DEPARTMENT OF FINANCIAL SERVICES
Meeting Agenda
Meeting Name: FLAIR User Group
Date: 6/5/2012
Time: 2:30 p.m.
Location: Winewood Complex, Building 4
Agenda
 FLAIR User Group Call to Order – Mike Wolfe – Chairman
Meeting called to order by Mike Wolfe.
 Approval of the Minutes – Mike Wolfe – Chairman
http://www.myfloridacfo.com/aadir/FLAIRUserGroup/MinutesDec2011.pdf
Motion and second to approve minutes from the December 2011 meeting was made. Minutes from
December 2011 were approved as submitted.
 Report of the Sub-Committee – Tommy Lemacks – Enhancement Chairman
There were no new requests made this year for the sub-committee to consider.
We have several items that have been placed on hold or tabled. They are as follows:
2008-003
2008-005
2008-007
2008-008
2008-009
2008-014
2009-002
2009-003
2009-004
2010-001
2011-003
2011-004
2011-005
2011-007
On hold
On hold
On hold
On hold
On hold
Tabled
On hold
Tabled
In progress
Tabled
On hold
On hold
Tabled
On hold
A complete list of enhancements, along with the status of each, is posted on the FLAIR User Group
website.
If you would like to make a request, the request form and instructions can be found on the FLAIR User
Group website.
Mike Wolfe encouraged everyone to continue to submit enhancement requests. He cited the recent
change in the PPI field input as an example of a much needed change that was handled quickly and
easily.
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 Division of Accounting & Auditing Update – Christina Smith
We have had several enhancements that have been placed on hold. However, the tide is turning and
we will be able to revisit some of these items. Ms. Smith noted some of the accomplishments by the
Department of Financial services as:
A new agency (DEO) was created,
The mandated 3% payroll deduction was programmed and incorporated into payroll, and
The Statewide Vendor file enhancements, cleanup and new edits.
Effective dating, using the People’s First ID instead of vendor ID, and consolidated payments are all
big initiatives, but we hope to revisit these. Continue submitting requested enhancements, we will
approve and program the ones that can be done with the resources available.
Accounting & Auditing is going through a re-organization. It is not official; we are about three weeks
away from having the blessing of DMS and the CFO. The Bureau of Accounting will be split into two.
The Bureau of Financial Reporting will have the CAFR section, the Budget section which is Rita
Smith’s group, and the Federal Reporting section. The Bureau of Vendor Relations will have the EFT
section, the Warrant disbursement section, and the 1099 section. The people will remain the same, and
your contacts will not change, but you will see the new bureau names in the near future.
Year end is here. We are monitoring cash and budget, very closely for some agencies. If you have any
issues, please call 413-5510 so that we can help you work through those before the last minute.
 FLAIR Updates – Joanne Krieberg-Wolin
The name of the TR57 is changing effective June 9, 2012. It will no longer be the Refund of
Overpayments of Taxes, but will be the Refund of Overpayments of Taxes and Fees. The change goes
into production June 8th, but you will not see the new title on vouchers until Saturday, June 9 th.
There will be a change to the Report Request screen in FLAIR. There is a line for Request Paper
Copies. As you know, DFS has not provided paper copies in quite a while, so we are removing it from
the screen. This could affect agencies using screen scraping technology. Joanne asked, “Does anyone
use screen scraping technology for the RP screen?” DOE and DEO both responded affirmatively.
New specs will be coming out. You will be given a three month notice of the new layouts. September
1st would be the earliest it will go into production. We will contact agencies affected to ensure their
screen scrapers are modified.
We have been seeing some Condition 4 errors when running reports. This is due to a change that was
made in March of 2009. We had to increase the length of the amount fields on the GL master and C&G
master files due to truncation problems with yearly closings. At that time we also changed the master
file reports user defined amount field lengths in our standard library. All amount fields that were 11.2
were changed to 12.2. The MA1LTD (life to date) was changed from 12.2. to 13.2.
List of fields changed from 11.2 to 12.2
MA1MTD (month to date)
MA1QTD (quarter to date)
MA1YTD (year to date)
MA1NMTD (new month to date)
MA1NQTD (new quarter to date)
MA1PM (prior month)
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MA1NPM (new prior month)
MA1PQ (prior quarter)
MA1HAMT (hold amount)
MA1PY (prior year)
The amount fields on the C&G master were changed in the same manner (just replace the MA1 with
CG1 to obtain the names).
