Monday, March 26, 2018

CSE guidance on child accounts

A group of administrators worked with the Dean's Office to draft a collegiate statement regarding the use of child accounts in the college.  The draft language was circulated to all administrators for comment in January.  Now that the Finance blog is back up to memorialize this, CSE's approach to the use of child accounts is:

For sponsored projects involving co-investigators from more than one academic department, unless the involved department heads approve otherwise, child accounts should be established in each department to ensure that ICR is properly credited, that effort is well-managed, that reporting is robust, and so the administration of cross-departmental projects is as transparent as possible.  In addition, it is CSE's best practice to establish the resource division between departments at the PRF stage.  When multiple departments are involved, it is the responsibility of the administering department to adequately communicate with staff in other involved departments throughout the pre- and post-award processes.

Friday, March 23, 2018

Raise dates for 9-month employees

The University now requires CSE to have a consistent college-wide approach to raise implementation for each employee class.  After consulting several central offices including OHR, SPA, SFR, and the Tax Office, and after seeking input from departments, the following policy is effective immediately. 

Summer salary drawn after the start of the new fiscal year will be paid at a compensation rate that incorporates the annual merit increase, promotional increments, and most other pay changes that are effective at the start of the next academic year.

As is already collegiate policy, annual graduate assistant pay rate changes are implemented at the start of the academic year with summer salary all paid at the compensation rate of the prior fiscal year.

This is a collegiate policy, and departments no longer have flexibility in this area.  The majority of CSE's departments are already using this approach.  If you are not, please alter your internal processes to match this policy.

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

FY18 commitment deadlines

Like last year, CSE will have deadlines for requesting Dean's Office commitment transfers, so the college can appropriately plan cash flows as year end approaches.  For Dean's Office commitments to startup funds, the deadline for sending requests will be April 27.  For most other commitments, the deadline will be May 11. 

The exceptions to the May 11 deadline are those commitments that cannot be done until period 13 because a calculation requires full-year data, e.g., commitments to return a percentage of ICR generated.  Please let Cathy Burke know if you have any questions. 

Monday, March 19, 2018

FY19 Budget Entry

The Budget Office recently released the FY19 budget entry instructions: 

http://finance.umn.edu/Budget_FY2019/2018-03-14_FY19FinalBudgetEntryInstructions.pdf

In addition, the link below is to a CSE budget entry best practices document, which has been expanded from last year's version.  Please review it and follow the guidance.  For FY19, we will be reviewing departmental budget details after budgets are submitted to the college.  In cases where the best practice guidance does not meet your needs, please discuss with Cathy Burke in advance. 

CSE budget entry best practices:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=17Ns2roifYPfQwDzDcvFnpySNq-8aMNh2

Budgets are due to be submitted in EFS to the Dean's Office by 8AM Thursday, June 7th, 2018.  

Thursday, March 15, 2018

The CSE Finance Blog is Back

Due to technical difficulties, the finance blog has been on hiatus for several months.  It is fixed, and you will start seeing content again soon.  The URL for the blog is below, and past posts remain on the blog.  The distribution list had to be rebuilt from scratch without the benefit of access to the old subscriber list.  If you received this post as an email, then you are already signed up and need to take no further action. 

http://finance.blog.cse.umn.edu/