FALL 2013 BAR MEETING
STATE BOARD – BELLEVUE OFFICE
January 23rd and 24th, 2013
Thursday, January 23rd
Welcome
Chair Jennifer Strother called the meeting to order at 10am
Welcome CTCLink Project Staff by Barbara Martin
Jennifer went over housekeeping items and also introduced new BAR members.
CTC-Link Presentation
We should all be on Finance SME Listserv. That is how they will communicate information with us.
They are currently working on configurations and interfaces. There are global values we will all use and
local values that will be specific by college.
August 22nd is go live date for Spokane & Tacoma
Chart of Accounts: Cindy Shaffer
Cindy has a Power Point for her presentation
Set ID/Operating Units. Our college ID codes used to be P010, P020, etc. They have converted these
codes to take of the P and added WA. So our ID codes are now WA010, WA020, etc.
Rainbow Charts. This shows the crosswalk between our current chart of accounts structure and the
People Soft Chart Fields.
In the future, we have to report our IT Costs – development costs vs maintenance costs – to OFM. Our
current system does not allow for this, but they have created a new chart field in People Soft to track
this. We have a waiver with OFM until we are all on People Soft and able to report this. Joann
Wiszmann will send out more information on this as we get closer to implementation and having to
report. The 4 year colleges are doing this already, so we will have guidance for them.
Fund vs Appropriation in People Soft. We use appropriation in People Soft – we won’t see two separate
fields any longer.
Account Chart Field. We will no longer use transaction codes in People Soft, we will use General Ledger
codes. All General Ledgers, revenue source codes and subobject codes have been converted to a Chart
Field Number. They used the FAM Manual to identify the ledgers and the codes we use. Joann is now
going through this Chart Field to look at items in the FAM we no longer use, items that need to be added
(GL1209) that we have discovered from preparing Financial Statements, etc. There is also a question
about whether we will continue to use accruals in People Soft (3205 and 6505). OFM has approved that
we no longer need to report on 3205, but we aren’t sure yet about 6505.
Cindy also showed us how the trees work in the system, journal vouchers, etc.
Lisa Wolcott presented Commitment Control (KK) in People Soft. Control requires a budget value – we
set a value and if someone tries to exceed it, the system will stop you. Tracking with budget will not
stop the transaction, but will notify the budget manager when the budget amount is exceeded. Tracking
Without Budget, does not require a budget and does not stop the transaction.
Globally, KK has been turned on and Locally we can set the levels. They are recommending that we set
control in the general operating fund at the fund level so that we cannot go over our appropriation from
the state. But when it comes to departments, it is up to us whether we want to set the control or give
more flexibility. For capital projects, set at project level and for grants, set at activity level.
Budget Monitoring – we will always work in two years. Current year and the next fiscal year. We can
make permanent and temporary changes to the current budget. The only thing that rolls forward in the
next fiscal year is the permanent changes. Temporary changes will be used for one-time amounts.
We need to start doing our budget development at the fund level. We will no longer be able to budget
to fund 000.
We should be re-titling account names as we go forward now so that we don’t have to when we are
converting. The system doesn’t like us all using the same account titles among colleges – we probably
all use ABE. When we do conversion, the ctcLink group said they could just add our college code and
attach that to our titles during the conversion process. We are using the 3 digit code in front of all
account titles from now on. We are going to do this at conversion, colleges do NOT do this now.
Change Management at Individual Colleges – Mary Kay Wegner, Director Information Resources,
Bellevue College (working lunch)
Mary sent her handouts on Change Management to the listserv.
As managers and supervisors of our employees, we will have the biggest impact on this change.
She suggests we steal a process from LEAN and document processes and do some value stream
mapping.
She provided 12 basic principles for responding to Resistance from employees. This is from a suggested
book by Rita Burgett Martell called A Manager’s Guide to Managing and Sustaining Change in the 21st
Century Workplace.
Student Financials: Sherry Stroud
Sherry has a Power Point on setting up fees for student financials.
Tuition setup:
There are three items we will have to set up for the different tuition amounts – operating, building and
S&A. But, there is a question about our tuition actually having 5 parts because we also have Innovative
fee portion of tuition and the student financial aid portion for the distribution. Sherry said this would be
set up Globally, but we can’t have it that way because S&A fees are set at the local college level.
