered into vendor partnerships for travel, office supplies, scientific supplies, express mail, office furniture, floor coverings, temporary help, and scientific gases. For further information, about these programs call 495-5401 or see the Procurement Management web site at http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/procurement. We hope you find these programs useful and cost effective."

New University Guidance on Employee
Gifts and Celebratory Events
Approved by Financial Deans   back to top

A new University financial paper, designed to provide guidance on the often unclear area of employee gifts and parties, was approved by the Financial Deans at their December meeting. This paper does not apply to gifts or celebratory events for donors or alumni who do not hold paid or unpaid Harvard appointments. The paper is located at http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/documents/pdf/employee-gifts.pdf.

University Policy on Capitalization and Depreciation Revised    back to top

FAD has revised the "Tangible Personal Property and Software" section of the University policy on "Capitalization and Depreciation of Property, Plant, and Equipment". The full text of the revised policy is available at: http://able.harvard.edu/policies/acct/index.shtml#3

The purpose of these revisions is to address concerns raised by tubs with regard to this policy as well as to bring the policy into compliance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Here is a synopsis prepared by Vicki Johnson, Harvard University's Director of Finance and Accounting.

1. The first revision of the policy relates to the $5,000 capitalization threshold. The policy states that "capitalized costs of tangible personal property are those costs associated with the acquisition or construction of tangible personal property. The property must have a useful life of two years or more and cost in excess of $5,000 per individual unit. Tangible personal property includes equipment, furniture, fixtures, and vehicles."

One exception has been added to the $5,000 per individual unit requirement. As part of a building acquisition or construction (CIP) project, costs may be incurred to fit out space with new furnishings and equipment. When such purchases are made as part of an acquisition/ construction project, if the aggregate cost of these expenditures exceeds $5,000 and the items have a useful life of two years or more, the costs may be capitalized even though some of the individual items cost less than $5,000.

However, only allowable capitalizable items (i.e., items having a useful life of two years or more) may be included in the amount capitalized. Because the useful lives of furnishings and equipment differ from the useful life of the building, furnishings and equipment may not be capitalized as part of the building, but must be separately accounted for in the appropriate object code.

2. The second revision relates to the allowance of capitalization of certain costs for software site licenses when they are debt-financed.

3. Finally, a section has been added discussing internally developed software and the rules surrounding what related costs must be capitalized and what costs must be expensed.

Vendor Hotline Now Has E-mail  back to top

In addition to calling 5-2000 or faxing 6-3196 to request that a new vendor be set up in the system, you may now e-mail your requests to: AP_VendorHotline@harvard.edu

As always, your request should include the full name of the vendor, the pay site, and the Federal Tax ID or Social Security number. If complete, your request will be fulfilled within 24 hours.

For Users of the Estimated Income
from Endowment (EIE)
and Detailed Listing Lite Reports   back to top

With the FY02 budget process beginning in many units, the need may arise to consult the EIE report to get an estimate of endowment income from each fund.

The endowment distribution tables have been updated and the EIE report can now be run to get endowment income distribution estimates for the next fiscal year. To run the report for next year's estimates, leave the report period, start, and end date as the defaults that appear on your screen. The reporting team recognizes that the period selections are misleading (i.e., "CFY Estimate" should really be called "Next Year's Estimate") and will be modifying them in the coming weeks to make them more intuitive. If you have any questions about running or interpreting this report, contact Joe DeCristoforo in General Accounting at 495-4592 or joe_decristoforo@harvard.edu.

The unit values for the past ten fiscal years and for each month in the fiscal year to date are now available on ABLE here.

In addition, AWS2 and HUDINI product manager Dave Waxman writes, "I'd like to remind users that there is an abbreviated version of the Detail Listing known as the "Detail Listing Lite." The "Lite" version is identical to the regular version, except four columns have been removed to improve readability. The excluded columns are Journal Source, Journal Category, Journal Header, and Units.

"Additionally, a new feature has been added to the "Lite" version that distinguishes itself from the regular version. You will note the inclusion of the two-digit year within the transaction dates. This is most helpful to those in the sponsored community who run details spanning fiscal years. This was not included in the regular detail listing as it would add three characters to the width of an already difficult report to read (i.e., we'd have to make it smaller to fit)."

