October 2014 BAR MEETING
Columbia Basin College
October 16th and 17th, 2014
Thursday, October 16th
Welcome
Chair Larry Clark called the meeting to order at 11am
Welcome and logistics by Janice
DES Update
Purchasing and Procurement Training Project
Patty Sikora, GRCC
Beginning July 1, 2015 all employees that develop, execute, or manage contracts must have the new
contract training. RCW 28B.10.029. The training classes are not ready yet. A consultant was hired and a
task force has been established for the training program development. There are different training
modules, and the colleges get to choose which people on our campus take which trainings.
Contract Reporting. Emmett has been asked to develop a report in People Soft that will meet our
contract reporting requirements so that we don’t have to have a separate reporting tool to track this
information.
Purchases with Federal dollars. With the new circular, we will only have direct buy up to $3,000 instead
of our own 10k state law. Purchases between 3k and 100k with federal funds will now require quotes.
Working Lunch – Breakout Sessions
NelNet
Dor Audits
Financial Aid
Your Future as a CBO
Dawn Vinberg, Seattle District
37% of current CBOs plan to retire in the next 3 years
CBOs most important duties – managing the institution’s resources, decision making, strategic thinking,
leading change, supporting the president, etc.
It is no longer just a financial role – you have to have good relationships with the academic side and be
aware of legal issues, mindful of politics, be well versed in facilities and construction and you can teach
financial information.
Having a mentor, advocate and sponsor is the best way to grow as a professional
Steering Committee
Dawn Vinberg is the Steering Committee Chair. She is asking for volunteer members to join the Steering
Committee to plan future meetings and topics for trainings.
Please email Dawn if you are interested in volunteering.
SBCTC Report from Jason Gordon
Update on year-end closing.
Not as many SMART checklist errors this year.
Disclosure Report Errors – on the federal pass thru disclosure, make sure you put the contract #s
in. Variances on federal direct form, make sure these are explained.
If you use a 3rd Party Service Organization, you need to provide a narrative with the signature
disclosure form.
Transfers – make sure we are using the correct trans codes. 023/024. 023R is for error
corrections only.
SMART Changes to capital asset form is coming in 1415
Opening Error Reports will be out to the colleges soon.
BAC Report
Jennifer Strother, BAC Representative
Presentation from Barbara Martin on ctcLink. We probably won’t hear a defined date for the Pilot
Colleges, but they will be working in the system soon. They are working their way towards integration
and they are doing lots of data validation. There has been some disappointment with the training
provided so far. Waive 1 colleges are having bi-weekly meetings.
BAC Academy presentation from HRMC. Recruiting diverse employees.
WACTC just had a financial statement academy so they may be asking us questions about our financials.
ctcLink project is short by about 6 million. So, they proposed different methods of how to get this
funding from the colleges. WACTC will be deciding this. We currently pay 3% of our tuition in to the
Innovative Fund. This 3% is only supposed to cover our initial project costs. We will also need ongoing
costs for annual fees, staff, etc.
Clery Act Update & Info
Kyle Forman, Director of Safety & Security at Big Bend
Requires colleges to report all crime statistics. Includes both attempted and completed crimes. Also
includes all reported offenses, regardless of whether someone is found guilty.
The Clery Act requires timely warnings and emergency notifications to the campus community.
A daily crime log is required and must be available upon request.
Unreported crimes are 35k each
Competency Based Education
Connie Broughton, Project Director SBCTC
Student receives mastery of subject to receive credit. Learning, not time, is the determining factor.
Students work at their own pace, online and receive constant support.
The main goal is to change the way we count student learning.
Available in January 2015 and it is a Business Transfer Degree Pilot
It is a 6 month term and students can complete as many credits as they are able during each term.
There are 8 pilot colleges. The pilots are sharing the initial costs and sharing 4 full-time faculty and 6
adjuncts.
They are hoping Competency Based Education removes barriers and allows more completion.
SBCTC Report by John Ginther
Shared Funded Enrollment Reporting Worksheet
Counting enrollments in courses supported by both State and Grant funds.
The law requires SBCTC approval for doing this.
BAC Operations Committee was tasked with looking at split funded classes and rewriting the policy.
There previously was not a mechanism to calculate this information and submit to SBCTC. So they have
now developed a new form to provide this information.
1098-T Update
NACUBO wasn’t able to get an exception for us this year and they are now starting over on working with
the IRS.
Nothing new from last year. We still have to respond to them and Joann sent us a sample response
letter.
Pay attention to the 1099s. Colleges really did have to pay the penalties on this last year.
Dream Act is a new law for undocumented students and they are now able to obtain State Need Grant.
This was new for 1314. They have a dummy number for a social security number, so we need to find out
how we make sure we don’t issue 1098-Ts to these students.
The group asked is SBCTC-IT could send us an Edit Report before they are printed so we can identify
ones we do not want printed and sent to the IRS. Or, if they can somehow help all the colleges make
sure we are not sending 1098-Ts without ITINs.
Friday, October 17th
Minutes & Treasurer’s Report
Minutes from the May BAR meeting were approved as is, no amendments
Treasurer’s Report provided by Karen Mottner. Each college is now paying dues for BAR Membership
and there are a few colleges that still have not paid. 6,324 is our current balance.