We will post these changes on the website. Again, the change was made in 2009, but this has not been
a problem until this year/month. At this time of the fiscal year a lot of money has been accumulating
in the amount fields on our master files.
We were having an issue with the CFO Received Date coming from MFMP. We had an issue with
FLAIR overlaying the date from MFMP, which resulted in the date being off by a day. That has now
been resolved. It was tested and went into production June 1st.
We have had to make a change to the TN3270 Secure transmission of passwords due to an audit
finding. Our original deadline for having encrypted passwords was May 31 st. The deadline has been
extended to August 1st, but you are encouraged to make this change sooner. We would like to have
everyone changed by June 30th if possible. Bluezone is available through DFS at no cost to your
agency. Our version is for connection to FLAIR only. We are running reports to determine who is
coming in encrypted and who is not. .
Question: Can you use Mod 2 or Mod 5?
Answer:
Yes. Either way.
Joanne asked if anyone was having issues with changing over. No one responded affirmatively.
For Entire Connection, DFS has concurrent licenses for connection to FLAIR only. Contact the
Helpdesk to download. Entire Connection is used to upload to and download from FLAIR. Version
4.5.2 is the version we are now sending out. Download Zip file.
Question: Do we have to have a license for each user?
Answer: The helpdesk will ask you how many users you have and you can use it for that many.
Question: When Bluezone times out and takes you back to the NASSAM sign-on screen, you can’t
get back in. You have to close out the session and start over. What can we do about that?
Answer: Joanne asked Mike to contact her regarding that issue.
A BIG Thank you to the agencies. We have changed from non-secure FTP transmissions to Secure
Shell FTP. The agencies have all worked really hard to get this done and it has been a lot of work. We
are not 100%, but we are close. Again, this stemmed from an audit criticism.
Because of year end we will have extended FLAIR hours beginning June 11, 2012. FLAIR will be
available 7 a.m. through 8 p.m. Monday through Friday. Saturday hours will be 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.
The extended hours will be June 11th until July 3rd.
 Statewide Vendor File Cleanup – John Nicholson
There are over 430,000 records on the Statewide Vendor file. 90,000 are MFMP records, and the rest
were directly input into FLAIR. 45,000-50,000 are marked as confidential records, and 30,000 40,000 are non-standard records. We have a big job ahead of us to clean up the file.
We will start the process by sending a survey to agencies. We are asking things such as:
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When do you set up a new record?
Who sets them up?
How do you use the Statewide Vendor file?
What are your agency policies regarding the file?
Do you actually look at the file before adding a new record?
We are going to be looking closely at the confidential vendors being added and pulling reports of all
confidential vendors added the previous day. We are seeing Department of Corrections and Circle K
as vendors on the report. If a vendor adds a confidential sequence on MFMP, it makes all the records
confidential. We will be contacting agencies via email to determine if the vendors are confidential.
We are also looking at the PCard vendors. We have had requests to use the information on the bank
file. Some vendors have many sequence numbers and some operate under names different than the
franchise name. This makes finding the correct vendor number difficult. Due to transparency, we
have to use the correct vendor number. We are in the very early stages of looking at this issue.
We are also looking at the sequence numbers on vendors. How many have identical information?
Vendors like Publix and Walmart have every location on the file. Can we reduce the number of
records? We have inactivated over 1,000 invalid records. The Vendor team will be reaching out to
agencies as we work through these issues.
The W-9 process has been hard to work through. Thank you for bearing with us. We have had a lot of
errors where we did not have the actual vendor number on record.
Question: Has there ever been a discussion of creating a query to look up a vendor by other data,
such as house number, street name, etc? Marriott is an example.
Answer:
Not that we know of. That may be a good enhancement request. We could include a
question on the survey regarding what would make a query useful to your agency.
MFMP has started purging vendor records that have not been used in a transaction for 18 months, and
have not responded to bid requests in 24 months. About 80,000 locations and 45,000 unique vendor
numbers were purged.
Question: Will FLAIR begin a similar purge?
Answer:
FLAIR has had a purge process in place. We already purge a record after 18 months of
non-use (12 months for N vendors).
When we switched to the Statewide Vendor file in February of 2011 there were around 300,000
records and it has steadily grown. So we need to undertake these clean-up efforts. Be looking for the
survey to come out.
Question: Can another agency’s employees be added to our VE file? Some agencies have added
state employees to the VS file. Should they?
