Finance and Administration News
Cost Share Award Process Reminder and Update
Cost share awards start with a 3 and represent the portion of costs not paid for by the sponsor on a grant. There are two types of cost share that must be tracked and require an account.
- Mandatory Cost Share: required per grant award and reported to sponsor. This cost share uses a source of 113000.
- Voluntary Committed: not required by sponsor but is in proposal/budget therefore it must be tracked. If we commit to this type of cost share it will use a source of 113100.
Disabling of Function 42 - Deans and Provost for FY21
The proposal to eliminate function 42-Deans and Provost was discussed with both the CFAO Group & the Accounting & Reporting Partner Group. It was agreed that activity currently going through function 42 should be transitioned to function 40-Academic Support, starting immediately, so that function 42 could be end dated on 6/30/20. It is not necessary to make any corrections to FY20 activity but you should not charge to function 42 in FY21. The decision was made to discontinue use of function 42 because it was not being used as intended for internal management reporting and is not needed for external financial reporting since functions 40 & 42 both roll up to the same Academic Support parent.
OBI Dashboard Enhancements
Over the last few months, we have deployed some new changes to the OBI dashboards.
Shred-It Pickup Schedule
Shred-It, the University’s paper shredding service provider, will continue to pick up confidential shredding during the COVID-19 by appointment only. Shred-It normally has regularly scheduled pickup days with departments using their services. However, due to many offices and buildings being closed or having limited access during this time, Shred-It has been unable to maintain the regular pickup schedule. Regularly scheduled pickups have been placed on hold until August 1, 2020, at which point we will re-evaluate the situation. Once the University is back to normal operations, Shred-It pickups will resume as previously scheduled. Departments will only be billed for pickups as they occur.
If your department needs Shred-It services prior to the first of August, the department will need to reach out to Shred-It’s Account Representative, Michelle Caudill, at Michelle.Caudill@STERICYCLE.com or 513.816.3016 to schedule a pickup date/time. Please be sure to reference your PO number and location of the pickup when communicating with Michelle. It is the responsibility of the department to ensure that Shred-It personnel have access to the location of the Shred-It bins during these scheduled pickups.
Questions? Contact Finance Customer Care at financecustomercare@ohio.edu.
Direct Deposit for New Suppliers
Effective March 16, 2020, direct deposit is now required for all NEW suppliers. This change has been implemented to ensure business continuity for payments to our vendors especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. By using direct deposit, our employees can practice social distancing during the current pandemic and further prepares the University for emergency situations that arise in the future.
This new process will also benefit the University by providing cost savings through the elimination of check stock and ink, reducing time spent on printing, voiding, and re-issuing checks. Direct deposit is also a more sustainable practice, eliminating the mass amount of paper products that are being used and provides more security to our vendors.
The finance department will be reaching out to current vendors that are set up as check payment to convert them to secure direct deposit for all future payments.
Questions? Contact Finance Customer Care at financecustomercare@ohio.edu.
New PCards - COMING SOON
The University will be changing purchasing card providers. Bank of America will be the new provider and we plan to distribute new cards to cardholders in mid-October.
More details related to training materials and card distribution will be forthcoming in future newsletters and at the Business Forum in August.
Planning Unit PPE Purchasing Guidance
Over the past several months there has been a tremendous amount of work to identify the various personal protective equipment (PPE) and supplies that the university will need to have available as we start to welcome everyone back to our campuses and mitigate the risk of COVID-19. To ensure that we are prepared and have what is needed for fall opening, we asked each planning unit to identify a point person to help us gather PPE needs for each department and unit. As such, each planning unit has identified one point of contact to coordinate all COVID-19 related PPE needs. This individual will be working directly with departments within the planning unit to consolidate all PPE needs and work with Purchasing to fulfill those requests. Please view the PPE Planning Unit Contact webpage to identify the individual that has been assigned to your planning unit.
Important Year-End Reminders - Multiple Periods are Open; Key Year-End Dates; Prepaids
As you are working to complete your year-end closing tasks, please be aware of the following:
Multiple Periods are open -June 2020-20 & July 2020-21 are now both open periods in JET. Please be very careful when staging journal entries to choose the correct GL Period. For Project Task Award (PTA) transactions the Grants Module will post the transaction to the earliest open period relative to the transaction’s Grants Expenditure Item Date. Therefore, make sure to use the correct Expenditure Item Date for any PTA journal lines, examples below:
Faculty Voluntary Separation or Retirement (VSRP)
Ohio University is re-opening the Voluntary Separation or Retirement Program (VSRP) for eligible faculty members.