April 2008 previous issue back issues index by topic e-News home Contact us at: admin_systems_enews@harvard.edu or via the UIS Helpdesk at 6-2001 The Administrative Systems e-News is a monthly electronic newsletter for users of Harvard's financial, human resources, and reporting systems. Special Issue: FY2008 Year-End Closing Deadlines Click the links below to learn more about ... Schedule announced for FY2008 financial closings Fiscal year-end reporting guidance and tips Summary schedule for FY08 transactions and reporting Whom to call list for closings Notice of Change in the Posting Date of the July 3, 2008 Bi-weekly and Weekly Payrolls Important Notice for Users of Web Voucher and ADI: Implications of Harvard Enterprise Security Policy HR Release 20.0; PeopleSoft and HIRES Outage May 2-5 HRMS Updates: Enhancements to CREW HRMS Reports Cash Receipts Office is Moving in May About the e-News

Schedule announced for FY2008 financial closings      top

Overview

Harvard's fiscal year 2008 will end on Monday, June 30. 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 deadlines and submission information for the following financial transactions (click on a transaction to jump to that section of the e-News):

• Accounts Payable Web Vouchers
  • Petty cash fund settlement
  • New vendor setup
• Credit vouchers (cash receipts)
• Credit vouchers (validated deposit slips)
• Massachusetts taxable sales deposits
• Foreign check deposits on credit vouchers
• Voided checks
• Stopped checks
• Escheat checks
• Foreign currency drafts and wires
• U.S. wire transfers
• ACH payments (Benefits/Tax)
• Purchasing Card sweeps
• Web Voucher Travel Authorization Forms (WV-TAFs)
• Web Voucher Reimbursement reports
  • Web Voucher Reimbursement reports with advance settlements
• Central Accounts Receivable billings
• Journal entries
• Interdepartmental billings
• Cost transfer requests on sponsored funds
• Chart of Accounts maintenance requests

Note the journal entries deadlines this year.  In order to allow the tubs more time to process manual journal entries on the day of the closings, the deadline time has been moved. On Thursday, July 3, the day of the first closing, any journals entered into the General Ledger by 10 a.m. will be included in that close and will be in the HDW the next day.  On Friday, July 11 and Friday, July 18, the days of the second and third closes, any journals entered into the General Ledger by 11 a.m. will be included in that close and will be available in the HDW the next day.

In addition, in order to provide the tubs with more timely information during the FY2008 year end, there will be two additional data refreshes to the Data Warehouse (HDW) on Sunday night, July 6 after the first close and on Sunday night, July 13 after the second close. This means that June journals entered after the deadline on the day of the close and before 6:30 p.m. on Sunday night will be posted and reflected in CREW on Monday morning. Note that there will not be a data refresh on Sunday, July 20 after the third close. Any regular invoice batches and invoice imports that have been processed by the Accounts Payable department from Friday through Sunday after the first and second closes will also be uploaded on Sunday evening and reflected in CREW on Monday morning.

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

These are the FAD (Central Financial Administration) deadlines. Since some departments have internal deadlines that may be earlier than these, you should check with your local 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.

Journal Entries

Please keep in mind the following:

• The University is closed on Friday, 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. Thus, any journals entered in the system after 10 a.m. on Thursday, July 3 and before 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 6 will be posted to the General Ledger on Sunday night, July 6 and available in the General Ledger on Monday, July 7. Any journals entered on Friday, July 11 after 11 a.m. and before 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 13 will be posted to the GL on Sunday night, July 13 and available in the HDW on Monday, July 14.
  


• From Monday through Wednesday of the first close, any feeds or manual journals for the month of June will be posted nightly to the General Ledger at 6:30 p.m. For the second and third closings, any journals entered from Monday through Thursday will be posted nightly to the General Ledger at 6:30 p.m. The journals entered by 6:30 p.m. on these days will be posted and recorded in the Data Warehouse for the next day.
  


• Any June journals entered after the third close deadline of 11 a.m. on Friday, July 18 will be deleted.
  


• Be careful to select the proper period (JUN-08 or JUL-08) when you are entering a journal. Beginning July 1, the default period will be JUL-08. If you want to post a journal to FY2008 during July 2008 you will need to select JUN-08 as the proper period.
  


• Entries must not be processed to 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 they follow this requirement.
  


• A journal should only be reversed by the person who created the journal, or with the permission of that person.
  


• Based upon departmental activity and the reports you run through the month of May, please make any necessary adjustments as early in June as possible.
  

Interdepartmental billings

• All interdepartmental billings – whether entered manually 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 like UIS and UOS.) An interdepartmental billing journal may be processed in the third closing only if permission has been obtained from the financial office of the tub being charged.
  
  
• An interdepartmental billing should only be reversed by the person who created the entry, or with the permission of that person. Interdepartmental billings should provide a name and contact number on the journal for questions or concerns the tub being billed may have.
  