Students will just see the total as “tuition” and will not see the individual portions. All other fees
charges will show separate from state approved tuition charges – technology fees, student self-assessed
fees, lab fees, etc.
The college will locally set up parameters to define when students tuition comes out of unearned
revenue. At the time they register or pay tuition, it will automatically go to unearned. Then we choose
the date of when it is recognized as revenue – final drop date, etc. But, our payments to the state
treasurer are based on cash receipt date. Sherry is going to research how that will work.
Cashiering: (called Cash Management in student financials)
Someone has to go in each day and open your Cashier “main” and open the other cashiering offices
(other locations). When you open this up, you can also assign security roles for the day and state if they
can only take credit cards for the day, or if they can do all forms of payments. We can set up as many
cashiering offices as we want – main, other campus cashiering, back office.
There are 2 different types of cashiering in the new system. Student financial cashiering plus non
student cashiering.
It was asked if we can do mobile cashiering – by phone, cube, app, etc. when cashiering at offsite
locations. Tara Keen said the team is evaluating this and whether or not it is something the new system
can accommodate. They will let us know when they figure it out.
Third party invoicing. Vendors are Global for all of us to use. There is also a collections component in
People Soft. The aging parameter is set up Globally. And then we can set up blocks and what we want
to block them from – registering, dropping, etc.
Right now in People Soft, students can choose to pay a portion of their tuition and not 100%. They said
this was a request from colleges, but colleges are not liking this. We would end up doing a lot more
refunding if they pay a portion down, but then end up getting dropped for not paying 100% before drop
date.
Send Sherry Stroud an email for any questions/concerns on the student financial section.
Right now our fiscal years in the system are B234, B341, etc. In People Soft, they will be 2147. 2147 =
Spring 2014. For the last digit, 1-Summer, 3-Fall, 5-Winter, and 7-Spring.
Budgets, Grants & Contracts: Lisa Wolcott
Project Costing – includes grants and contracts and capital projects
We need to be changing/adding project numbers on all grants for the conversion in to People Soft. All
grants turn in to projects in the new system, but not all projects are grants. We need to set up a project
# for each Grants that has multiple activities – Perkins, Workfirst. Each activity has their own Org code,
but they need to have one identifiable project code # in FMS to convert to People Soft.
Any project numbers or grant #s that are in our FMS System that we no longer use, we need to
inactivate.
AP, Purchasing, Asset Management: Emmett Folk
Emmett suggested we subscribe to the listserv Ctclinksme_Fin because that is how we will receive
information about what is happening.
He has a Power Point Presentation that he will email to the listserv.
Procure To Pay Overview. Showed us how an AP Voucher is processed and then hits the General Ledger.
We will set up criteria that will send the Voucher for approvals. The Purchase Order is filled out in
People Soft and feeds the Requisition and the receipt records and the AP Voucher. You can create an AP
Voucher from scratch, but most of the time it will be generated automatically from the PO information.
You can scan in to the system the backup documentation – invoices, internal forms, etc.
Employee Reimbursements and Travel Expense Vouchers will go through the Expense Module and not
the Purchasing Module.
ACOM Software are serving as an intermediate piece. But, we are not sure yet whether we will continue
to use this software for Laser Check Printing in the new system or if we will use the People Soft Laser
Print software.
They know we can use PCards to make payments and can input that as our payment method on the
requisitions or the vouchers. But, they are not sure what the PCard Reconciliation will look like yet or
how that works yet.
Friday, January 24th
BAC Report
Presented by John Huffstutter from Spokane
Megamations – it needs to be done and we are pressing forward
Discussion about the budget. STEM FTEs and COLAs are priorities for State Board for the legislative
session.
Minutes & Treasurer’s Report
No changes proposed for the Minutes. Motion passed to accept prior meeting Minutes from Fall.
No Treasurer’s report
On the Ground, CTCLink Report from Pilot Colleges
Spokane and Tacoma
John from Spokane suggests participation in the WebEx meetings. He said that participation is the most
helpful in getting prepared.
Spokane said that LEAN Helped at the college level. John said this helped with process changes, data
standardization and clean up.
