Finance User Group
Meeting Minutes
Friday March 5, 2010
Meeting: Finance User Group Meeting
Date:
Friday March 5, 2010
Start Time: 9:00 a.m.
Location:
Waite Park Quarry Center
conf room# 107
Participants:
College & University:
Stephanie Adams (South Central)
Kim Bienfang (Anoka Ramsey)
Dave Bjelland (Alexandria TC)
Chris Carney (Dakota County TC)
Brad Doss (Riverland CTC)
Shannyn Jacobsen (MSU Moorhead)
Deb Kerkaert (Southwest St U)
Jan Marble (MSU Mankato)
Jeff Wagner (St Cloud State)
Dawn Belko (North Hennepin CC)
Dee Bernard (Mpls CTC)
Julie Fenlason (Alexandria TC)
Dave Thorn (Winona State)
Christine Vopatek (Central Lakes CC)
Special Guests:
Chair: Mike Nordby
Recorder:
Campus Map & Parking – Parking lot in back
Office of the Chancellor:
Al Finlayson
Kathy Froysland
Steve Gednalske
Roger Gillson
Denise Kirkeby
Lisa Liljedahl
Dave Lund
Bill O’Brien
Ann Page
Kent Smith
Dave Stallworth
Tim Stoddard
Teri Welter
Unable to attend: Ron Beckstrom (Metro State); Bob Haines (Ridgewater)
Time
3/23/20104:46 PM
TOPIC
DISCUSSION
Page 1 of 9
9 AM
Students First Updates
Tim Stoddard & Bill O’Brien
Project Update:
SME workgroups have been identified. (includes appointees from Campuses)
Identifying User groups – Role will be daily availability and to serve as
feedback group similar to Web accounting.
ePayment reframing – reengineering meeting started yesterday, have to decide
how much to take on; have many opportunities for enhancement
Dave Thorn volunteered to be SME with Robin as backup
Students First Initiative Updates
CE/CT discounts
See Al’s item below
Shared services
Students First effort & Finance effort;
Student duplicate resolution
Nearly done?
Direct lending
Not sure where this project is in the decision making process.
The focus will be a central or regional processing center.
eTime interface (Finance)
Developed & tested,
Will pilot shortly
There will be a user group
eProcurement study
CST looking at where we need to go for the 21st century processing; potential
integration with the SWIFT procurement system (in dvlp)
Steve G & Dave Lund – A lot of opportunity, contract & shopping efficiency,
had vendors come in to demo current products. SWIFT talking about building
purchasing portal for catalog purchases. Would need to integrate somehow.
1098 W2
Group met earlier this week on requirements
Reviewing IRS guidelines, State data practices
Included as part of single bill payment process
3/23/20104:46 PM
Page 2 of 9
9:30 AM
RFIM revisited
Update from the ePayment reframing meeting held 3/4/10
Tim Stoddard & Bill O’Brien
Discussion
BPAC (id’d areas that needed alignment) to RFIM (Policies/culture &
enhancements) to REGIS (was never assigned resources) & Single bill from
Students First
Discussed how Students First relates to the policy, culture, &
enhancements discussed in RFIM.
ePayment Reframing Scope:
Should primarily focus on tuition & fees for Finance & Financial Aid.
What is reasonable process?
What alignment steps are required?
Giving the student a choice of how to allocate the payment will be
complicated programming.
ePayment workgroup
Workgroup will develop a roadmap for the process, guideline, procedure
and policy needs and timing to.
Ideally, will include some people from schools that allow Partial pay and
some that don’t.
Will meet over the next few months.
Volunteers:
AnRams – Kim Bienfang or Marilyn Smith
Winona – Dave Thorn
SW State – Deb Kerkaert
MCTC - Dee Bernard
10:30 AM
Title IV funds when the
misc charge flag = Y
Teri Welter
Discuss changes requested by FA User Group
Enhancements:
Restricted awards will pay other year terms if student checks flag to pay
other charges. The YRTR’s will still be limited to those in the same award
year.
Currently a restricted award in Spring term would not pay off last fall term,
if misc charge flag =Y. After this enhancement, funds would apply to fall
YRTR because it is still in the same award year.
FUG discussion:
Changes Approved. No objections from FUG.
Expectation is more charges will be paid off.
See Supplement to this agenda #1.
