Weekly Bulletin No. 829
Tuesday 15th September
- Essential IT guidance for returning to the office
- Year end events for information
- Cognos Grants Reports - NEW report
- Deposit Account – Interest Payment & Emailed Enforced Movement Letters
- Department name changes - now live
- Science Purchasing Group – New ‘Forum’ Format
- What information can be added to invoices to help with payment?
- Training - forthcoming courses
Essential IT guidance for returning to the office
Don’t lose your desktop files
If you’ve been using a University laptop or desktop PC at home, please ensure any files saved on your Windows desktop are also saved on shared drives or other locations before returning to the office. When you log on to the University network in the office for the first time, your desktop is likely to be wiped and your files will not be retrievable.
Allow time for Microsoft updates
You may need to allow time for Microsoft updates to be applied when turning on your computer for the first time since you were last in the office. This will also be true if you’ve used a University desktop or laptop from home and haven’t connected to the University VPN. These often include crucial security updates, so it’s important to apply them as soon as is convenient.
Update your printer server settings
If you work on a UAS computer, the server that you use to print will have changed. Find full guidance on what to do here: https://help.uis.cam.ac.uk/printmigration.
Stay alert for phishing and malware emails
Be on the lookout for fraudulent emails. Scammers will seek to take advantage of the change back to working internally. Please see our guidance here: https://help.uis.cam.ac.uk/news/phishing-alert-aug2020.
We’re here to help
We realise this is a difficult time and we are here to help you through your return to the office. Please log all issues via our self-service portal at www.uis.cam.ac.uk/self-service or, if you have any difficulties with this route, contact us via servicedesk@uis.cam.ac.uk. We may be able to offer some in-person IT support sessions at the Roger Needham Building by appointment only.
Issued by UIS Communications Group on behalf of UIS Service Desk
Year end events for information
Year end certificates to be returned by Friday 25 September
For further information, please refer to the Year End Instructions pages on the Finance Division website.
Issued by Christine Rogerson - Finance Training
Deposit Account – Interest Payment & Emailed Enforced Movement Letters
Deposit Account
Please note Deposit Account interest has been credited for August 2020 in CUFS
Enforced Movements
As part of monthly monitoring the Treasury & Investments team have carried out deposit movements to correct debit balances on Sources of Funds. Affected departments will receive documentation indicating which accounts have been adjusted.
Emailed Enforced Movement Letters
Departments will now receive enforced movement letters via email. If these are being received by the incorrect contact or you have not received a notification you were expecting, please contact Treasury & Investments.
September 2020 Deposit Account Interest
Please ensure deposit movements for September 2020 have been processed by the close of 6th October 2020, and that overdrawn accounts have had funds taken off deposit by this time to avoid delays in crediting September’s Interest.
Cambridge University Endowment Fund – Distribution
Distribution August 2020
Please note that the Cambridge University Endowment Fund distribution for August 2020 has been processed in the August 2020 CUFS period at 222.98p per unit per annum.
Queries: Any queries should be addressed to: Treasury & Investments, treasury@admin.cam.ac.uk, Ext 64216
Issued by Scott Maclaren - Treasury & Investments
Department name changes - now live
As advised in bulletin 823, the following department name changes have been completed in CUFS.
|
Department Code |
From |
To |
|
AJ |
Registrary's Office |
Governance and Compliance Division |
|
AN |
Occupational Health and Safety Service |
Health, Safety, and Regulated Facilities Division |
|
AY |
Legal Services Office |
Legal Services Division |
|
BY |
EM Administration |
Estates Division |
Issued by Lesley Dent - System Administrator
Cognos Grants Reports - NEW report
A New Cognos report, Grants: Listing and Budget V Actual Report, can be found in the Departmental (Shared) Reports folder for your School. This report has a variety of optional fields, allowing users to customise the output to suit their requirements. Using this report you should be able to reproduce any of the outputs from the following 18 reports and the report has been designed to eventually replace all of these:
- Actual v Budget Grants
- Actual v Budget Grants by Project Organisation
- Departmental Actual v budget grants by Project
- 3-2-1 List
- 3-2-1 Grants Listing
- 3-2-1 List by project
- FES List
- Awards ending with budget remaining
- Grants ending in the 3-2-1 months following the run date
- Grants End Date Enquiry
- Grants by Sponsor Type (with Budget and end date)
- Grants by Sponsor Type (with Budget)
- Grants by Sponsor Type (with Budget) with related information
- Grants Summary Information
- Grants Summary Information excluding Task 100
- Grants Summary Information excluding Task 100 by expenditure category
- Grants Summary Information with expenditure category
- Projects Ending List by Project Organisation
The report is intended for use by departments, schools, Central Finance and the Research Office. It uses the standard security model, restricting returned information to only the Projects and Awards the user has been granted access to.
- Training instructions for the report can be accessed here
We would encourage users to set up report views, with pre-set parameter choices for reports that are regularly used, to save time and replicate the report layout they desire:
- Creating a Report View click here
We will be looking for user feedback to help steer any improvements to this report in the right direction.
Issued by Leisa Broad - Financial Reporting Developer
Science Purchasing Group – New ‘Forum’ Format
The Strategic Procurement Review ('SPR') recommended the re-establishment of Commodity Working Groups ('CWGs'). As part of our work to implement SPR recommendations through the Strategic Procurement and Purchasing ('SPP') project, the Science Purchasing Group ('SPG') has been refreshed and now has a dedicated ‘forum’ platform supported through Yammer. The purpose of this forum is to act as a sharing resource, open to all those involved with Science purchasing.
You can join the forum here, where you'll also find a short welcome from the SPG chair, Niall Taylor.
Issued by Helen Stuckey - Procurement Service
What information can be added to invoices to help with payment?
As part of the drive to reduce time, admin burden and additional process requests, we thought it might be helpful to circulate what information needs Procurement Services seek when reviewing high value and/or large advance payment related invoices.
These invoices come to us for confirmation that they are in line within the current Financial Regulations – for example what competitively tendered process was the purchase order issued under; what dispensation number relates; or was pre-approval secured for a large advanced payment. When this information is not included on invoices – either by the supplier issuing the invoice or the department receiving it and passing on for payment – we manually search through our University wide records to identify it if possible and then seek confirmation or data from the departmental contact quoted on the invoice, if indeed one exists. All this takes time however, so if we could ask or remind all departments to add this information through the ordering and/or the invoice receipting cycle then we can reduce both the time taken for payment, as well as the admin burden for many.
For clarity, we are looking for:
- A valid University of Cambridge contract number (if one exists – usually in the form of something like UCAM 123/019 – where the first three numbers relate to the contract number and the last three to the year of execution) or;
- A dispensation number – a 5 digit number usually in the form of DISP 12345 and;
- The date pre-approval for any advanced payment above £10,000 was supported, recognising pre-approvals for advanced payment below £10,000 is delegated to Head of Department.
Forthcoming courses (via Teams)
General Ledger 2, 4 places, Tue 22 Sep.
Following on from GL1, learn how to run and interpret GL reports. Must have completed GL1 and Cognos Intro or equivalent.
Grants 2: Reporting using Cognos, 3 places, Tue 29 Sep
Manage departmental research grants using the Cognos reporting tool. Must have completed Grants 1 (online) and Cognos Intro or equivalent.
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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