Dear Colleagues,
The Accounting Office and Impact23 team are pleased to announce important information related to salary corrections/cost transfers. Salary and benefit costs are the university’s largest expenditure, and accurately reporting these expenditures is essential to performing our financial management responsibilities. With the deployment of the new Chart of Accounts, Oracle and the various reporting tools, the development of these critical applications and processes took additional time. The three areas covered below are: 1) Deployment of the new COA Salary Cost Transfer Application; 2) Corrections to July UCPath expenses redirected to suspense; and 3) Temporary process for correcting old FAU to new COA salary costs. Please review each section below carefully and complete the requested actions.
Direct questions about the applications to https://impact23.ucr.edu/request-help-ticket
Thank you for your continued patience and support as the campus adapts to the new COA and the replacement of our many financial systems and applications.
Sincerely,
Bobbi McCracken
Associate Vice Chancellor and Controller (retiring)
Business & Financial Services
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Salary Cost Transfer Guidance
- New Salary Cost Transfer (SCT) Tool
The new SCT application is available for immediate use. The new version of the SCT was developed specifically for salary costs posted under the new COA and recorded in the Oracle General Ledger and Looker Payroll Distribution (formerly SuperDOPE). The business rules are similar to the former application, however, some adjustments were required to accommodate the new COA and restrictions in Project Portfolio Management (PPM) related to project dates. For non-zero project numbers: a) business rules check confirm earnings end date is within the project’s start and end dates; b) all salary cost transfers must be approved within 60-days of a contract and grant project’s expiration date (see below for special exception due to transition); and c) all transfers “to” a contract and grant projects must be processed by the Shared Services Center in UCPath within 120 days of the pay period end date, so units should plan accordingly.
The new SCT has a unique icon in R-Space authorized applications with the name “Salary Cost Transfer Tool”. Please note, the old FAU version will also be present in the authorized applications under “Salary Cost Transfer Tool (FAU)”. The New SCT tool requires specific Enterprise Access Control (EACS) provisioning by Department SAAs and is independent from ServiceLink. Department SAAs can begin provisioning the 1) SALARY COST TRANSFER TRANSACTOR and 2) SALARY COST TRANSFER APPROVER roles immediately.
Immediate Actions
- Department SAAs should begin provisioning the SALARY COST TRANSFER TRANSACTOR role immediately to individuals with job roles requiring the ability to initiate salary cost transfers.
- Department SAAs should begin provisioning the SALARY COST TRANSFER APPROVER role to the department head and/or department financial manager
- Due to the anticipate high volume of requests, please advise your unit transactors to place their initial focus and highest priority on:
- Any cost Transfers involving expired and expiring contract and grant projects
- All Cost Transfers involving the July pay period
- Special Handling: Due to the time limits mentioned above for non-zero projects (i.e., contracts and grants), approved payroll transactions involving the July 2023 pay periods that exceed the 60 or 120 rules will be processed via manual journal entry. A manual exception process/form under COA is under consideration.
- Suspense Funding Due to Cutover
As communicated in the 9/11/2023 MSOADM email “July Payroll and Suspense Funding”, with the UCPath cutover to the new Chart of Accounts, payroll salaries and benefits referencing earnings dates prior to 7/1/2023 were redirected to suspense funding (69993) due to a system limitation. These payroll transactions cannot be moved using salary cost transfer tools due to the same system limitation. The Accounting Office will be generating correcting files in phases for all July transactions posted to fund 69993, so please do not initiate SCTs for these transactions. Phase One of the proposed correcting transactions relate to the first week of the biweekly pay period ending 7/8/2023 (i.e., 6/25-7/1) based on current position funding were distributed to ORG CFAOs on 10/13/2023 with a due date of no later than 11/9/2023. Once the files are completed by Orgs, priority being given to salary expenses impacting sponsored projects. Questions about this process should be directed to your Organizational CFAO.
- SCT Tool (FAU Edition)
As a temporary measure, the former version of the Salary Cost Transfer Request tool has been modified to assist departments in requesting SCTs for May 2023 and/or June FY23 transactions. The modified tool works as follows.
- The tool is identified in RSpace under authorized apps as “Salary Cost Transfer Tool (FAU)”
- There is no need to reprovision transactors and approvers that currently have these roles. New users can be provisioned in EACS by Department SAAs under the ServiceLink application.
- All requests will route to the Accounting Office-Payroll Coordination team
- The team will review and provide feedback and updates on the requests
- All requests will be journaled in the Oracle Cloud Financial (OCF) system (i.e., the corrections will only be in OCF not in UCPath or Looker)
- The SCT tool has been modified to allow change requests of up to 180 days from the original pay period end date
- This edition of the tool will be decommissioned at the end of December 2023
- Note: Manual Exception SCT previously submitted related to FAU will be converted to COA, sent for verification and processed as manual journals in OCF.
Immediate Actions
The highest priority should be given to requests involving expired or expiring contract and grant projects.
SCT FAU to COA Requests steps:
- Select the payroll lines for transfer and enter the transfer to FAU in the request
- Provide the FAU to COA conversion information for in the comments section for each cost transfer row (both “from” and “to”)
- Double check the “to” COA to ensure the cost is allowable and earnings occurred within the project date
- Provide a reason the SCT was not initiate prior to the fiscal closing cut-off
- Attach other supporting documentation including PI approval when the transaction involves a C&G fund
- Route for appropriate approvals