Weekly Bulletin No. 857
Tuesday 6th April
- Update from the Director of Finance
- Cambridge University Endowment Fund – Notification of Revaluation & Purchases & Sales
- Accounts Receivable – AstraZeneca/Coupa Supplier Portal Reminder
- Medically Exempt Marketplace Orders Update
- Forthcoming Courses (via Teams): GL and Grants
- Monthly Accounting Timetable
Update from the Director of Finance
Director of Finance David Hughes regularly updates the Finance Division on key business matters. Where relevant, we will also share this news via the CUFS Bulletin to keep our wider Finance community informed. David's latest message features a brief update about the launch of the Finance Transformation Programme's Strategic Procurement and Purchasing project and a link to a presentation delivered by David and Professor John Dennis, Head of the School of Technology.
The update can be accessed here.
Issued by Nicola Lawrence - Finance Transformation Programme Communications Manager
Cambridge University Endowment Fund – Notification of Revaluation & Purchases & Sales
The deadline for the requests to be received is the 17th June 2021.
Issued by Scott Maclaren - Treasury & Investments
Accounts Receivable – AstraZeneca/Coupa Supplier Portal Reminder
AstraZeneca are moving to mandatory use of the Coupa Supplier Portal (CSP) from 31st March 2021. From that date all invoices issued to AstraZeneca from the University will need to be submitted on this portal, they will no longer accept invoices sent by post or email.
This will also apply to business with MedImmune as well as AstraZeneca .
The University already has a central Coupa registration (managed by Bernadette Parsons in Credit Control) to which we can add users from all our departments and the Research Office if they need to transact with AstraZeneca, we want to use this registration rather than have separate registrations set up for individual departments.
Please contact Bernadette Parsons (Bernadette.Parsons@admin.cam.ac.uk) Tel: x765872) if
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you wish to be registered as a user on Coupa
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you have already completed a Coupa registration (we can merge the accounts)
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you have any queries on the new process with AstraZeneca
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any of your other customers mention a Coupa connection going forward.
Issued by Bernadette Parsons - Shared Services Manager
Medically Exempt Marketplace Orders Update
Further to our communication in Bulletin No. 855 regarding Medical Exempt purchase orders to Marketplace Suppliers, we are pleased to be able to ease a little, the temporary workaround previously detailed.
Procurement Services have over the last couple of weeks been reaching out to our Marketplace suppliers to establish which of them might ship direct to the University from their establishments overseas, hence generating an import for us. In those circumstances a separate medical exemption certificate is still needed, so it can be provided to the carriers to present when the import declaration is made and to enable us to receive the goods free of Import VAT.
To date we have received replies from nearly 60% of the suppliers listed. Departments will now only need to manually forward a copy of the completed Medical Exemption Certificate to suppliers who:
a) have responded to say that items may be imported; or
b) have not yet responded to confirm where their goods may be delivered from.
A listing of the above suppliers (and where known, the products affected) is available on Procurement Services website. We will continue to update as further information is received.
To prevent duplicate orders please ensure that you do not forward a copy of the original purchase order to the supplier, only send the certificate referencing the order number.
In addition, following feedback received the contact email addresses have been updated for both:
- Agilent Technologies - customercare_uk@agilent.com
- Greiner Bio-One - sales.uk@gbo.com
We appreciate that this is still an additional administrative burden for departments and where goods are imported you will still need to establish additional information and ask them to pass the certificate to their carriers. Therefore, we are continuing to look at alternative solutions to enable us to benefit from the ME relief, but which also works from both a departmental and suppliers' perspective.
In the meantime, thank you to all those who have offered feedback and kindly forwarded additional comments to us from suppliers. If you have any further questions or information, please continue to contact Procurement Services on procurement.services.enquiries@admin.cam.ac.uk
Issued by Karen Sheldon - Finance Training
Forthcoming Courses (via Teams): GL and Grants
GL2: Reporting in the General Ledger, Tue 13 and Wed 14 April
Generate and discuss the standard reports in both Cognos and CUFS that are most commonly used for monitoring department finances. Common issues and watch points are also covered. You need to have completed the Intro to Cognos course (and therefore have Cognos access) and there is a pre-coursework exercise to complete. If you missed the Intro to Cognos course, you can catch up by completing the online version – you need to allow at least 48 hours to get your Cognos access.
Grants 2: Reporting using Cognos, Tue 20 and Wed 21 April
This is the Grants course that covers reporting and follows on from Intro to Cognos. We focus on the Grants reports offering in Cognos. It includes the two “new” consolidated reports where you discover how to produce your own desired output. Over the two sessions, reporting is viewed from three different perspectives: summary financial information, detailed expenditure analysis and management reports for grants due to close. As with the GL course above, if you missed the Intro to Cognos course, you can catch up by completing the online version.
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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