Clean things up in Legacy system that are no longer used at your colleges. Delete, or inactivate, fee
codes that we no longer use. But keep a list of those we delete, because they may be tied to charges on
student records that convert over and may need to be reinstated.
Plan for additional staff and cross train current staff. We need to have everyone thinking of processes
from end to end.
Rod Ramer, Spokane Purchasing Officer, told us about their process to clean up the Vendor Table.
Megamations discussion from Joann. We know that when we get on People Soft, there is information
that People Soft will not track like FAE/Megamations does. In the People Soft environment, we will
need to have that additional program to track all of our building information that we are required to
track. Our goal is to only use People Soft, and then just use Megamations for things that People Soft will
not do. We are still making sure that Megamations will do what we need it to do on the financial side.
Joann said the goal is still to move everyone to Megamations for everything we do in FAE, until we get to
People Soft and then we will use that for everything it can do and Megamations for the remainder.
There is still a pilot group of 4 colleges that are testing Megamations for the financial stuff that hasn’t
worked in the past.
Spokane cleaned up a lot of employee data to convert payroll over to People Soft. They are currently
doing data validation. They are cleaning up pay scale tables – some colleges have several years of pay
scales in the system. They are also cleaning up position control tables in PPMS. Make sure HR
Databases for employee jobs are cleaned up and inactivated for conversion.
Both Spokane and Tacoma have a Change Agent/Project Manager who is tracking what need to be done
and coordinating the effort for the campus.
Reporting is an issue that has come up for Tacoma. FMS Query Reports and other standard FMS reports
that are viewed daily. Tacoma has not heard too much about how reporting will work in the new
system.
Tacoma has also set aside additional funding for staffing, but they haven’t actually added any positions
in the business office. They said they haven’t had that much coming at them yet as a pilot that they
have needed extra help. She said if the people were there and hired today, they wouldn’t have anything
for them to do yet, but they may need people in August when they convert. They are just still watching
this and seeing how it goes.
Cleanup of Customers in Student Financials for cashiering. Take a look at customer lists at our college.
There is no inactivate button. There are still customers out there with social security numbers and make
sure those are cleaned up. Cindy said they are still looking at how to clean up this information in our
system, but this will be coming.
There will be a separate training team that will come out to our campuses about 3 months prior to Go
Live. There will also be online tutorials that we will be responsible for running through to learn the new
system.
State Board Updates – Including Financial Statement Template and current plan for Financial
Statement Audits.
Joann and Jason provided a BAR Update Handout.
Jason Gordon went over commodity code changes from OFM for assets. They changed a few
commodity codes and added new ones.
IPEDS Reports have been sent out by Jason. Just a couple of changes were made this year – the title of
Statement A and title of Statement D. There are no changes this year to the reports, but there will
probably be next year as we are working through our first year of preparing financial statements with
the pilot colleges. The hope is that eventually we won’t have to prepare financial statements and IPEDS
and that we can use the financial statements in place of IPEDS.
We are using a Scholarship and Allowances Tool to prepare the financial statements and that tool was
from NACUBO. We can use the tool for that same information on scholarships in IPEDS.
DES Stuff. Training Requirement for Contracts/Purchasing - We still are not sure what this will look like.
DES Contract Reporting is all due by September, but they are giving colleges the option of reporting
earlier. We are required to go through a risk assessment in order to get delegated purchasing authority
from DES. Joann wants to wait and see what happens with the house bills that are in the legislature that
may clean some of this up and will revisit after the session. DES does support the bill and wants us to
have our own authority.
Department of Education has a new Q&A out for advice on reconciling disbursement and cash
transactions for Title IV student Aid Programs.
There is a new federal grant circular coming out. OFM and Budget has issued guidance that combines 8
existing grant circulars into a single document called the Super Circular. Effective after December 26,
2014. Joann said there will be lots of training opportunities offered.
Payroll Surcharges. Employees whose health insurance covers a smoker or covers someone who has
waived coverage from another provider, they will be charged a $25 surcharge. This will keep rates a
little lower for all other state employees.
Time & Effort Reporting. Employees working on a single federal project should also be reporting their
time.