How to Print General Ledger Journals 
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Many General Ledger users want to generate a hard copy record of individual journals for reconciliation, backup documentation, or other purposes, but don't know that this can be done from within the GL application itself. Here are two ways to print journals from General Ledger:

1) Generate a Print Screen

With the journal open on your screen, select Print from the Action menu. This command sends a screen shot directly to your local default printer.

Pros:

• Quick and easy-to-use standard feature.
• Can be used to print either posted or not-yet-posted journals.

Cons:

• If the journal's lines contain more than one screen's worth of data, you'll have to scroll down until the lines you want to print are visible and then select Print from the Action menu again. In other words, you'll have to execute the print screen command multiple times to get the whole journal.
• No file is created by this feature, so you cannot save as a soft-copy.
• For journals created today, the status is unposted until nightly processing. Printing a copy of the journal out of OLTP may lead to a false impression that the journal was successfully posted. When you print a journal you just created, you need to remember that its status is still unposted.

Note: With the Release 11 upgrade, some users found that this feature no longer worked for them. The problem is due to a missing driver that needs to loaded on some HP printers. Call the UIS Helpdesk at 6-2001 or your local desktop support provider if you experience this problem.

2) Export the Journal

With the journal open on your screen and your cursor in one of the journal's lines, select Export from the Action menu. If this is the first time you've exported a journal, the system will ask you to either pick an application to open the exported file with or to save the file locally.

• If you pick an application (for example, Excel), then every time you choose to open a file while exporting it the file will be opened with that application.
• If you save the file locally you can name and store it wherever you want. You can then open, edit, and save it with the application of your choice (for example, Excel).

In both cases, only the journal lines are exported, so to get header information you have to enter it directly in the exported file.

Pros:

• Quick and easy-to-use standard feature.
• You can name the file in a way that is meaningful or informative to you and store it on any drive or directory that you have access to.
• Once the file is saved, you can edit it as you wish.
• The file can be imported into a variety of applications (for example, Excel, Word, Access, Notepad).

Cons:

• Only the Journal Lines are exported, not the Batch or Header information.
• You have to save the file first and then open it in the application of your choice in order to print out a hard copy.
• Again, for journals created today, the status is unposted until nightly processing. Printing a copy of the journal out of OLTP may lead to a false impression that the journal was successfully posted. When you print a journal you just created, you need to remember that its status is still unposted.

Generating a Report of a Journal in HUDINI

As well as printing reports from General Ledger, you can also generate a report of the journal using HUDINI. Here's how:

Log onto HUDINI and select Reports > Financial > Journals - General from the menu. This will open a window for you to set the report parameters. When these are set (see the example below), click OK and submit. As with all HUDINI reports, you can see your results in the View Requests screen. Select your report by highlighting it and hit the View Report button.

Here's an example of how to set the report parameters.

If you are looking up a manual journal prepared in December, but you're not sure which day, you could enter these parameters:

Type: Line Item
Posting Status: Posted
Currency: USD
Period: DEC-00
Start Date: Leave blank if you don't know the exact date
End Date: Leave blank if you don't know the exact date
Source: Manual
Batch Name: Click the list of values button and select your Journal Batch (assuming you recognize the naming convention you used when preparing your journals)

Pros:

• The report has both Batch Header information and all of the journal lines.
• The report is nicely formatted.

Cons:

• For journals created today, you must wait one day (until nightly processing) to find your journal in HUDINI.
  

About the e-News   back to top

The Financial Administration publishes this semi-monthly electronic newsletter for users of Harvard University's financial systems, policies, and procedures. Generally, the e-News is published on or around the 12th and 26th of each month.

It contains:

• updates on projects underway to build or improve University financial systems;
• information about new University financial policies, procedures, and forms;
• reminders about upcoming deadlines and cut-over dates;
• tips and tricks for working more easily or productively.

We welcome questions and suggestions for improvement from readers. If your questions are of general interest, we will answer them in future issues.

Please send comments, questions, or suggestions for improvement by email to us at: fad_communications@harvard.edu