  

Cost transfer requests

• These dates apply to ALL requests for cost transfers to federally 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 OSP. OSP will review the request and any necessary documentation for appropriateness. OSP will then enter the cost transfer journals into the General Ledger. Note that OSP only enters cost transfer journals during the year-end closing process; during the fiscal year, these transfers are entered directly by the tubs.
  
  
  

Chart of Accounts maintenance requests

Disable Requests:
June 6 (MAY-08 close) is the last date that values will be disabled in FY2008. Any CSMA requests not successfully disabled on June 6 will be held until the JUL-08 close on Thursday, August 7.

Requests to disable CoA values that require approval should be submitted through CSMA before 5 p.m. on Thursday, May 23. Disable requests that do not require approval should be submitted through CSMA before 10 a.m. on Friday, June 6.

Add / Modify / Re-enable Requests:
Requests to add, modify, or re-enable CoA values submitted through CSMA will be processed according to the normal daily schedule (7 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday - Friday) throughout year-end. CSMA requestors wishing to specifically designate for the JUN-08 period any CoA changes entered from July 1 through August 7 (the date of the July close) should enter 30-JUN-2008 as the effective date for their request.

Fiscal year-end reporting guidance and tips      top

Every year-end we experience exceptional reporting demands during the closings. Following these suggestions on reporting will reduce the time required to run your reports.

• Use the Detail Listings “close” dates to limit to the specific transactions that occurred in each close. Choose the specific close (First Close, Second Close, etc.) from the report period pick list. 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 close dates to narrow the scope of your data rather than capturing all of the Prior Fiscal Year data throughout the close periods.



• IMPORTANT NOTE: Fiscal Year 2007 close dates will be displayed in the Detail Listings report period names until July 1. On July 1, these dates automatically update to the FY2008 dates. This does NOT preclude setting up and scheduling reports in advance. The FY2008 dates will automatically repopulate all scheduled reports.



• Schedule your closing reports to run on the Year-End “Event” dates.



• Enter all of 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 to filter your data. For example, let's say a user wants to see 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 report users.



• Only use transaction reports like the Detailed Listing when you really need to see the transaction line detail. Summary-level balances can be retrieved in reports such as the Summary Actuals Listing report, Fund Summary report, Fund, Gift, & Unrestricted Unexpended Balance report, and the Budget Variance report.



• Preserve server disk space by deleting unneeded reports instead of waiting for them to “purge.” (Note: Report requests are systematically purged after seven days.) This is especially important if you have report output that you know is large.



• Keep in mind that, as of July 1, the Current Fiscal Year to Date option will reflect FY2009. To retrieve FY2008 year-to-date transactions, select the Prior Fiscal Year date period from the period pick list.

Summary schedule for FY08 transactions and reporting     top

Please follow this link for a "printer-friendly" version of the summary schedule.

Whom to call list for closings      top

Notice of Change in the Posting Date of the July 3, 2008 Bi-weekly and Weekly Payrolls     top

In order for the University to comply with financial statement reporting requirements, the bi-weekly and weekly payrolls for Thursday, July 3 will be processed in the first close of FY2008; the General Ledger posting date will be June 30, 2008. These payrolls are both for time worked in June which should be reported in FY2008. The bi-weekly payroll includes the pay period Sunday, June 15 through Saturday, June 28; the weekly payroll includes the pay period Sunday, June 22 through Saturday, June 28. All entries, which include regular payroll, vacation payroll, overtime, bonuses (those with an effective date of 6/28/08 or before) and supper money payments, on the two files will be posted. Employees will not be affected by this posting date change and will still receive their paychecks on Thursday, July 3 as scheduled.

Important Notice for Users of Web Voucher and ADI: Implications of Harvard Enterprise Security Policy     top

Office of the Controller
Data Security and Financial Transaction Process Changes
March 19, 2008

Based upon the University’s Enterprise Security policy all web voucher and journal transactions within Oracle that contain confidential information will be modified over the next several weeks as part of an initiative to remove confidential data elements from modules within Oracle where broad end user access is allowed.

The modified financial records will contain a notation of DSCU ( data security clean up) indicating that secure data elements such as SSN, credit card , and bank account information have been removed form the record to ensure compliance with the University’s Enterprise Security policy. A complete list of confidential data elements are contained in the HEISP policy: http://www.security.harvard.edu/glossary.php#Confidential_Data

Business Process changes to ensure compliance moving forward are as follows:

1. Individuals may no longer include their GE Corporate card number in Oracle for Web Voucher and Web Voucher Reimbursement transactions. This includes GE Direct Pay and third party payment transactions.


2. Remittance slips for all third party payments to GE must be attached to the Web Voucher Reimbursement for processing. GE will require an additional 24-48 hours to process all third party payments based upon the reconciliation efforts that will involve the review of individual remittance slips with the total amount of the check. Please submit third party payments as soon as possible for processing to avoid incurring late fees.


