November 9, 2008 - November 15, 2008 Archives

The November Monthly Joint Financial/Human Resources meeting will be held next Thursday, November 20 at 9:00 a.m. in The Minnesota Population Center Seminar Room (50 Willey Hall) not 140 Nolte Ctr. as previously announced. Please remember to change on your calendar.

Reminder for requisition preparers
When creating a PO for a guest hotel reservation, always include the tax with the room rate. Example - if the rate is $111.00/night, add the tax of $14.87, for a total of $125.87 a night as the rate.

Hopefully this will eliminate most of the match exceptions relating to hotel payments.

As part of their start-up packages, new faculty members receive a 1 month paid research appointment that takes place prior to the start of their Fall academic appointment. The purpose of this appointment is to ensure that University services such as an email account, internet access, library privileges and access to contract parking services are available during the transition to their new appointment. This is a separate commitment from their research, transitional and administrative support.

The transfer for the summer research appointment will be made to the department 20000 program code. Please make sure that this appointment is paid on that program code.

When a faculty member is awarded a development or research leave, the department pays only 50% of salary and fringe. However, the position was budgeted at 100% and this creates salary savings in the department that are to be used for instructional costs.

During the next month, departments will be asked to move these freed up funds to their 20031 program code (instructional funding) to offset the cost of replacement teaching. For further information, please see the CLA Replacement Teaching guidelines document at:

http://cla.umn.edu/intranet/docs/FY07_Replacement_teaching_guidelines_rev.pdf

Reimbursements for a unit Chair or Director require college-level approval.

Stacy Bonn in Fiscal Administration will continue to be the contact person for obtaining signatures. However, to accommodate the new financial system, some minor processing changes have been made when routing these documents for college level signatures.

For department preparers, please fax (4-6839) or scan and e-mail (bonnx002@umn.edu) all of the supporting documentation to Stacy before finalizing the document in PeopleSoft. Stacy will obtain the appropriate signature and fax back just the page with that approval signature to the document preparer, who can then complete the reimbursement document in the system.

Endowment reports are not yet available in EFS. The July 31, 2008 market values are currently available to view in EFS (Cash Management/participant position) by senior accountants on the service teams. Information for August and September market values is currently being loaded into EFS, after which, distributions for first quarter-end will be entered. We will keep you posted in CLA NOW on status of distributions and reports.

Quarterly distributions will continue to target accounts in EFS, the same as was done in CUFS. This includes all CEF endowments as well as the University (match) portion of PUF endowments. At this time we understand that the Foundation (gift) portion of PUF endowments will need to be requested through the Billing module in EFS. However, that process is still in flux and will be communicated by the Foundation once it is known.

When planning for FY09 and FY10 distributions, a close estimate is to plan for the same amounts as FY08 for stable endowments (exceptions: endowments with large fluctuations in or out of the endowment, endowments created during the past several years.)

CF1 is required for endowment chart strings. There is a CF1 mapping for University endowments on the CLA Fiscal website, along with other college mapping documents.

When planning for FY09 and FY10 distributions, use the same distribution amounts as FY08 for stable endowments. Foundation endowments usually have more fluctuations in principal value than do University endowments, due to contributions, transfers in, distributions to spending accounts. So Foundation endowments need to be reviewed more closely when making projections.

If you have further questions about status of EFS related to endowments, contact Rose Pederson (6-7611, r-kerb@umn.edu.)

November 14
CLA Payroll cutoff for the 11/10/2008 - 11/23/2008 pay period, 4:30 pm

November 20
Joint CLA Financial / Human Resources Meeting, Minnesota Population Center, Room 50 Willey Hall (West Bank), 9:00 am

November 28
CLA Payroll cutoff for the 11/24/2008 - 12/07/2008 pay period, 4:30 pm

December 1
CS/BU Outstanding Service Awards Reception, Memorial Hall, McNamara Alumni Center, 2:00 pm

December 12
Nominations and dossiers are due for the Tate Award, 113 Johnston Hall