3/23/20104:46 PM
Page 3 of 9
11 AM
Bankruptcy and Waiver
code
(follow up from Sept 30,
2009)
Need Clarification:
Teri Welter
System already working this way so want to confirm this is the reason for the
request.
The recorded request was to stop the system from putting a write off hold on
the account if 06 – bankruptcy is the reason.
FUG consensus:
Confirmed, the process works as requested.
11:15 AM
Purging accounting
Transactions

Al Finlayson
Discussion:
We have 15 years of transactions
Server group getting concerned about server size required
OLA might want current + three years.
Options Considered:
Follow an MMB or MnSCU official retention schedule
Deleting the Acct Receivable/Accrued Revenue JG 9001/8201 transactions
would eliminate a great deal of lines.
Eliminate ENs when FY is hard closed. Summary files would stay.
Transactions should be stored instead of deleted. Move to warehouse.
FUG concensus:
Upon hard closing a FY, delete AR/Accrued Revenue JGs and move EN &
EFs to a data warehouse.
Campus – What the heck is
it?
Al Finlayson
Discussion:
ITS occasionally gets requests for new campus set up in the system.
Campuses as defined in ISRS are physical locations but are now being used
for distance learning, organizational units.
A different campus code in ISRS could be necessary if there are different
admission requirements for students. The campus would be used as an
organizational unit rather than physical location.
When campus codes are used as org units, the C/U would not be able to
do a study by physical location within ISRS.
Follow Up
Al Finlayson to look into building a method of entry to allow campuses to
set up new campuses themselves.
Kathy Froysland to look into documentation on the “campus code”.
3/23/20104:46 PM
Page 4 of 9
CE/CT Update
Al Finlayson
History
ISRS could not support the non credit
Some Colleges bought Lumens as a solution
CECT likes the functionality but it does not interface to ISRS
An RFP search was conducted to find a permanent solution.
RFP results
Lumens was the only bidder on the RFP with a couple options – by school
($20K per) or by systemwide ($5 mil 5 years)
Detail would remain in Lumens?
Would not address credit classes (credit would need to remain in ISRS)
IT Options
Memo has been sent to Student Side/CECT/ Linda Baer from ITS outlining
other options.
Another option: Fail search and hire someone to build a system, no need
for interface because it would use the current database infrastructure.
(expensive)
Another option: Fix ISRS (cheaper but would require good business
analysis and take away development resources)
Worst situation from a maintenance perspective would be to have some
colleges use Lumens and others use ISRS; would have to support both
modules.
Discussion
There probably will not be any room to redeploy resources within the
2010 ITS workplan.
A solution that doesn’t interface with ISRS would be expensive and not
solve the integration issue.
11:30 AM
Lunch
3/23/20104:46 PM
Page 5 of 9
Noon
Student Direct Deposit
Lisa Liljedahl
Intro to the Student Direct Deposit module in development
Demo by Lisa Liljedahl
Includes an Admin & Student side of the module
Weak passwords and security infrastructure issues needed to be resolved.
Student will be required to enter their login again to confirm changes.
ITS will need an email address from each campus for bounced emails.
Schedule
Admin & student view functions may be released for pilot in Summer
2010.
For the administrative portion, you would have to log in with a STAR id.
Since the student side won’t include the maintenance of bank account
data then the student will be able to login with current User ID.
Can’t release student maintenance of bank account until all students are
using STAR id (target July 2011)
Accounting, Budget, other web apps will require a STAR id by end of 2010.
Dept users in Accounting can be exempted from the 2010 deadline.
Discussion
SSN search only allowed on admin side.
Student Payroll has a business need to see SSN but Acct Payable does not.
We can get by without it but nice to have.
Unused Direct Deposit records (user defined) should be purged on a
schedule for security reasons.
Discussed frequency of the record purge. Perhaps yearly?
12:30 PM
1098-C Implementation in
ISRS
Lisa Liljedahl
Uniface screen SR0003UG
Demo by Lisa Liljedahl
CLCC & Anoka Tech turn in spreadsheet to Tax Services
In development - Under Systemwide Reporting-Tax Reporting menu.
Will have separate security AC_13H
Discussion
Keep as an AC as opposed to EQ security group
1 or 2 people at each campus would have access
The campus should not value the donation. IRS wants the donor to value
the equipment. The Institution should be silent on the value to the owner
but will need to enter a value for accounting.
Would like to be able to tie it to the serial number and asset number of
the accounting transaction for reporting. Also, should any donated assets
entry direct the user to this screen?
o Note: After further review, this request will not be implemented.
