The Agresso finance system has been live for a year – how time flies! So what have we been up to since our last newsletter in spring?
New user group sessions - a cross section of staff were invited to attend workshops to feedback on the Agresso user experience. The sessions were a great success and the systems team are pleased to have made the following changes based on the feedback:
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New research budget reports for all Principal and Co Investigators, automatically producing a full financial statement for all associated research projects
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New salary commitment report available to authorised users
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New version of the School statement was issued to Heads of Schools for March 2013
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Purchase invoice out of tolerance check at 2% has been removed, so only invoices that differ from the order by £5 or more require a second approval
 Password expiry length has been increased, so users only need to enter a new password every 6 months
We are continuing to work through the other items on the feedback list and will be liaising with the user groups to ensure we meet, where possible, their expectations.
Expenses – based on the expenses user group session some of the suggestions we are currently looking at are:
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Sending automated email alerts to claimants if their claim is left in status draft
 Increasing the number of expense types available
 Reviewing the approval route
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Improving the printed summary report
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Improving the expenses form, removing unwanted fields
New FAQ’s – a comprehensive and user friendly list of frequently asked questions are now available on our Agresso web pages. Please take a look at our new FAQ’s .
Helpdesk – Since launching the new FAQ web pages our helpdesk calls have started to reduce, giving the finance systems team more time to review and improve Agresso functionality.
Agresso helpdesk calls/emails
2000
1800
1600
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
Phone calls
Email tickets

Training sessions – after the announcement of new training sessions in the spring newsletter we received a dramatic increase of users requesting training. We are really pleased with the positive feedback received so far from these sessions:-
“It was very useful and allowed time for specific questions”.
“All the training has been really helpful from the point of view of a completely new user. All the sessions that I attended helped and particularly the purchase card one as I could apply this straight away”.
“The main advantage of attending the training session is knowing that there is a friendly team behind the Agresso bull.
Additionally your recently updated FAQ page is very useful, actually will look there first next time I have a problem”.
To book on to one of our training sessions please visit the Agresso training session web page.
Plan for future months
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Improve expenses process
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Review approval screens for purchase invoices out of tolerance
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Continue to work with the user groups to review all aspects of Agresso
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Increase the number of suppliers available via Punchout (on-line ordering system)
 Continue to develop all student, credit control and accounts payable processes
 Continue to develop the monthly School Statement
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Introduce a monthly statement for Heads of Professional Services, IT and Library
Many thanks for taking the time to read our newsletter.
Don’t forget to check our Agresso homepage to view our latest news.