Financial Reporting Issues and Progress to Date
The issues being addressed and SPIT's current achievements toward
improving financial reporting resources that are available to help
sponsored research administration staff perform their work are listed
below. Changes and enhancements that are being planned follow the
achievements list. The links provide detailed information, which
is further down on this page.
Issues
- The lack of comprehensive and accurate encumbrances in the central
accounting system results in reports that are inadequate for decision-making
by the project director and other managers.
- Centrally produced statements of activity categorize information
in ways that are not meaningful or useful to research administrators
and project directors.
- The difficulty of matching M-Pathways data with data in local
bookkeeping systems adds complexity and time to the reconciliation
of local records with the official record.
- The inability of project directors and their administrators
to easily track accounts receivable causes dissatisfaction on
the part of our sponsors and can lead to serious financial problems.
- The Project Budget Report no longer provides information about
current paid balance that can be easily reconciled with the Statement
of Activity or users’ local systems.
- The lack of timely close-out of completed projects causes additional
work for research administrators and staff in Financial Operations,
and may make it very difficult or impossible to resolve overdrafts/balances
effectively.
- The lack of timely financial reports to sponsors causes additional
work for project directors and their research administrators;
it can affect the project director’s relationship with the
sponsor; and it causes the University to be out of compliance
with sponsor regulations.
- A-21 reporting is redundant and time consuming.
Progress to Date (December 2002)
Previous Financial Reporting
Progress Reports
Coming Soon to the U-M Research Community
- Cost Sharing Best Practices Guide
Progress to Date Details
Changes to the Project/Grant
Budget Status, Statements of Activity, and Voucher Detail Expense
Reports (December 2002):
The financials reporting review committee, which included
staff from MAIS, Financial Operations, and research administrators
in various units, was charged to help develop new formats for various
financial reports to make them more useful for the schools, colleges,
and institutes.
The committee organized focus group meetings, which resulted in
recommendations for several changes to the Project Budget Status
Report (PBSR), Statement of Activity, and Voucher Detail Expense
reports. Redesigned reports were implemented in December 2002.
Your Financial Operations Coordinator can provide help with reconciling
reports or answer questions about the data on a report. The MAIS
Help Desk can provide assistance with running these reports.
A-21 Reporting (December 2002):
To improve the A-21 reporting process, Financial Operations
Sponsored Programs has:
- Hired three full-time Financial Control Clerks to complete annual
and final A-21 reports.
- Conducted a process review, which included feedback from SPIT
representatives and Department Administrator focus groups
This review resulted in suggestions for improvements to the A-21
process, and Sponsored Programs has begun to pilot the proposed
changes. Additional feedback from Department Administrators and
others interested in the A-21 reporting process should be given
to Bryan Van Sickle (e-mail bvsickle@umich.edu,
or call 734-647-1946).
A communication explaining the changes to the A-21 reporting process
will be distributed when the changes become effective in early January.
Updated process guides, job aids, and training will be available.
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