Answer:
No, but some have. Any State employee can be added to your VE file, it does not have to
be employees of your agency only. Right now it is an option, There is no mandate to add employees
to the VE file. Agencies maintain complete control over their VE file. But we may look into that in
the future. Call the Vendor group or email with questions.
 FLAIR Education Update (LMS) – Ella Hinson
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https://apps8.fldfs.com/lms/Home.aspx
We have completed this year’s session of classes. Thank you for sending your staff. We will begin
classes again at the end of August. Please let us if you have any training needs. We know that an End
of Year class is needed and hope to develop one eventually. Also, when your employees come to
training, if you know of any needs such as parking accommodations, larger print materials, etc. please
give us three to four days notice. Send an email to the FLAIR Education inbox.
We are currently working on updating the FLAIR Manual.
Comment: It is currently in three parts. I would like to see it put into one manual with hyperlinks to
the different sections. That way I can index it and search through it more easily.
If anyone has suggestions or comments, please send them to the Enterprise Education inbox.
We have a new Learning Management System (LMS). This allows for automated registration for
FLAIR classes. Previously, you had to send an e-mail, be manually registered for classes,
confirmations emailed and you had to respond. Now each individual can register for classes, cancel if
they need to through LMS. It is web-based, and easy to use. So, set up a profile and get ready for fall!
 Nominations and Election of FY 2012/2013 Officers – Ella Hinson
Nominations for President: Mike Wolfe
Closed, voted, and elected.
Nominations for Vice-President: Tommy Lemacks
Closed, voted, and elected.
 FACTS Changes – Elwood McElhaney
FACTS went live on March 1st. The agencies have loaded in their contract information and the
website will be released to the public later this month. This website is for transparency. We did make
some changes that affected FLAIR. We will be showing the payment against the contracts in FACTS.
Beginning 7/1/12, agencies will be required to use the 5-digit FLAIR Contract ID on the payment
transaction. We have 6-12 agencies that have been using this field for years, but many have not, so
this will be new.
Question: How will FLAIR know if you need to use a contract number or not?
Answer:
FLAIR won’t, but the Bureau of Auditing will. Auditing reviews all contracts over a
certain threshold and that threshold will be decreasing. And they look at sampled vouchers. When it
gets to them, if it is a payment against a contract, but does not have that number in the transaction, then
it will be deleted.
At this time, only contracts are required to go into FACTS, grants are not. That may be coming down
the road. However, if your agency chooses to input grants, that it optional. Also, contracts that you
deem to be confidential do not have to go into FACTS. Your agency must decide what is confidential.
Also, as of June 1st, you will no longer be required to use the “Z” in the Bookkeeping Indicator (BKI)
field.
Starting July 1, 2012, the correlation table will be used. The account code must be added into FACTS.
It will be edited against the Account Description (AD) file and sent to FLAIR. Any payments made on
the contract must use those account codes. Any changes or edits must be made through FACTS. The
changes are then sent to FLAIR. This is an overnight process.
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Question: Sometimes you pay the vendor from one fund and then split the funding to other funds
via JT. Do we only need the original fund in FACTS?
Answer:
You should have all account codes in FACTS where the payment will be distributed.
When you do the JT, you should use the FLAIR Contract ID, so that we are really being transparent
about the funding.
Question:
Answer:
Does the Contract number carry over to the benefitting side?
No.
Question: So how do we get the Contract number on all sides of the JT?
Answer:
You will have to input both sides manually. Two transactions will be required. It does
make more work for you at this time.
Question:
Answer:
Do you have to tie each account code to an amount?
No. You will input account codes only. They are not tied to dollar amount.
Currently you are sending in a Contract Summary Form for each contract payment. As of July 1 st, this
form will be automated from FACTS. Auditing will only accept the FACTS form with the payments.
The Bureau of Auditing will review the form for accuracy. If you have input all of your contracts as
having Contract Wide Consequences, and no deliverables are attached, they will not have anything to
audit against, and will not be able to make the payment. There are a few data fields on the current
Contract Summary form that are not in FACTS. You will have to add these manually until we can
make the necessary changes in FACTS. The form has been modified to remove the Agency Manager
Certification that was required on the initial payment. The current Contract Summary form is being
modified to remove that section as well. The Contract Manager still has to sign the form.
Question:
Answer:
Do they have to sign the actual form or can we attach an addendum?
The Bureau of Auditing will determine this.
