We apologize for any inconvenience. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

Boston University Information Services & Technology
IT Help Center
ithelp@bu.edu
617-353-HELP(4357)

Quick Reference Guides (QRG) are available through BUworks Online Help to address both circumstances; explaining the process for employees who don’t work during the closing, and how to process compensation for those who do. Employees are encouraged to refer to the Employee Handbook and/or the collective bargaining agreement for details on emergency closing policy and procedures. A brief synopsis:

Full Day Closing
If the closing occurs before the employee’s regular planned work time and remains in effect up to or beyond the end of his or her planned working time, the employee, or manager, should enter the Absence (ABS) code 2009 Emergency Closing and the number of planned work hours. (Do not use start and end times for absences.)

Partial Day Closing
If an Emergency Closing is declared during an employee’s working day, time should be entered for the period before the EC in the usual manner using Attendance (ATT) code 1000 Hours Worked. For the hours after the EC starts, the ABS code 2009 Emergency Closing and the number of hours to complete the employee’s regular workday should be entered. (Do not use start and end times for absences.) Example: if a seven-hour per day employee works 8 am to Noon (four hours) when the EC starts, they should enter three hours, without start and end times, with the ABS 2009 code, for a daily total of seven hours.

Late Openings
If the University announces a late opening, the employee should enter the ABS code 2009 Emergency Closing and the number of hours from their regular start time until the official opening of BU. After the official opening, enter start and end times with the regular Hours Worked ATT code 1000. Example: Scheduled start at 8:30, BU opens at 11 AM, enter 2.5 hours with the ABS code 2009 then 4.5 hours with start and end times for a daily total of seven.

Work During Emergency Closing
When an employee is requested or required as essential personnel to work during an EC, in addition to recording their planned work hours as described above using the ABS code 2009, they will record the hours actually worked, with start and end times, using ATT code 1015 Hours Worked Emer. Closing. If the hours are to be taken as comp time, the code 01 must be entered under the OT Comp Type column on the same line.

NOTE: Please forward this link to the Quick Reference Guides (QRG) to any hourly employees who enter time using ESS and/or post them in a location convenient to your employees. Should you have any questions, please contact Jeff Small, Time Management Administrator at 617-358-4817.

What is changing?

• The basic functionality of the transaction itself isn’t changing; the same menu paths and transaction codes will work, and the same fields are available for keying.
• With the new functionality, any department submitter will be able to enter transactions on any fund center.
• Journal entry transactions can contain debits for up to 10 fund centers, and when saved as complete, the entry will flow for approval to the designated approver for each of the fund centers in the document. (Note: if an approver is authorized to approve on more than one fund center in the journal entry, the approver will only be asked to approve once; he/she will not see the journal entry multiple times.)
• Journal entries created by central users will flow to their designated supervisor to approval.
• Journal entries to grants will flow directly to the PAFO research administrator assigned to that grant, reducing the turn-around time for approval and posting.
• Entries using transfer GL accounts will now flow to the Budget Office for review. Please remember that transfer GL accounts are only to be used to 1) move funding between cost centers and internal orders and 2) moving prior year funding between two internal orders. These GL accounts do not represent actual revenue and expense activity. DO NOT USE transfer GL accounts for moving expenses between cost centers. The proper transfer GL account numbers to use in SAP are: 479999, “transfer in – operating” and 579999, “transfer out – operating”. All other transfer GL accounts are for central use only.
• Documentation of these changes in the approval process and any screen changes will be posted to the BUworks website by October 23rd.

Future changes planned

Some schools have requested the ability to approve journal entries at the school level as well as at the department level; this functionality is planned, but is not yet ready to be put in place

Impact on journal entries in workflow in SAP on October 26th

Our journal entry workflow “queue” needs to be empty at the time of the transport of the new functionality to production; any journal entries in the queue will be lost. To prevent loss of data, we are putting in place a short “freeze” on submitting journal entries in SAP, as follows:

• The freeze on “submitting” journal entries will start at 5 PM on Thursday, October 25 and end at 9 AM on Saturday, October 27.
• Department approvers should be sure to approve all submitted entries by noon on Friday, October 26; PAFO and General Accounting can then complete their approval processes by 5 pm on Friday so that no entries are lost.
• If you would like to check the status of your submitted journal entry during this period or at any time, instructions are available in this online document. Refer to page 35 (Tree On/Tree Off), pages 37-41 (Track Journal Entry through workflow), and page 57 (Services for Object).
• If your approver is away on vacation, or you are having any issue with completion or approval of the journal entry before the freeze, contact Israel Elmeus at ielmeus@bu.edu.

Please contact General Accounting with any questions about these changes or the Journal Entry process. You can reach us at 353-4266, or send e-mail to Israel Elmeus.

Submitted by:

Gillian Emmons
University Comptroller

Until Firefox releases an update that solves the problem, we are recommending that Windows users shop with Internet Explorer. Alternatively, instructions are provided so that Windows users can revert to version 15. Unfortunately, all Mac users must revert to Firefox 15 since Safari and other browsers are not supported by BUworks.

The affected punchout catalogs in SRM include:

• Airgas
• Bio-Rad Laboratories
• Fisher Scientific
• Grainger
• Qiagen
• Office Depot (Which is limited to only a select number of users.)
• SHI International Corp
• Sigma

If you have any questions, or any problem downgrading to an earlier version of Firefox, please feel free to contact us.

Boston University Information Services & Technology
IT Help Center
ithelp@bu.edu
617-353-HELP(4357)
www.bu.edu/tech

The BUworks team has devised a schedule for installing the Support Packs over the Thanksgiving break. These updates are tested by the BUworks team in our test environments, and then thorough “user acceptance” testing is done by key central and distributed end user representatives. This testing will occur over the course of several weeks preceding the Thanksgiving break.

Installation of these updates into the SAP Production system takes about three days. After that, we require another day to check out the system to ensure that everything is working as expected. Access to the BUworks (SAP) system will therefore not be available starting at 7:00 pm on Wednesday, November 21 through 6:00 pm on Sunday, November 25.

Additional reminders will be provided as the Thanksgiving break approaches. The Payroll Office and Student Employment will be making changes to the November monthly and weekly payroll schedules to accommodate this work, and those changes will be communicated well in advance.

We apologize for any inconvenience. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

Boston University Information Services & Technology
IT Help Center
ithelp@bu.edu
617-353-HELP(4357)
www.bu.edu/tech

Please contact the IT Help Center at ithelp@bu.edu, or by phone at (617)353-HELP (4357) if you have any problems or questions.

Please contact the IT Help Center online, via email at ithelp@bu.edu, or by phone at (617)353-HELP (4357) if you have any problems or questions.