FY2002 Year-End Closing Schedule
for Financial Transactions   top

Harvard's fiscal year 2002 will end on Friday, June 28. As in the past, we will close the books through a series of steps called "closings." In the paragraphs that follow, you will find closing deadline and submission information for the following financial transactions (click on a transaction to jump to that section of the e-News):

• Web Voucher vendor payments
  • Petty cash fund settlement
  • New vendor setup
• Credit vouchers (cash receipts)
• Massachusetts taxable sales deposits
• Foreign check deposits (credit vouchers)
• Voided checks
• Stopped and redeposited checks
• Foreign currency payments (drafts and wires)
• U.S. wire transfers
• Purchasing card transactions
• Travel authorization forms
• Web Voucher expense reimbursements
  • Web Voucher advance settlements
• General Accounts Receivable billings
• Manual journal entries
• Interdepartmental billings
• Cost transfer requests on Sponsored funds

The deadlines provided are the last allowable dates to submit transactions.

Note that these are the Office of Financial Services deadlines. Since some departments have internal deadlines that differ from these, you should check with your department's financial office to obtain any departmentally defined deadlines.

Reporting tips are also included in this e-News. We expect exceptional reporting demands during the year-end closings. Following our suggestions on reporting will reduce the time required to run your reports.

Web Voucher Vendor Payments    back  

To be included in FY2002, Web Voucher vendor payments must be entered and approved online and the related invoices must be received by the Accounts Payable office by 5 p.m. on Friday, June 28, except for foreign currency drafts and wires and US wire transfers (see below).

If you purchase items late in the fiscal year that you want charged in FY2002, be sure to request immediate billing from vendors so that you can meet these deadlines.

Petty Cash Fund Settlement
If you maintain a departmental petty cash fund, you must submit your petty cash log for reimbursement to Accounts Payable by 5 p.m. on Friday, June 28 if you want the charges to be included in FY2002.

New Vendor Setup
New vendors that need to be set up in the system in order to process June web vouchers will be accepted by the Vendor Hotline (617-495-2000) until Thursday, June 27 at 5 p.m. When making a payment to a new University vendor or individual, you must obtain the required vendor information and call the Vendor Hotline at 5-2000 to set up the vendor / individual in the vendor file. To comply with IRS regulations, the Vendor Hotline must have required vendor information. Incomplete vendor information could result in a delay in payment to the vendor. To determine what information is required, refer to the guidelines published on ABLE.

Credit Vouchers (Cash Receipts)    back

Credit vouchers accompanied by cash or checks will be accepted by the Cash Receipts office, Holyoke 453, until 12 noon on Thursday, June 27.

Massachusetts Taxable Sales Deposits    back

All Massachusetts Taxable Sales forms with a validated bank deposit ticket for deposits made in May or June must be delivered to Cash Management, Holyoke 451, by 5 p.m. Friday, June 21. In order to allow for sufficient processing time and to meet the deadline for FY02, the paperwork for all deposits made from June 24 through June 27 must be delivered on a daily basis to Cash Management. Deposit forms and validated bank deposit tickets for deposits made on June 28 must be delivered to Cash Management by 5 p.m. on June 28 in order to recognize the income in FY02. On June 28 Cash Management will not accept or process any deposits that were validated any other day.

Foreign Check Deposits (credit vouchers)    back

Credit vouchers accompanied by foreign checks that need to be sent to the bank for collection should be deposited into the Cash Receipts Office, Holyoke 453, by 5 p.m. Friday, June 7. Because each bank and country's collection times and processes are different, we cannot guarantee that we will receive credit from the bank for these checks before June 28.

The University has an agreement with Fleet bank to receive provisional credit on most common foreign currencies, and the June 7 deadline may be your best opportunity to collect these funds and recognize the income in FY2002. It is extremely important that you deposit these checks with Cash Receipts immediately upon receiving them.