SBCTC Auditor – David Bishop
Operations Reviews – reports are done but they haven’t been reviewed yet. Because of the length of
time that has gone by, they are not going to ask us to pay back the money. They are going to send out
the reports as a reminder of the items we need to be addressed, but some of the reports go back to
2013.
This year they are going to Bates, Clover Park, Grays Harbor, Pierce, Renton, Shoreline, Whatcom, South
Puget Sound, etc. They will be reviewing Workfirst, Perkins and ABE.
Joann Wiszmann Updates from SBCTC
Joann sent an email to BAR of her October 2014 Update
FY1314 Financial Statements – Progress & Issues
 Cash flow statement is now balanced by Jason for all colleges. We just need to keep it in
balance as we make adjustments and re-categorize some activities.
 They will be sending us an update on the Operating Expenses section of the cash flow.
 Other updates to FY14 will be sent out soon. Just little clean up things in the Notes and MD&A.
This year, they will also be keeping a cumulative list of changes to the formulas, accounting
treatment changes, etc.
 Updates go out to the fswg listserv, not the BAR or BAC listserv. If you have someone at your
college who needs this information, make sure Joann or Jason knows.
 Joann is also gearing up to work with the Pilot colleges on items that are unique to preparing 2nd
year statement. She is working on an MD&A with 2nd year comparisons and will work on this
template with the pilots. And on the Revenue & Expense Statement, we plugged the beginning
Net Position number for 1213. Therefore, our ending Net Position in 1213 is not balancing to
our starting Net Position in 1314. A smaller group of pilots is working on the Net Position and
there is more to come on this.
General Financial Statement Update
 When running the CR2128, everyone should be running the Edit Report. Its optional when we
schedule the job for the CR2128, but we should look at this report. This will show invalid funds,
invalid commodity codes, etc. Joann is going to work with SBCTC-IT to make the error messages
on the report more clear.
 For each college, Joann is developing a spreadsheet that will show the difference between our
current depreciation amounts, and what our depreciation should be with new OFM useful lives.
The whole point of this exercise is for us to have something to show the auditor for why our
useful lives don’t match. For most colleges, the amount will not be material (less than 5%) and
we won’t have to make an adjustment.
 Disabled codes will never get picked up in the CR2128. Even though codes may be disabled, the
system will still allow us to use them. Also, anything with a useful life of zero will not show up
on the CR2128. The spreadsheet/tool that Joann is working on for depreciation, will also show
us if we have capital assets booked in disabled codes that are not being picked up by the CR2128
that we need to recode.
 The Auditor will be looking at the useful lives in SAAM as of the current date. OFM changes
useful lives and we do not keep a list of what changed when. If we need help showing this to
the auditors, let SBCTC know and they can provide old versions.
 Do not use 0300 commodity code. We think its infrastructure and OFM assumes it is
inexhaustible art. When we move to ctcLink, these will move to inexhaustible art.
 Joann is reviewing GASB 65 and there may be instructions for future adjustments we need to
make once she looks through this standard.
Audit Results
 So far, there are really small exit items. Some of the exit items are not having a designated
internal control officer and performing an annual risk assessment (see COSO standards for help
on this), approval process for user access to FMS screens, disabling access for former
employees, verifying entries in FAE system, signatures on appointment letters, an employee
overpayment, and calculation of course fees.
 LEAN Review schedules are considered internal control reviews.
Audit Schedule
 They are working with SAO on the timing of FY14 audits and developing a schedule of when the
audit teams are available to work with us. We will be asked to sign a contract with an estimated
date of when we think we will be ready.
 We will be signing individual contracts with SAO, rather than a pooled contract like we did for
the Pilot. So it is an individual college commitment for when we will be ready for a review.
 Auditor’s Office wants to increase budgeted hours to 350 (300 on sight, 50 administrative).
 Account ability audits-discussions taking place regarding how much revolving funds are available
to perform these audits. SAO wants to do 5 colleges before June 30; SBCTC disagrees on the
amount of revolving funds available. Everett, Shoreline, Greys Harbor, Whatcom, and one
other.
FAM Updates
 This is still on Joann’s agenda before she leaves us. Correcting typos, wording, correcting errors
in accounting treatment, etc.
 How do we as a group want to vet any changes or additions before publishing? Joann proposes
to use the pilot group of financial statement colleges as a sounding board for her changes and
she will run those items past that group.
FAE conversion to Megamations
 Joann doesn’t see a benefit in trying to do our financial work in Megamations. There is a benefit
to Megamations for building tracking.
 Facilities folks can use Megamations for all of our building tracking and for our reporting
requirements for capital buildings and land that ctcLink is unable to provide.
 But, we will continue to use FAE for our assets because we know that can provide the data we
need four our financial statements.
 John will take this to the BAC Operations Committee.
Proposed Allocation and Accountability
Nick Lutes, SBCTC
Working on trying to figure out a new way to establish each college’s share of the state appropriation.
Goal is to have a way to explain our allocations. Right now we can’t explain the differences between
colleges.
A task force was created to address allocations.
The current system does not put enough money into performance.
Workgroup is going to try to get recommendations to the WACTC group and Board by the end of this
fiscal year.
Nick thinks the implementation will be the next fiscal year – 1617.
Wrap Up & Adjourn
Meeting adjourned at noon.