New Quarterly Close Process Effective September 2011

Beginning with the September month-end close, the University and tubs will be performing interim reporting on a quarterly basis, which will result in the extension of the quarterly closes. As such, for the months of September, December and March, the month-end close will be extended for an additional 5 business days, however, this will NOT change the process currently used by University employees to process month/quarter end journal vouchers - there is still a 5-business day window after the end of the month in which you can process all necessary journal entries.

What will be impacted:

• CREW Reporting - Reports that are currently automatically scheduled to run after the month-end close will not run until the end of the full 10-business day close period. For those reports that you have scheduled to run automatically after the month-end close, you will need to set up the reports to run as of a specific day for the quarters noted above. This can be done by going into CREW and manually changing when you would like the report to run. If you do not change the report to run as of a specific day, the report you need will not run until 5-business days later than it would typically run.
  
  
• Journal Entries - During days 6-10 of the quarterly close, the period will still appear to be open to post to (the previous month will still be available for selection when uploading an entry). It should be noted that although this period will still appear to be open, any entries uploaded to the previous month during this period will NOT be posted. These journals will remain in an unposted state unless you do one of two things - 1) go into the system and delete it or 2) go into the system and change the period. Please note that it will appear as if your entry has been accepted by the system - you will not receive an error message - but the entry will NOT be posted to the General Ledger or appear in the Harvard Data Warehouse (HDW).

Other information:

• HUBS - The quarterly results will be uploaded to HUBS twice at the quarter end - once after the initial 5-business day period and again after the 10-business day period.
  
  
• Allocations - Monthly allocations will run on day 5 of the closing and again on day 10. This will result in the allocations being recorded as of the 5th business day, those allocations being reversed on the 10th business day and re-run for the full month (including the additional five days) that day. This only applies to the monthly allocations. Daily allocations will be run each night of the 10-day closing period as usual.
  
  The monthly allocations include the following:
  • Federal Work Study (FWS)
  • WIP equipment
  • Non-WIP equipment
  • WIP and CIP balancing
  • CIP interest
  • Sponsored revenue accrual
  • HMS gift assessment
  • HSPH gift assessment
  • Construction and non federal sponsored gift interest
  
  
  
• For September, this means that the following schedule will be in effect:
• The 5 business days during which you can upload journal entries as normal will be October 3rd - October 7th, at which point the normal close process will take place.
• The extended period (business days 6-10) will run from October 11th - October 17th during which time the period will remain open and any journals you upload will NOT get posted. The only entries being posted during this period will be those coming from tub central finance offices and limited to quarterly high level accrual activity.

Upcoming Releases

FINDINI Release Schedule

A software release to the Oracle Financial Applications, known as a "FINDINI release", is done every two to four months. Each upgrade introduces needed bug fixes, enhancements, and technical upgrades into Harvard's financial systems. Generally, releases are performed on weekends to assure maximum availability during the business week. Most outages occur from 6 pm Friday evening-6 am Monday morning.

The next FINDINI release, 3.2.15, is scheduled for October 21-24 2011. Details will be available in an upcoming e-News.

The Oracle Financial Applications are:

CREW FIN Releases

The Common Reporting Environment for the Warehouse (CREW) is a reporting system that draws data from a variety of sources which are updated on a nightly basis. Users can submit report requests for immediate processing or schedule reports to automatically run on a recurring basis. Types of CREW reports include financial, budget, receivables, HR management, benefits, costing, payroll, pension, security, grants management, and sponsored reports.

The next CREW FIN release, 3.2.15, is scheduled for October 21-24, 2011. Details will be available in an upcoming e-News.

HR (PeopleSoft) and CREW HR Release 30

The next PeopleSoft Release (HR 30) is tentatively scheduled for December 2011. Details will be available in an upcoming e-News.

The CREW HR 30.0 Release is tentatively scheduled for December 2011. Details will be available in an upcoming e-News.

CREW Reports

In addition to the CREW Financial and CREW HR releases which correspond with the FINDINI and HR releases listed above, changes and enhancements to new and existing CREW reports are also released the 3rd weekend of each month.

Release Number	Dates	Notes
7.10	10/14/11
7.11	11/18/11
7.12	12/16/11

Sponsored Systems Releases

• The GMAS release (1_29) was deployed on Saturday, June 18, 2011. As always see the Release Notes about releases to date.
• The HIRBERT release was deployed on Saturday, June 25, 2011. As usual, please see the Release Notes for details about releases to date.

HUBS Releases

The Harvard University Budgeting Sytems (HUBS) is a set of web-based Oracle Hyperion Planning applications used for budget data entry, estimates, annotations, reporting, and submission associated with the annual budget and planning cycles.

The last major HUBS release, Release 1.0.10 occurred June 14, 2011. Information on enhancements provided in this release can be found on Eureka.

About the e-News

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.

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