Weekly Bulletin No. 806
Week Commencing Monday 27th January
- Vulerable Period - Tuesday 28th January
- Cognos Availability - Tuesday 28th January
- Marketplace Unavailable – Thursday 30th January 2020
- Internal Trading - Description Lines Being Passed From AR to AP
- Accounts Receivable - Changes to the Transaction Screens
- AR Customer Sites - Visibility
- Central AR Customer Set Up Service
- January Month End - Half Year Accounts
- Payroll - PSA On-Costs for 2018/19
- Fraudulent Purchase Orders
- Financial Statement Review
- Training - Upcoming Courses
System Availability - Tuesday 28th January
The CUFS system will be unavailable during the vulnerable period of 6am to 9am on Tuesday 28th January.
This time will be used for system maintenance.
Issued by Michelle Bond - Lead Functional Analyst
Cognos Availability - Tuesday 28th January
Cognos will be unavailable during the vulnerable period of 6am to 9am on Tuesday 28th January.
This time will be used for system maintenance.
Marketplace Unavailable – Thursday 30th January 2020
Please be advised of an upcoming period of maintenance scheduled to take place on the Marketplace from 6:30pm to 8:30 pm Thursday 30th January
2020.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
Issued by Heather Twinn - eProcurement Administrator
Internal Trading - Description lines being passed from AR to AP
Further to the November 2019 FUG where we advised that we would look at bringing the description on an AR internal Invoice line into AP, we have developed a process to create a line in AP, with the relevant description, for every one that appears on the AR Internal Invoice, (if there are 3 lines on the AR invoice there will be 3 lines on the AP equivalent with the same descriptions). This process will be implemented in CUFS on Tuesday 28 January 2020.
We urge all departments issuing Internal Trading invoices to ensure that the description on the AR lines is meaningful for the receiving department, avoid vague references. Please refer to the Financial Procedures Manual 8b for further guidelines.
If you have any queries please contact the Accounts Receivable Helpdesk on 32215 or email ufs_ar@admin.cam.ac.uk.
Issued by Andrew Weatherley – Manager Accounts Payable, Receivable and Cash Management.
Accounts Receivable - Changes to the Transaction Screens
In order to improve the appearance of the transaction screens we have removed some of the unused fields in order to make it clearer which areas are in use, see an example here. These changes will be implemented in CUFS on Tuesday 28 January 2020.
If you have any queries please contact the Accounts Receivable Helpdesk on 32215 or email ufs_ar@admin.cam.ac.uk.
Issued by Andrew Weatherley – Manager Accounts Payable, Receivable and Cash Management.
AR Customer Sites - Visibility
A change is being made to CUFS on Tuesday 28 January to make all active customer addresses (sites) visible to all CUFS AR users.
This will mean that if a customer is active in AR, every department will be able to see all the addresses available without the need to set up an address site for each department needing to invoice that customer (currently a separate address site is needed for each department invoicing that customer, even if all the addresses are the same).
This will simplify customer set up greatly, enable us to cleanse more records following recent data cleanses on the AR customers and maintain the data integrity of the AR customer records more easily.
For internal customers this will have a large benefit, as currently all internal customers have as many address sites as there are departments within the University. Following this change we will be able to reduce this number to one address for most departments (departments with multiple location address used for invoicing will have each of those addresses listed once).
The benefit for external customers is that if the address you need is already on CUFS, you can invoice immediately without the need to ask for the address to be added for your department. If the address you need is not on the list, you will need to send a request through for it to be added, but the new address will then be visible to all. If a customer changes their address we’ll only need to change it once rather than multiple times.
Any contact names held on the customer record will still be available to select when raising a sales invoice (and there should be a generic ‘Accounts Payable’ contact available for commercial customers). If the name you need is not available please contact the Finance Division customer set up team (see following note) and we will add the contact to the customer.
You will need to select a salesperson for each invoice you raise. This will be a mandatory field from Tuesday. The Finance Division are currently updating the salesperson records, and you can make changes to these by contacting the helpdesk.