Voided Checks    back

All checks that need to be voided and redeposited must be received by Cash Management, Holyoke 451, by 5 p.m. Friday, June 21 in order for the credit to be included in FY2002.

Stopped and Redeposited Checks    back

All checks that need to be stopped and redeposited must be received by Cash Management by 5 p.m. Friday, June 21 in order for the credit to be included in FY2002.

Foreign Currency Drafts and Wires    back

Web Voucher payments to be made in foreign currency must be entered and approved online and the related invoices must be received by Cash Management, Holyoke 451, no later than Friday, June 21 at 5 p.m. Note that these invoices must have a bank draft authorization form or a wire transfer authorization form attached to the front of the invoice.

US Wire Transfers    back

Vendor payments to be wire transferred must be entered and approved online in the Web Voucher system with related invoices received by Cash Management no later than Thursday, June 27 at 5 p.m. Note that these invoices must have a wire transfer authorization form attached to the front of the invoice.

Purchasing Card Transactions    back

In order to ensure that as many current PCard transactions as possible are swept in this fiscal year, there will be three PCard sweeps the week of June 24. For your convenience, here is a list of FY02 year-end sweeps:

PCard settlement system users will have until 4 p.m. on each sweep date to log onto the system and review transactions scheduled to be swept that day. However, users are encouraged to log onto the system the week of June 17 and early in the week of June 24 (on Monday and Tuesday) to review as many transactions as possible. Users should try to review all transactions to be swept on Wednesday, June 26 and Thursday, June 27 by Monday or Tuesday of that week.

Users should also review any transactions to be swept on Friday, June 28 as they appear on the system throughout the week. All transactions to be swept at 4 p.m. will be on the system that Friday morning.

Please note that there is no way to determine a final day on which users can make PCard purchases and assure that those transactions will be swept in FY2002, since timing is dependent on vendors and other factors.

The first sweep in the new fiscal year will occur on Thursday, July 18.

Travel Authorization Forms    back

As discussed in a later article of this e-News, the Harvard Travel Center will discontinue use of the paper Travel Authorization Form as of July 1, 2002. If it is important to your department that air travel expenditures for FY2002 get processed in FY2002 then you must get the paper TAF to the Harvard Travel Center by 5 p.m. on Thursday, May 23. After this date, the Travel Office recommends the use of the American Express card with the Harvard Travel Center between Friday, May 24 and Friday, June 28 to ensure that charges appear in FY2002.

Web Voucher Travel Authorization Forms
TAFs processed in the Web Voucher system by 5 p.m. on Thursday, June 20 will be included in FY2002. Again, the Travel Office recommends the use of the American Express credit card with the Harvard Travel Center between Friday, June 21 and Friday, June 28 to ensure that charges appear in FY2002.

Web Voucher Reimbursements    back

Web Voucher reimbursements not requiring tax pre-audit will be accepted by the Holyoke Travel Office until 5 p.m. on Friday, June 28. Reimbursement requests requiring tax pre-audit will be accepted until 5 p.m. on Wednesday, June 26. Web Voucher advance settlements will be accepted by the Holyoke Travel Office until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, June 26.

General Accounts Receivable Billing    back

Invoices and credit memos processed by the tubs can be entered into the AR system until 10 a.m. on Monday, July 1.

Accounts Receivable invoices and credit memos for nonstudent-related billings that are to be data entered into the system by the AR Department will be accepted by that office until 5 p.m. on Wednesday, June 26. As a reminder, the AR Department will process invoices for those departments that process fewer than ten invoices per month. Units that process more than ten per month are responsible for entering the invoices and credit memos themselves.

AR feeds to be included in FY2002 need to be entered into the Oracle AR system by 2 p.m. on Friday, June 28.

Manual Journal Entries    back

General Ledger journals are now entered directly by users. Please keep in mind the following:

• Based on departmental activity and the reports you run through the month of May, please make any necessary adjustments as early in June as possible.
  
