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News, Enhancements, and Tips for Financial Reporting at Stanford

New OBI Reporting Tools for Managing Aging and Force Cleared Transactions

To mitigate fraud, waste, and abuse, Financial Management Services (FMS) launched a quarterly process in fiscal year 2022 (FY22) to facilitate the timely clearing of Purchasing Card (PCard) and Travel Card (TCard) transactions and advances.

The last FY22 force clearing is occurring in a few weeks, and Nov. 2 is the final day to resolve aging transactions and avoid the $35 force clearing fee. A reminder email will be sent to cardholders/custodians and verifiers on Oct. 19.

FMS continues to develop tools to manage aging and force cleared transactions, including several new or enhanced tools summarized below.

Tools to locate transactions that require action

  • The Credit Card Transactions - Aging Report and Advances - Aging Report (in OBI Expense Requests and SU Card Activity (ERR) Dashboard)
    These reports now include "Expanded - Action Needed" views to assist in timely transaction clearing by showing the employment status and supervisor of a verifier or card custodian (for TCards and PCards) or a preparer or supplier (for advances).
    The new views help you identify:
    • PCard or TCard transactions that have stalled because a verifier or card custodian is no longer active
    • Advances that have stalled because a preparer or supplier (person who received the advance) is no longer active

Tools to locate transactions that have been force cleared

  • Advances - Force Cleared Report (in ERR Dashboard)
    Use this new report to locate advances that have been force cleared and may need to be journaled to their proper PTAE. The report, which has a summary view and a details view, includes:
    • Transaction details of advances that have been force cleared
    • All transactions associated with the original advance and the force cleared advance, including the force clear fee
       
  • Force Clear Metrics Dashboard (in ERR Dashboard)
    This new dashboard shows summary-level metrics for credit card and advance transactions that have been force cleared. The data is summarized at task org level as well as by person (verifier, credit card custodian, or award manager).

Learn more and get support

Clearing aging transactions in a timely manner helps your department avoid force clearing fees and also supports financial stewardship. We hope these new tools make the clearing process easier and more efficient; please send any feedback to efrsupport@stanford.edu.

Effectively Monitor the Status of Stanford-Issued Credit Cards with Updated Report

With business back and a busy fall ahead, FMS is refreshing resources to support managing and monitoring access to the PCard and TCard. While these cards are convenient purchasing methods for departments, it is vital to monitor their use to mitigate risk to the university and support good financial stewardship.

FMS is therefore clarifying card suspension processes for leaves of absences and cardholder fraud for individual and department cards. To support these existing policies, the SU Credit Card Custodian Report has been enhanced to include the employment status of the verifier and cardholder/custodian.

New report fields include: 

  • Card status (enabling reporting on closed or suspended cards)
  • SUNet IDs for custodians and verifiers
  • Job status of custodians and verifiers
  • Verifier’s start and end date (useful if the verifier changed on a card)
  • Notes (e.g., identify if the card replaced another card)
  • Budget unit
  • Inactive date of closed cards
Improved selection criteria make it much easier to answer a range of business questions about PCards and TCards. Managers of cardholders should monitor this report and take appropriate action, such as suspending cards for employees who are on leave and closing cards for employees who no longer work at Stanford, to reduce risk to the university. These actions can be performed in the Credit Card Profiles Change Request tool; please submit a Card Services support request for questions or assistance.

 Verify Labor Schedules for New Fiscal Year

The start of the new fiscal year is an opportune time to ensure that labor schedules are complete and accurate for your department. Run the Labor Schedule Trend Report to help you identify gaps in labor schedules, verify that carryover from the prior year is correct, and confirm payment for people in different work orgs was intended. Refer to the table below to determine which organization perspective and report view to use to meet your business needs. 


*This highlights employees whose total assignment percentages by pay period are less than 100% and may need action. 

Events

October Webinar: Salary, Fringe, and Indirect Cost by Employee Report

In July 2022, FMS created the Salary, Fringe, and Indirect Cost by Employee (SFI) report to provide better answers to payroll reporting questions. Up until now, OBI users needed to perform tedious calculations to obtain employee salary charges (both actuals and commitments) with associated fringe benefits and indirect costs, but the new report allows users to get this information through standard views. Read the Fingate article for details.

Join us on Wednesday, Oct. 12, 10 to 11 a.m. via Zoom for a live demonstration of the SFI report and time for questions. The webinar will cover how to:
  • Report salary, fringe, and indirect cost actuals and commitments attributed to each employee by GL period or by earnings month
  • Create salary projections by employee for the fiscal year
  • Better manage labor distribution adjustments (LDAs):
    • Easily see difference between an LDA’s pay period and GL period when it posts
    • Visualize LDAs by time period in trend reports
  • Compare vacation accrued with vacation credit received by employee
  • See salary earned separate from vacation credit applied
Reminders

Get OBI Support Fast with Support Requests


Do you have a brief OBI question? The quickest way to get help is by submitting an OBI Financial Reporting support request, which routes to OBI specialists in the Financial Support Center. If the question is more complex, your request will be escalated to OBI Open Lab instructors, who will answer in the ticket if possible or suggest meeting in an Open Lab session.

Ready to submit your OBI support request?
support request link is located on every OBI Finance Dashboard report page, in the upper left corner (as shown below).

 
Screenshot of support request link in OBI Dashboard PLM report page






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