A short-term effect of this change will be that on some customers you may see multiple duplicate addresses. Any of these duplicate addresses can be selected, so simply choose the address you need for your invoice. We will undertake a clean-up exercise in the coming weeks to remove these duplicates.
Issued by Bernadette Parsons - Manager of Shared Services and Credit Control
Central AR customer set up service
Most departments already use the Finance Division’s central service for AR customer set up. Turnaround on requests is fast (same day or next), and it has enabled us to maintain a good consistency of AR customer records.
Following discussions at FUG in recent months, and improvements made in AR (including the removal of the requirement to have a separate address for each department billing a customer) the central service will now become the standard, mandatory way to set up and make amendments to AR customers and addresses.
A small number of departments have been identified and contacted who have specific needs and will be able to continue to set up their own customers. However, to maintain the data integrity of the existing customer records any amendments to existing customers should be sent through to the central service.
Details of and guidance on the service can be found here.
Issued by: Bernadette Parsons - Manager of Shared Services and Credit Control
January Month End - Half Year Accounts
The accounts for the first half of the financial year are important in ongoing financial management, whether at University, School or Department level. They are used in monitoring performance and compliance in key areas such as: spending against budget; balances on trust funds and donation accounts; income levels; internal trading; the rate of recovery of indirect costs and progress on construction projects.
As in previous years we are asking departments to review their accounts in January, and bring them as up to date as possible. In particular departments should:
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Re-allocate items of expenditure to research grants, donation accounts and trust funds as appropriate, where they have been provisionally coded to Chest or other sources of funds - this should be done by amending the Accounts Payable distribution where possible, otherwise by raising a General Ledger journal;
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Bring income up to date by raising external trading invoices and invoices for B source of funds recharges etc;
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Claim unallocated BACS receipts;
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Process suppliers' invoices for January purchases and raise accruals for any significant purchases not yet invoiced;
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Clear suspense accounts (e.g. Grants, internal trading, credit card);
In order to give departments more time to review their accounts to January 2020 and process transactions the CUFS modules will remain open 4 days longer than normal.
7 working days - Tuesday 11th February
Accounts Payable
Accounts Receivable
Inventory
Grants
Purchasing
8 working days – Wednesday 12th February
Last day for placing funds on deposit
Fixed Assets
9 working days – Thursday 13th February
General Ledger
All modules will close at 5pm on the stated days.
Issued by Mike Sinclair – Central and Research Accounting
Payroll - PSA On-Costs for 2018/19
Fraudulent Purchase Orders
As discussed at the FUG last Friday, there is a continued attempt by fraudsters to obtain goods by deception.
The main approach used by fraudsters is to use a seemingly correct Purchase Order to request goods from a company. This purchase order usually originates from an email address that resembles those of the University of Cambridge.
The Finance Division has more detailed information on its website
We are encouraging our suppliers to be vigilant and to query Purchase Orders they receive from us, especially if they are not from their normal University contact or delivery address.
Please feel free to contact Procurement Services or the Finance Division Helpdesk if you need any help or support.
Issued by Chris Patten - Head of Accounting Services, Finance Division
2018/19 Financial Statement Review
There are still a few places left for the overview session being presented by David Hughes on Tue 4 Feb at Mill Lane (lunch time). He is giving a brief review of the 2019 Financial Statements following the year end audit. To book a place, please go to https://www.training.cam.ac.uk/fin/event/3342050
Issued by Christine Rogerson - Finance Training
Training Courses
The upcoming courses have places available:
Grants and Indirect Costs at Cambridge, Friday 31st January, 10h00 – 11h30
How to Excel (for Finance Staff), Tuesday 4th February, 13h00 – 16h00
iProcurement Pt 1 Getting started in iProcurement, Wednesday 5th Feb, 09h30 – 15h45
Issued by Christine Rogerson - Finance Training
Monthly Accounting Timetable
To view the status of the monthly process including the month end close dates please use the following link: Accounting Timetable
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