Question: I printed one of the forms out this morning and the Contract Manager name is not on the
form. Is this being fixed?
Answer:
No. When this website goes live to the public, they will have access to this form.
Transparency and Public Records requests are not the same thing. We do not want to release the
names of contract managers to the public, so we do not include it on the form. They will only need to
print and sign their name.
We have developed a special URL where you can print out the Contract Summary form, but cannot
make any changes or updates to the contract. There has been concern with giving Contract managers
or other access to FACTS and not being able to control what they could change or edit. This will solve
that issue. This URL will not be made public. This will be coming soon. Your contract managers can
print the form, sign it and send it to you with approval to make the payment.
We had asked for Impact Statements from the agencies regarding the upcoming changes and additions
to FACTS. We only received about six. The responses to the Impact Statements will be posted to the
website this week. Also, if you are one of the agencies who sent in a statement, you will receive a
direct response to your statement.
Question: Will the public be able to see any audit findings for a contract?
Answer:
Yes. This is a future enhancement, but it is anticipated that the audit findings will be
available for the public to view.
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The Contract Imaging implementation is next. We need to talk about confidentiality issues. We don’t
want to put anything out there that will contain trade secrets. We will have a series of workshops
regarding this beginning next week. The first one will be Wednesday at 1:30-4:30 in this room. There
will be a memo giving specifics.
The audit findings enhancement is expected to be implemented in the fall. The findings and all
correspondence will be made public.
Christina Smith recently met with the CFO and we do have adequate infrastructure to proceed with the
imaging in the fall. We anticipate the greatest interest will be in your agencies top five contracts based
on highest dollar amount. We will send letters to your Directors of Administration asking them to send
redacted copies of the contracts to us. Right now, the imaging is focusing on the contracts not the
procurement documentation that can go along with a contract. We will provide guidance in this regard
and may set standards. DFS is piloting this, and we are finding that you must deal with issues on a
case-by-case basis. Part of the two party agreement is the Statement of Work and the pricing of each
deliverable. DFS will share our experiences. We should be ready to begin loading images in October.
We will have October through December to load them. We will monitor the progress and reach out to
agencies who have not yet loaded as the end of the period gets closer.
We mentioned the auditing piece. The checklist that Auditing now uses will be moved into FACTS.
Once we complete the checklist, if there are deficiencies you will have a response time, then all the
correspondence will go live. We expect to have this in place by September 2012.
We have had scheduling issues with Florida Tax Watch. We are planning to meet with them and show
them what we have, as well as some prototype screens of where we are going.
Also, the manual Contract Summary form is being modified to match the automated form in FACTS.
There will be times when you will need to use it for confidential contracts not in FACTS, etc. We
have added the method of payment for each deliverable.
Question: Will there still be the fields with the three dates?
Answer:
No, the contract Summary form has never been for prompt payment compliance. The
three dates are not on the form.
Question: Some agencies, such as DEP and DOT had modified the form to include those three
dates. Can we do that with this form?
Answer:
Most agencies still put that on the invoice. We can look into that.
Question: Do we have the option to save the form?
Answer:
No. If there is an amendment, the agency will have to print a new form with the updated
information. You can copy the form and use it if no changes were made to the contract.
Comment: There may be a problem with the amounts on the form. The amendment does not change
the Total Contract Amount.
Answer:
We will look into that. An amendment with a monetary value should change the total
amount.
Question: DOT has rolled up deliverables. Do we need to list every item on the form?
Answer:
We are going to need to continue the conversation regarding this. We need to have
meaningful deliverables on the contract and on the form. DFS ran into this with a lease with no end
date. Every year they just updated square footage, etc. Do we really need 30 years of history?
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Probably not. But going forward, we will need to have some detail to make it meaningful. We will
have to deal with some on a case-by-case basis.
We will have some CFO memos coming out regarding the Contract Summary form, payments
reporting, and we will need to look into the JT issue with contract numbers.
MFMP contracts will be addressed in a memo.
We are hoping that once we get the FACTS imaging done that we can apply the same concepts to
vouchers. We are at least 1 to 1 ½ years away from having imaged vouchers. Right now, the CFO
wants contracts imaged.
We anticipate the site going public the last week of June.
 Other Business – Mike Wolfe
A “new FLAIR” is still on the to-do list, but until then, let’s work to make this one better.
Thank you to the Education group for the very detailed, seven pages of minutes from the last meeting.
 Adjournment
Motion made to adjourn, seconded and approved.
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