  
• The University is closed on Thursday, July 4 for the holiday. Therefore, there will be no journal vouchers posted to the General Ledger or recorded in the Data Warehouse on that day. Because the following day is the first closing, we are extending the journal data entry deadline to Friday, July 5 at 8 a.m. That means that any journals entered into the system after 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 3 until 8 a.m. on Friday, July 5 will be posted to the General Ledger on Friday, July 5 and recorded in the Data Warehouse on Saturday, July 6. Providing this extra time is intended to allow local units to process those entries necessary for the first closing.
  
  
• During the week of the first closing, journals for the month of June will be posted to the General Ledger at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and available in the Data Warehouse the next day. Because Thursday, July 4 is a holiday, no journals will be posted on that day. As noted above, the deadline for entering first close journal vouchers is Friday, July 5 at 8 a.m. For the second and third closings, from Monday through Thursday journals for the month of June will be posted to the General Ledger at 6:30 p.m. Therefore, journals must be entered by 6:30 p.m. in order to be posted and recorded in the Data Warehouse for the next day. Note that any June journals entered on Friday during the second and third closings will not be posted until the following Monday at 6:30 p.m.
  
  
• During the month of June, the period of July 2002 will also be open. Be careful to select the proper period (JUN-02 vs. JUL-02) when entering a journal.
  
  
• Entries may not be posted to account coding owned by another tub after the second closing without authorization from the financial office of the tub being charged. Individuals processing journals have personal responsibility to ensure that they follow this requirement.
  
  
• A journal should only be reversed by the person who created the journal, or with the permission of the person who created the journal.
  

Interdepartmental Billings    back

All interdepartmental billings -- whether on a journal or via a feed to the General Ledger -- must be processed by the end of the second closing. (GL billing feeds are generally submitted by service centers such as UIS and UOS.) An interdepartmental billing journal should be processed in the third closing only if permission has been obtained from the financial office of the tub being charged.

As described above under the Manual Journal Entries deadlines, during the first three closings, activity for the month of June will be posted to the General Ledger at 6:30 p.m. from Monday through Thursday. (The one exception is July 4, when the University is closed. Any feeds entered in the system on that day will not be posted until Monday, July 9). Therefore, feeds must be entered by 5 p.m. and manual journals by 6:30 p.m. in order to be posted and recorded in the Data Warehouse for the next day. Note that any June journals or feeds entered on Friday will not be posted until the following Monday at 6:30 p.m.

A journal should only be reversed by the person who created the journal, or with the permission of the person who created the journal. Interdepartmental billings should provide a name and contact number on the journal for questions or concerns you may have.

Cost Transfer Requests on Sponsored Funds    back

These dates apply to ALL requests for cost transfers to sponsored funds (funds in the range from 100000-199999). Note that these requests may require supporting documentation.

Cost transfer requests should be submitted directly to OSR. OSR will review the request and any necessary documentation for appropriateness. OSR will then enter the cost transfer journals into the General Ledger. Note that OSR only enters cost transfer journals during the year-end closing process.

Reporting Tips   top

Schedule your closing reports to run over the weekend whenever possible. AWS2 and HUDINI offer the option of running reports immediately or at a later date.

In AWS2, to run an individual report over the weekend, enter the following parameters under "Schedule Options" when submitting your report request:

• for RUN REPORT, choose WEEKLY
• for TIME PERIOD, enter SATURDAY or SUNDAY
• for START DATE , enter Friday's date
• for END DATE, enter Monday's date

In HUDINI, to run an individual report over the weekend, enter the following parameters under "Schedule Options" when submitting your report request:

• for RUN REPORT, choose DAILY
• for START DATE , enter Saturday's date
• for END DATE, enter Sunday's date

If you would like closing results, closing periods will be available as selections in the Detail Listing. You will be able to choose the specific close (First Close, Second Close, etc.) from the report period picklist. Note that the start and end dates populated for these periods will display July dates. For these closing periods only, these dates refer to the actual entry dates of fiscal month June entries. We strongly recommend that you take advantage of using the closing period parameter to narrow the scope of your data rather than requesting all of the Prior Fiscal Year data through the close periods.