The only assets that are entered on EQ0111UG are ones of value
of $10,000.00 or more. Most auto/boat donations aren’t worth
this amount of money so it probably would never be used.
3/23/20104:46 PM
Page 6 of 9
12:45 PM
Direct Deposit &
HigherOne
Al Finlayson
North Hennepin pilot program
North Hennepin CC has a pilot program with HigherOne
Disburses all money to students through the program.
Students receive debit card after registering – Student chooses how to
receive disbursements: Debit Card, personal account, or check from the
provider.
ATM on campus is free of charge.
Majority of students seem to like it.
Students no longer need to use the check cashing establishments that
charge high fees.
It creates a limited credit history because it is a bank account, not credit
card.
Student account maintenance is done on the HigherOne site, they store
the data.
Notifications are sent to student upon changes to the account.
Cost is 40 cents per transactions plus bank fees for the wire transfer. (2
transfers a week. Fin aid & Refunds run 1 per week.)
Accounting office uploads the payment file and processes the wire
transfer.
Can’t pull any money back if student has touched the funds. (Title IV could
be an issue? Withdrawals?)
Discussion
On Conversion to a Payment via Vendor solution
Some C/Us want to explore the payment via vendor solution and some
don’t.
Some C/Us would lose revenue gained from Banking contract.
Metro Schools haven’t been able to agree to procure a common local
bank.
On Bank Accounts
MCTC - Bremer has cash flow issues when aid is sent. The bank is
encouraging then to explore a Third Party payment solution.
Some students are not able to acquire a bank account.
Winona State wrote into their bank contract that the bank must provide
an account to all students.
On ITS enhancements
What are the system changes necessary to support the payment via
vendor solution.
LADE file?
Set up a table to mark the account should be paid thru vendor and a
process to create the file to send to the vendor.
The system modifications would have to go thru the IT prioritization
process.
What about a consortium of campus IT?
Follow up:
Survey the campuses on the likelihood of using a third party to pay
students if a single vendor is identified through an RFP process?
3/23/20104:46 PM
Page 7 of 9
1:15 PM
GI Bill Chapter 33
Question for the User Group:
Dave Stallworth & Teri Welter
Award id 10233 was created for the Ch 33 Post 9/11 benefit and was
recommended to be applied as a 3rd party process.
So far 7 use as a scholarship, 15 as 3rd Party, others may be deferring the
billing and receipting the aid directly to the student account via AR0119UG
when the funds are received.
What method does your institution use and why?
Discussion:
rd
Based on the VA answers, if 3 party is used, award must be set up to
allow overage so a refund is not issued to VA.)
If the student has a VA benefit, it should be the first applied.
The initial certification amount is generally a guess and may not match the
final benefit. VA has a process for adjustment with the student.
Apply the aid as a Scholarship wouldn’t allow the student to know how
much they owe if it is dropped? Plus tax issues. Box 4 of 1098.
The new VA program seems to be working better. The payments are
received more promptly than previous years.
The VA interface is pretty good and the students see exactly what the
disbursements are for.
th
This is scheduled to be item on the AR Symposium Agenda on May 4 &
th
5 at Inver Hills CC.
Workshop is planned for campus VA contacts on the educational benefits and
processes of Chapter 33.
Scheduled for April 8 at Hennepin Technical College.
1:45 PM
2010 OLA Audits
These items have been a focus of the OLA audit teams so far…
Purchasing Cards
Employee expense reimbursements
Object Codes for expense reimbursement – Mentioned there isn’t a
dedicated “Meals without lodging” object code.
Employee tuition waivers
Bank recs – Looking for certification by preparer & reviewer
3/23/20104:46 PM
Page 8 of 9
2 PM
Incompatible Roles in ISRS
The Security Module
Presidents received a letter about the new security admin system.
It will only show duties that have been defined as incompatible duties
within the application.
Pilot is scheduled for April, roll out for May
Next Steps
We must finish defining the Security incompatibilities to complete the set
up in the Security module.
Other Modules yet to be formalized:
Financial Aid (May tie closely with AR)
Registration
St Payroll
EQ Group
FUG Comments:
Splitting Uniface Groups should be examined.
More view rights can be helpful.
Action:
ITS & channel support staff to put together a preliminary study and ask
FUG for input on incompatibilities & mitigating controls.
FUG Adjourned
3/23/20104:46 PM
Page 9 of 9