Members of the university community play a critical role in safeguarding Stanford’s resources. At Stanford, financial stewardship means ensuring that university resources are used appropriately, in support of the mission, and comply with policies, laws, and sponsor or donor intent.
To that end, Stanford Financial Management Services offers the course, Financial Stewardship Expectations, which covers the key expectations, concepts and resources that support the university’s pursuit of excellence in financial stewardship. Completion of this course is required in order to access Stanford’s financial systems.
What action is required?
The Financial Stewardship Expectations course is the prerequisite training for any faculty, staff or students who need access to many Oracle Financials systems (see complete list below).
- New employees needing access to these systems on or after January 3, 2022 are required to complete the course as a part of their onboarding process.
- All existing faculty, staff or students accessing these systems were initially notified by FMS Communication on February 9, 2022 that they need to complete the course by May 9, 2022 to maintain access. The initial communication and follow up reminder emails include quick links to take the course.
The course takes approximately 10 minutes to complete. Afterward, the course will require annual recertification (a requirement to retake the course) each year. This ongoing recertification helps foster a shared understanding amongst the university community of the key concepts that are foundational to our stewardship of university resources.
What happens if you do not complete the course by May 9?
Financial and reporting system access will be suspended for anyone who does not complete the Financial Stewardship Expectations course by midnight on May 9, 2022. The Authority Manager system will indicate that authority privileges are pending completion of the FIN-PROG-0020: Financial Stewardship Expectations course, financial transaction system access (e.g., Expense Requests, PCard) will be restored within two hours and financial reporting system access (e.g., OBI, CMS and OFIT) will be restored overnight. For support with financial training please submit a support request.
About the course
In January 2022, Financial Stewardship Expectations (FIN-PROG-0020) replaced the Financial Confidentiality Agreement (FIN-PROG-0010) course as a foundational requirement for accessing Oracle Financials systems. The course includes key concepts such as:
- Stewardship relationship
- Separation of duties
- Financial approval delegation and approvers
- Conflict of interest
- Confidentiality
While the previous course mainly covered managing confidential and sensitive information, the new course covers confidentiality and additional concepts that ensure the appropriate use of university resources in support of its mission and in compliance with university policies, government or sponsor regulations, and donor intent. Since all faculty, staff and students have a shared responsibility to steward the university’s resources, the course is open to all members of the university community.
List of Applicable Systems
Prior to receiving access to financial systems, users must be granted the proper authority privilege in Authority Manager and complete required training. The following systems are among those that require this course:
- Approver Workflow Notifications
- Capital Accounting and Debt Management System (CADMS)
- Commitment Management System (CMS)
- Expense Requests
- FFE-MP Tracking Tool
- iBudgets
- Labor Distribution Adjustments
- OBI Financial Reporting
- Organization Financial Inquiry Tool (OFIT)
- PTA Manager/PTA Maintenance
- Purchasing Card (PCard) module
- Transfer Administration System (TAS)
Related resources
Stanford Financial Management Services is committed to supporting and promoting excellence in financial stewardship at the university. All faculty and staff are encouraged to:
- Explore the new Topic Overview: Managing Financial Risk, which expands on concepts covered in the course.
- Subscribe to and review past issues of the Excellence in Financial Stewardship newsletter:
- Follow the Slack channel #Stanford-FMS-News for the latest on this and related topics.