For Fiscal Year 2002 the close start and end dates are:

First Close: Fiscal June entries from June 1 through July 5
Second Close: Fiscal June entries from July 6 through July 11
Third Close: Fiscal June entries from July 12 through July 18

Helpful tip: You can use the close date period options in conjunction with your scheduling features to set up your reports in advance. For instance, starting in mid-June you can create a Detail Listing using the first close date period and then schedule it to run on Saturday, July 6.

Enter all the chart segment parameters you can for a given report request to increase performance for yourself and the whole University. Never use your security view alone to filter your data. For example, let's say a user wants amounts for a range of objects within the tub and org for which they have a view. Because of their view limitation, the user will get the same result whether tub and org are entered as parameters or not. However, not including tub and org will make the query take much longer to run, tying up system resources and slowing things down for all users.

A modification will be made to the Detail Listing reports so that they cannot be submitted with all of the parameters being left at "ALL." The report will require that at least one chart value be entered.

You should only use transaction reports like the Detail Listing when you really need to see the transaction line detail. Summary level balances can be retrieved in reports like the Summary Actuals Listing Report, the PER (sponsored only), the Fund Summary Report, the Fund, Gift, & Unrestricted Unexpended Balance Report, and the Budget Variance Report.

Deleting unneeded reports will be a big help in keeping disk space available for report output. For reports you no longer need, you can use the functionality in AWS2 to delete multiple reports at once. This is especially important if you have report output that you know is large.

As of July 1, the Current Fiscal Year to Date option will reflect FY2003. To retrieve FY2002 year to date, you will need to select Prior Fiscal Year to Date from the period picklist.

Lastly, a new version of the Detail Listing was recently made available to users. The new Detail Listing - Heavy has the option for up to six sorts and subtotals (Detail Listing and Detail Listing - Lite have three).

Locations and Phone Numbers   top

Year-End Closing Summary Dateline   top

Reminder - STAR Query Tool to Close on May 15   top

The STAR Query tool will be permanently shut down at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 15, 2002. After that date, you can get summaries of STAR data through detailed listings reports in AWS2, or you can obtain more complete information by requesting copies of the original reimbursement documents from the Imaging department.

Please refer to the April 26, 2002 issue of the e-News for more details.

The Web Voucher Travel Authorization Process  top

An exciting new way to pay for airline tickets is currently being piloted at several schools around the University. It's called Web Voucher TAF and it will be made available to the entire University on May 28, 2002.

Please note that the new Web Voucher TAF process will replace the existing paper TAF process and that the Harvard Travel Center will no longer accept paper TAFs as of July 1, 2002.

Many travelers and travel arrangers currently use the Travel Authorization Form (TAF) as a way of having airline tickets billed directly to their department. This is a valuable process because it provides departments with an alternative to credit cards when paying for air travel.

While the paper TAF process is an extremely convenient option, there are a few drawbacks:

• the billing cycle takes 6-8 weeks, causing charges on detail listing reports to appear late;
• there is less secure financial control as signatures must be manually validated; and
• the reconciliation process is labor intensive.

The new and improved electronic TAF process allows orders for airline tickets to be placed through the Web Voucher system. Once a Web Voucher TAF is approved, the system will send a message to the Harvard Travel Center, authorizing them to issue the ticket, and the charge will appear on the detail listing in two weeks. Feedback from the pilot users has been extremely positive.

Local brown bag workshops to explain the process in more detail are currently being scheduled. If you currently use the paper TAF, please plan to attend one of these sessions. For more information about the Web Voucher TAF or the brown bag workshops, contact your school's financial office or one of the project team members:

About the FAD e-News   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