Financial Statements:
Joann went through the Preparation Checklist. She wanted colleges that are not in the pilot group to
have a heads up on things they may want to be cleaning up now to get a head start.
 Review Receivables Subledger and make sure it balances to your GL. Because it’s a FS Audit, we
have to support the balances with detail. Our subledger detail is not good, so you may need to
come up with other ways to support those balances. Each colleges challenges may be a little
different. We have to be able to show the auditor what makes up our balance.
 Look at your investments and figure out what is actually short-term vs long-term
 If we have buildings financed by COPs, we have to report the interest earned during the
construction period. This wouldn’t really apply to equipment because there is no “period of
construction”. We don’t start paying back the debt/interest until the equipment is received.
We will do a makeup adjustment for anything that happened up to now to add the additional
amount to our building value and adjust the depreciation. And from now on, we need to
capitalize this interest as paid. Question about what constitutes end of construction period –
certificate of occupancy.
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Art Collections or other items of historical value. These items do not depreciate. If you have a
policy that says if you sell the art you will use the proceeds to buy new art, and some other
criteria is met, then you do not have to capitalize art. There is no category in FAE to record
nondepreciable assets. Even if you don’t capitalize art though, you need to have a system to
track it.
GL5199. FMS allows you to record revenues and expenses in Agency Funds (790/840), but this is
not allowed by accounting practices. These funds only allow assets and liabilities. At year end,
the revenues and expenses in Agency funds roll to GL5199. We all have tuition in Fund 840,
because we don’t technically own it until after we have earned it.
Recategorize Expenses. We may be capitalizing subobject in capital projects that are actually
“Es” or “Gs”, etc. So we have to reclassify expenditures that have been capitalized and move
them out of E, G, etc. State Board might revise the FAM and come out with guidelines as to how
to code non J expenditures so that we know what has been capitalized in those funds.
Infastructure. Only include items over 100,000. If we put infrastructure in as part of
construction of a building, it has already been capitalized and does not need to be added.
Anything purchased in a proprietary fund is not included. Joann just wanted to give non- pilots a
heads up this is coming, but does not suggest they start working on infrastructure yet. Be able
to demonstrate to auditors we went through a process to identify infrastructure that isn’t
already capitalized.
Burning Issues Discussion
Higher One ATM Failures and response time to get it fixed. Would those colleges that use Higher One
find it beneficial to get together and ask for service improvements from Higher One with our ATMs.
Grays Harbor and Seattle have had significant issues with this. Joann will send out a survey to the
colleges about what issues we have been having so that she has data to report back to Higher One.
Does anybody know if state treasurer regulations allow an ACH debit from a utility? Joann said we could
find out and see if we need permission from them. You are giving the vendor the right to go in and debit
your account.
Would any colleges be willing to share techniques in how they are changing 1098t process to capture
students with no social security numbers.
We all get a lot of calls this time of year from students asking for a 1098t form. Would colleges have an
interest in investigating a service provider to prepare a form for students. Students receive their 1098t
forms, but they lose them or have bad addresses, etc. There is functionality in People Soft for students
to go in and print their own 1098ts and Sherry Stroud will be pursuing how to do that.
BM3003 was disabled for cancellation of electronic vouchers. There was an audit risk from the auditors
so it was disables. Now, Joann is volunteering Jason to work with a couple colleges to see if we could
come up with internal controls over this and then maybe we could turn BM3003 back on. The concern
from colleges is payments going to Higher One and risk of duplicate payments and difficulty researching
cancellations.
Archive rules are changing for storage. The cost of microfiche has gone up and some colleges have
already stopped archiving payroll records on microfiche. As long as you can demonstrate that you have
an electronic system that keeps these records, we do not need to have the microfiche.
Recent audit findings at 4 year colleges on P-Cards. Abuse of food purchases and wine purchases. The
purchases were not “illegal” because they paid for them with foundation funds. The issue is that the pcard program does not allow those types of purchases. This same rule applies to the 2 year, but most of
us have our foundations outside of our college so this would not come up. 4 years are arguing that it
makes more sense and saves time/money to make purchases on the p-card.
Wrap Up & Adjourn
Our next meeting will be held at Tacoma CC on March 27-28
Meeting adjourned at 12:30pm