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Real-Time Financials Project: Enhancements
ITS continues to partner with schools/colleges and central offices to identify opportunities to provide real-time reporting data through the central financial system. RTF enhancements that ensure the University has rich and timely reporting data include financial estimates improved transaction processing, and data archiving.
Financial Estimates
Payroll, employee benefits, and financial aid expenses represent well over 70% of the direct expenses for most University units. Offering automated, estimate calculations for these expenses in the U-M Data Warehouse and on various financial reports (e.g., Project/Grant Budget Status) provides your unit with:
- A broader level of financial information available from a single source.
- Enhanced fiscal planning and reporting without requiring duplicate data entry.
These estimates are:
- Gross Pay
- FICA (University cost only)
- Employee benefit (University cost only)
- Benefit Recharge Distribution (BRD)
- Employee parking (University cost only)
- Indirect Cost Allocation
- Financial Aid
- General Ledger estimate summary
Estimates are available for one prior fiscal year, the current fiscal year, plus two (2) future fiscal years.
Payroll Estimate Calculation Options (February 2012)
Based on campus feedback, flexibility has been added to the payroll estimate calculation used in various financial reports (e.g., Project/Grant Budget Status and CMB Summary of Projects). When you run financial reports containing payroll estimates (which includes Gross Pay, FICA, and BRD), you now have the option to determine the end date used in the calculation.
- The Funding End Date for each employee's appointment (default)
- The Budget Period End Date for a sponsored project/grant
- The Fiscal Year End Date for a non-sponsored project/grant or dept/dept group
Transaction Frequency
For financial data to be "real-time," transactions must be posted to the University's General Ledger in a timely manner throughout the month and for month-end close. Timely transaction processing ensures financial reports are more accurate, which in turn, facilitates robust financial decision making in your unit.
You can better leverage the M-Pathways system and improve your report data by examining your unit's business processes for these financial transactions.
To verify the University's transaction processing dates:
- Review the Monthly M-Pathways Business Cycle calendar.
Transactions are posted to the General Ledger throughout the month. With eReconciliation, you can reconcile transactions as soon as they are posted to the General Ledger
To see how financial estimates, transaction process improvements, or other RTF options can help you and your unit with financial reporting, contact the ITS Service Center to request a free RTF Consultation.
Archiving Data
When reporting real-time financial data the volume of data stored in the M-Pathways system must be evaluated against system performance (i.e., the time it takes to run queries/reports) to ensure a quick system response.
Voucher and payment data has been maintained in FINPROD since fiscal year 1999 (July 1998 – today). The current volume of this data negatively impacts system performance when querying against it for reporting purposes. To facilitate system performance going forward, ITS, Financial Operations and Procurement Services are archiving five years of voucher/payment data for FY1999 – FY 2003 (July 1998 – June 2002).
Archiving this data allows the University to:
- More closely align to industry standards to maintain/report data for the current fiscal year plus five (5) prior years. Even with archiving, U-M will maintain two additional prior fiscal years in FINPROD.
- Reduce 34% of the data maintained in FINPROD
Archiving Schedule: Voucher & Payment Data |
FY |
Date |
|---|---|---|
One fiscal year at a time will be archived within the normal weekend maintenance window. A system outage is not required. The remaining schedule will be determined based on results from the FY1999 archiving process. |
1999 |
6/26/2010 |
2000 |
11/20/2010 |
|
2001 |
12/04/2010 |
|
2002 |
12/11/2010 |
|
2003 |
12/18/2010 |
Impact to You: Little to none! If you need FY1999 - FY2003 voucher/payment data you can:
- Use the U-M Data Warehouse. This is the recommended reporting method as the Procurement Voucher tables in the Financial data set (BusinessObjects Universe FN06) contain data for the current and prior fiscal years
- Contact the ITS Service Center to have ITS create/run an ad-hoc PS query. Requests are evaluated on a case-by-case basis to determine whether the Data Warehouse is a viable alternative.
Criteria for Archiving include:
- The voucher's Accounting Date determines the fiscal year for the voucher.
- For PO vouchers and associated payments, the purchase order must be in Completed status.
Vouchers and associated payments for a "blanket PO" (i.e., PO that was active over several fiscal years) may not be archived.
