January 2015 BAR MEETING
Bellevue Community College
January 29, 2015
Thursday, January 29th
Welcome
Chair Larry Clark called the meeting to order at 8am. Ray White, VP of Finance provided the welcome to
Bellevue College. Jennifer Strother provided logistics information about the room and the breakout
sessions.
Approval of the October minutes, motion made and carried.
A Treasurer’s report was not available.
BAC Report
Jennifer Strother
SAO Audit Panel Discussion
Beginning Net Position figure on the financial statements is a plug figure. When you start the 2nd year,
the beginning Net Position is not going to match the ending Net Position from the prior year. The
biggest difference some are finding are the appropriations in GL4310 and the building and innovation
remittals and timing of those. There was discussion on how to book the state payments or returns that
are booked initially in the prior year but not reimbursed until July. Currently GL4310 is offsets 6505
when we make these entries in the prior year. The discussion looked at whether we should book these
entries with a liability or receivable for financial statements. Part of the problem creating statements is
that we are each creating statements as individual entities, but we are viewed and set up as a single
state wide entity. There is not a consensus yet on how we will deal with this issue. Entries that are
booked directly to fund balance without an entry to capital gains or losses in governmental funds also
create a difference in the beginning fund balances. Examples were when an asset is sold or disposed of
with remaining book value in a governmental fund and the change is booked directly to fund balance
without going through a gain or loss entry. The template currently does not pick up these changes.
The auditors will ask you to prove that tuition calculations are accurate. They will also spend time
assuring that you have calculated your depreciation schedules correctly. These auditors are not specific
to higher education, so it has been necessary to walk them through many of the differences between
our statements and those of other agencies.
ctcLink Update
Emmett Folk, SBCTC
Trying to take a new direction and showing us the basic fundamentals of PeopleSoft. Foundation
Elements and the basics of the General Ledger will be presented today.
They are not ready to Go Live with the Pilots yet. They did some readiness tests and determined that
they were not ready to Go Live. They still don’t know when those first link colleges will Go Live at this
point. An announcement should be made mid-February. The goal of the project is still to be complete
by the end of 2017 for the entire project.
General Ledger Presentation. PowerPoint Presentation provided for this and was sent out to the BAR
listserv.
Super Circular Federal Grant Update – Break Out Topic
Kelly Paustain, Bellevue
PowerPoint Presentation provided for this and posted on our website.
Kelly Paustain covered some of the key elements of the new provisions that went into effect on
12/26/13 for audits beginning on or after 2014. Topics included cost sharing, program income, budget
revisions, equipment, record retention, etc. Kelly covered the new procurement standard and details
about subrecipient versus contractor determinations and the importance of monitoring subrecipients.
Make sure you always go back to your specific grant documentation and read the Terms & Conditions.
Sometimes the Terms & Conditions will have special terms that differ from different funders.
BAR 101 – Break Out Topic
Led by Marian Paananen
BAR 101 – Break Out Topic
Led by Jennifer Strother; conference call with Ryan Pitroff, State Treasurer’s Office. Ryan Pitroff
reiterated that colleges need to set-up new merchant accounts with the State Treasurer’s office to
change the processing for credit card payments from students with Nelnet payment plans. There are
new Visa requirements that necessitate the merchant of record to be the account holder. All the
colleges in the 2-year system are on a Nelnet legacy system that will not allow for the state-contracted
Bank of America processing. Colleges with Nelnet merchant accounts in the college’s name are out of
compliance with the State contract with Bank of America. Auditors will check for compliance. Colleges
should have the state treasurer set-up a new merchant account for Nelnet processing. Dawn Vinberg
agreed to work with John Ginther and Ryan Pitroff to renegotiate pricing for the new contract with
Nelnet. Ryan said that colleges should send the average transaction size, number of transactions and
total dollar volume to him in the next few weeks so he can help develop a fair pricing structure. He
mentioned that paying Nelnet per transaction, $.25 for ACH and $.35 for credit card processing may be a
starting point. The new card requirements went into effect in January 2015. We are aiming to complete
the transition to new processing by March 31st.
SBCTC Updates – John Ginther
1098T – IRS Issues. NACUBO sent a letter to the IRS asking them to waive the fees they are sending us.
IRS isn’t going to stop sending these fines to us, so we need to change our processes and limit our
errors. Our errors are mostly with International students and social security numbers. They are hoping
to fix this with ctcLink.
Procurement Training. Trainings are web based so you can do them at your desk in 2 hour blocks. You
have to register in LMS first and then you can take the training anytime. Trainings have to be completed
by July 1, 2015. Each campus needs to determine who needs the training on their campus. John is
hoping that colleges can modify the state DES training since our Higher Ed rules are a little different and
then offer our own trainings on campus, but he has a call in asking about this.
Laser Payroll Checks. SBCTC-IT was going to have us print our own payroll checks on our campus. John
got a lot of push back on this. We have a central bank account, so it brought up confusion with
cancelled checks, handwrites, etc. So they are still working on this and this is still the plan, but they are
trying to get answers to all concerns first.
FAE vs Megamations. Last thing we heard was we were not moving forward with Megamations.
Facilities needs Megamations to do what they need to do. John agrees that Megamations can be used
to enter Buildings and Rooms by Facilities folks. We are so close to ctcLink, it makes more sense to
move data from FAE to ctcLink and not use Megamations in between. We know that FAE has to be
corrected and updated though, which would cause us to have adjustments to our financial statements.
The building data would be uploaded from Megamations to ctcLink. Then, everything would be in
ctcLink. We are going to continue to use FAE for now for our financial statements purposes because we
know it is working for our depreciation.
Continuity of Operations Plan. There is a bill in the legislature that says that all state agencies need to
write this plan each year. John will be surprised if it doesn’t pass.
IPEDS. When they made changes for NACUBO Program Codes, they didn’t capture those changes in the
criteria for IPEDS. They will be sending out updated IPEDS reports to the colleges.
Internal Control Tool for Risk Assessment
Sharon Kussy, Bellevue and Jennifer McMillan, Bellevue. A Power Presentation was used.
Internal Control Basics
Risk Assessments
Segregation of Duties
Monitoring
Meeting Adjourned
Meeting adjourn at 3pm. Next meeting in March at Everett.