June, 2015
From the Editor
It’s June, and you know what that means: Fiscal Year-end closing. Two big issues that departments face are (1) identifying open commitments and (2) closing any commitments that will not be carried into FY 2016.
How can BW help? The Funds Management Transaction Detail report provides the information you need to address the identification issue. Refer to “Finding Open Commitments” in the Tips & Tricks section below for more detail about how to use this report to answer your questions
If you’re a grant administrator, you may not be concerned with the close of the Fiscal Year, but you still need to track commitments for the grants you monitor. A frequently-asked question that surfaced during recent intermediate-level Grants Management reporting sessions was “how can I see my open commitments?” The best answer, for now at least, is to use the FM Transaction Detail report. The BW team is working on a specific GM solution, but it isn’t yet ready for publication. So, my advice to you is the same as that for the administrators responsible for tracking departmental budgets: check out this month’s Tips & Tricks.
I hope you find this issue of the Newsletter informative. Happy reporting!
Bill Stewart
Year-end Webinar
This news isn’t limited to BW reporting, but did you know that the Financial Affairs, Budget, PAFO, and Sourcing & Procurement Offices recently offered a Webinar describing the various dates and processes that departments must understand in order to successfully close Fiscal Year 2015? If you missed it – or if you attended but want to review any of the issues discussed – you can view Webinar resources on the Fiscal Year-end Closing Web page.
Some of these Tips may be new to you, while others may be familiar. Regardless, we hope you find value in these and future Tips, even if we do no more than remind you of the existence of tools you once knew about but had since forgotten.
Note: all of the Tips posted in our newsletters are archived on this page.
Finding Open Commitments
The Funds Management Transaction Detail report makes it remarkably easy to view open commitments. This Help guide describes the process recommended to identify all open commitments for a Funds Center, grant or internal order as of a specified date: BW How to – View Open Commitments.
Using Patterns in the Variable Entry Screen
This tip is somewhat esoteric, and it is not guaranteed to work for all BW reports, but there are times when it comes in handy. Suppose you want to view all Internal Service Request (ISR) or Facilities Service Request (FSR) activity for a Funds Center during a specified period. You know, I hope, that the GL accounts associated with ISRs and FSRs begin with 89. Using this fact, you can run a report and specify GL / Commitment Item on the Variable Entry screen like this:
All you need to do is enter 89, the first two digits of the GLs you seek, followed by a wild-card character (“*”). This specification limits report data to only GL account numbers that begin with 89, regardless of what characters follow these key digits. By the way, you can use this tip (or is it a trick?) when finding open commitments, as described in the previous tip.
Another example is this: suppose you want to see all supplies expenses. Examining the current list of GL account numbers posted on the Comptroller’s Resources page (http://www.bu.edu/cfo/comptroller/resources/), notice that all numbers associated with supplies begin with 5100. Given that pattern, you could specify this string in the GL / Commitment Item field on the Variable Entry Screen:
These two examples involve GL accounts, but you can use patterns when specifying other variables. In fact, if you read the BW Newsletter Tips & Tricks last month, you saw an example involving a date field. In that one, fiscal periods from the start of FY 2015 through the current period were specified like this: “>=1/15.”
June Training Opportunities
Following on the success of the April Position Budget reporting workshops, co-lead by Mary Beth Dillon, we revised our May intermediate-level Grants Management reporting sessions. This time, we were joined by Shelly Stewardson from PAFO. Attendees indicated it was great to be able to ask detailed questions about GM data and processes – and to see how BW reports could be used to highlight data related to those questions.
We are continuing to revise our intermediate-level reporting sessions. This time, it is the Funds Management sessions that will change, and Meghan Tracey from the Budget Office will provide her FM expertise. At present, only a single session has been scheduled in June:
Tuesday, June 16, 10:00-12:00 – Charles River Campus – click to register
If you find that the session is full by the time you attempt to register, send email to Bill. This is a busy month for all of us, but if there is sufficient interest, we will attempt to schedule another session.
Introductory Workshops offered this month
As always, an assortment of introductory workshops will be offered this month. These sessions present to new employees – or employees assigned a new business role – the fundamentals of reporting for a particular subject area. The sessions are a great way to review material, too. Even if you previously attended an intro session, you are likely to learn new things about reporting – or to be reminded of concepts that you had forgotten.
Click on any of the following links for a course description and/to register for an upcoming session:
Supplier Resource Management Reporting
Labor Distribution (Payroll) Reporting
Please visit this page to view a schedule of all upcoming BW sessions. If you don’t see a date or a location scheduled for the course you are interested in, send email to the BW trainer and let him know of your interest. If sufficient interest is registered, additional sessions will be scheduled.
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