3. Individuals should not enter the social security number of independent contractors anywhere in the Web Voucher. This information is stored and accessible through the vendor table in Oracle. It is not necessary to repeat the information in the Web Voucher process.


4. When submitting information requests for the set up of vendors in the vendor table, SSN should not be requested via email. The request should be sent via FAX transmission to 496-3196.


5. Correspondence containing confidential data elements should not be stored locally and should be destroyed following proper procedures for destruction of confidential data. In an effort to further secure the personal information of Harvard employees and to safeguard Harvard University’s assets, the University Technology Security Officer, the University Archivist, and the Office for Strategic Procurement selected DataShredder as the provider for a campus wide Data Destruction Program.DataShredder has designed the Data Destruction Program to conform to current industry standards surrounding document destruction, and allow Harvard to meet confidentiality requirements imposed by sponsored agencies granting funds to the University. DataShredder Inc. will provide secure processes, competitive prices, and flexible options for document and records destruction, in accord with Harvard's Enterprise Security Policy. If you work with or store personal information, you must ensure that it is destroyed to the specifications of the law. Please see http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/ofs/procurement/ven_par_dsr.shtml for security, http://grs.harvard.edu/ for the General Records Schedule, and http://www.greencampus.harvard.edu/ for environmental policy.


6. Journals (ADI’s, Manual or Feed) should not contain confidential data in either the Journal Batch description, Journal Header description, or Journal Line description.

HR Release 20.0; PeopleSoft and HIRES Outage May 2-5    top

Due to HR Release 20.0, PeopleSoft and HIRES transmissions to PeopleSoft will be unavailable starting on Friday, May 2nd at 2:00pm (dependent on closing of the off-cycle payroll prior to 2:00pm) until Monday, May 5th at 8:00am.

Also, as you may already know, Harvard University is conducting the upcoming special Open Enrollment for those employees currently enrolled in plans other than Harvard Pilgrim or HUGHP and wish to make changes in PeopleSoft. Employees will be able to make their election changes using Self-Service between 5/8 and 5/21. All changes to the Medical elections will be effective 7/1/2008. For more information about employees eligible for this special open enrollment period, please see the Healthy Harvard section of the HARVie site.

In order to minimize the need for manual processing of benefits events by BSG, and reduce the risk of inaccurate enrollments, we would like to ask the TUBs to:

1. Wait until after 5/23 to enter job data changes effective on or after 7/1. This includes all ASIP uploads.
2. Refrain from making mass job data changes between 5/6 and 5/23, if possible (regardless of the effective date of the job change), and,
3. Code before 5/6 all job data changes effective before 7/1 to ensure that employees see their latest eligibility reflected in the Self Service pages

For questions related to Open Enrollment, please call Paul Rizzi at 617-496-0755.

HRMS Updates: Enhancements to CREW HRMS Reports     top

CREW RPT 4.4 Release Notes

Crew HR Release 4.4 will be deployed into production on 4/21/2008.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the UIS Helpdesk at 496-2001 or dls.harvard.edu.

The CREW Human Resources (Information Management Services) Reporting teams.

Cash Receipts Office is Moving in May     top

The Cash Receipts Office is moving to its new home on the Mezzanine Level at 1033 Massachusetts Avenue next month. This new space will provide a more secure environment than the Holyoke Center space and is only a short walk down the Avenue from Holyoke Center.

The last day Cash Receipts will be open for business in Holyoke Center is Friday May 9th. As of Monday May 12th, The Office will be open for business at 1033 Massachusetts Avenue. The Mezzanine Level is one floor above the front entrance level.

The main phone number 617-496-8332 will not change.

Checks/Correspondence: For departments that still want to drop off their checks or correspondence at Holyoke Center, a mail slot has been created in the 7th floor Mail Room. The Mail Room staff will not provide receipts for deposits; those will be sent out from Cash Receipts once the deposits have been processed. Please note that no cash can be brought to the Mail Room.

Cash: There will be no facility at Holyoke Center for cash deposits. The Cash Receipts Office is currently working on a Harvard Square solution as an alternative to 1033 Mass. Ave. We will provide more information once all the details have been worked out.

There has also been a shift in personnel:

Patricia DeVellis has taken over management of Cash Receipts, in addition to continuing to manage the Student Loans and Collections areas.

Ellen Kelly is the Cash Receipts Group Leader and is responsible for the daily operations of the department.

Cassandra Williams and Charles Zouras complete the Cash Receipts team.

About the e-News   top

The Center for Workplace Development publishes this electronic newsletter for users of Harvard University's financial, HR, and reporting systems, policies, and procedures. The e-News is generally published on or around the 15th of each month.

It contains:

• updates on projects underway to build or improve University administrative systems;
• information about new University 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: admin_systems_enews@harvard.edu.

For information about subscribing or unsubscribing to the eNews notifications, visit our who gets the eNews page.