Good morning,

I am writing to inform you of upcoming changes to the PeopleSoft journal entry workflow, which will go into effect on Friday, 05/08/2020 – the day after April accounting period is closed in PeopleSoft. The change will apply to all journal entries that have at least one line, either debiting or crediting a sponsored project. The majority of the process will remain as is. Journals will need to be created, budget-checked and submitted for approval with all required back-up.

List of Changes

All approvals and rejections will be done electronically. The journal initiator will be notified via email once their journal is either denied or approved. If denied, the person denying the journal will be able to enter comments right in PeopleSoft explaining the reason for rejection.

Any journal entry may have up to three approvers:
1. Journals that have a combination of sponsored and non-sponsored lines (except for fund 100 lines) will first be reviewed by Financial Reporting and Accounting Services (FRAS) staff.
2. Once approved by FRAS, the journal will move into SPA queue and be assigned to a SPA Financial Analyst.
3. The final review will be assigned to one of SPA Team Leads who will post the journal if no issues have been found.

It is important to note that SPA FA (b) and SPA Team Lead (c) approvals are part of the current process. FRAS approval step is new. It is necessary because journal entries often contain sponsored and non-sponsored chartstrings. SPA is responsible for reviewing sponsored chartstrings and FRAS is responsible for reviewing non-sponsored chartstrings. Journals including sponsored project lines only or journals with sponsored project lines and fund 100 lines will bypass FRAS approval and be routed directly to SPA.

Journal status and all approval steps (prior and pending ones) will be visible in the journal entry Approval tab. Please keep in mind that any given journal must be in valid status, budget-checked and submitted before it can be routed for approval.

A new report has been created, which itemizes the entire history of a journal entry. It is available in the journal process drop down menu (see screen snapshot below). The report lists every step along with a date stamp, user name and comments history. It can be run at any time before or after a journal has been posted. A sample of the report is attached.

Implementation

The new functionality will be migrated into the PeopleSoft production environment late on Thursday afternoon, May 7^th. All pending journals that have not been posted prior to this date will be taken out of the journal workflow. Journal initiators will be required to re-submit them, at which point they will be routed via the new workflow.

Future Development Goals

This launch completes the first step of digitizing the journal workflow. Our next goal is to design an electronic Cost Transfer Form, which could be created, submitted and approved right in PeopleSoft. In addition, we will be developing reports and queries, which will allow campus users to analyze journal history and timelines for specific departments, colleges, journal types, etc.

All these are exiting changes! The new process will reduce administrative burden by making the entire workflow electronic; it will provide additional transparency and allow for development of additional reports and queries.

For questions, please contact your assigned SPA Financial Analyst or you may reach out directly to the members of the electronic workflow design and testing team:

Lana Metayer – SPA Team Lead, Sponsored Revenue and Cash Management

Susan Skalka – Assistant Director, Business Information Systems

Renee Hunt – General Accounting Manager, Financial Reporting and Accounting Services

Thank you,

Lana Metayer

Lana Metayer | Team Lead