FAQs: PeopleSoft Conversion and Data Warehouse Report

The Foundation will no longer be "pushing out" monthly project reports. You will need to take Data Warehouse training and you will be able to generate your own reports whenever you like. The Data Warehouse is updated every business evening.

We encourage you to attend the hands-on data warehouse training being conducted by University Financial Management. The Data Warehouse has vast reporting capabilities. It is mostly a matter of personal preference as to the usefulness of any reports. We will say the project “type” – cash operating or budget authority – will generally determine your report selection. Both G funds and RS funds are “budget authority” fund types. These reports have a budget, period to date expenses, outstanding commitments and a Budget Balance Available (BBA). These reports can be generated from the sponsored programs tab on the Data Warehouse dashboard. A useful report under the Management tab is the SP Available Balance report. The PI tab has multi-column expense summary reports. Your C and/or M funds are cash operating projects. Click “OPERATIONS” on the Data Warehouse dashboard. Choose “Fund Balance.” The results for this report will show your available cash balance. REMEMBER: This is an accounting report. IF you have a balance available the numbers will be in parentheses and will be red (39,482.98).

Contact your Grants and Contracts Administrator (GCA).

Many of the GL line items that were in IFAS have been consolidated and no longer correspond to 1:1 with the Account codes in PeopleSoft. For the time being, please be concerned with your bottom line. You may also contact your Grants and Contracts Administrator who can re-budget your projects, if necessary.

Individuals are categorized by their Department affiliation. Your Department Identification (deptid) code can be found on the Common Management System website.

All of your former 17 and 17-7 (fixed price residual funds) projects have been combined and converted into one RS (Research Stimulation) fund. Policies affecting these funds will be administered with one fund per PI, rather than a number of similar accounts. The available balance in your RS fund should equal the sum of the available balances in all of your prior 17 funds. If you need assistance reconciling the balance, please contact Mae DeBruin in ORSP at Mae.DeBruin@csulb.edu.

Employee payroll charges to your account are identified by each employee's ID number. This is the same ID number used on the employee's timecard.

We are not requiring PI's and account holders to use the new forms until January. A notice will be given along with training prior to this.

The new forms can be found on this forms matrix (PDF) and/or the Foundation's forms Web page.

At this time, there has been no change to signature authority (delegation of authority - DoA). Future changes to policies and procedures will be announced along with training in advance of the changes.

Changes to the accounting system have NO EFFECT on the travel authorization process. All policies, processes and approvals applicable to the University and your divisions have not changed. Travel Authorization is no longer forwarded to Foundation. Please forward your travel authorization to your Administrative Services Manager (ASM).

All detailed expenses up to September 30th will be on the old IFAS system. New activity in PeopleSoft will be available online. After attending the PeopleSoft Data Warehouse Training and gaining access to PeopleSoft Financial reporting, please log on to the CSU Login. Click on the account code $ amount to drill down and see the detail associated with the $ amount.

The PeopleSoft system will only encumber commitments made via the purchase order process. You will see any items processed through a purchase order, including sub-awards and contractual services. However, the Foundation will no longer be encumbering release time and associated benefits, travel authorizations, or petty cash.

This report column reflects the direct cost Budget Balance Available (BBA) or Budget less direct expense to date. If an expense has no budget, the BBA will show as a negative number. Please pay close attention to the total row.

PeopleSoft financials do not calculate F&A costs associated with direct expenditures on an expense by expense or transaction by transaction basis (legacy IFAS did calculate F&A in this manner). The F&A calculation is now a separate process which is performed upon demand. F&A costs will be calculated weekly on Fridays and after each semi-monthly payroll posts.

Except for the total row, this column will be blank. In the total row, the Effective F&A/IDC % is a calculation of the Total F&A/IDC Expense to date divided by Total Direct Expense to Date. This shows the effective F&A rate the project is recovering.

Acct Cat Fdescr is the Account Category Field Description. Account Categories are "roll-up" accounts where various, similar account types are summarized. For example, the account category "Regular Salaries and Wages" might include all the expenses for "undergraduate students," Tenure/Tenure Track Faculty, Support Staff. Acct Fdescr is the Account Field Description. The account is the expenditure or revenue type, for example: In-State Travel, Research Subject Incentives, etc.

The university's accounting cycle is on a July - June fiscal year. YTD is an acronym for (fiscal) Year to Date. Period 3 represents the 3rd month in the Fiscal year or September. YTD Period 3 means that your results will yield all fiscal activity for the period July 1 - Sept 30 of the fiscal year. At the bottom of Report Filters, you can click “Translate Period to Month” which will change the period from a number into the name of the month.

These prefixes replace the 07, 17 and 37 funds in the legacy IFAS system. G funds are sponsored programs (grants and contracts), formerly 07 funds. RS funds are research stimulation (F&A return and fixed price contract residuals), formerly 17 and 17-7 funds. C funds are center projects, formerly 37 funds.

In order to record financial transactions in PeopleSoft, there are 3 required chart fields: Account, Fund and Dept ID. These 3 fields are the only requirements for RS fund transactions. Because sponsored agreements most often have multiple budget periods, the PROJECT chart field is used on your G fund to differentiate different budget periods within a multi-year award. In order to record financial transactions on G funds, the PROJECT chart field is required. An edit in the system exists to stop any transactions on G funds which do not have the 4 required chart fields.

This is one of the accounting changes in PeopleSoft, you will notice. In IFAS, you could have the same general project number (with only an annual change to the final 2 digits) for as long as you received funding for a specific project, because the project “cash” could be managed in stand-alone project numbers. PeopleSoft is “fund driven,” NOT project driven. It is a PeopleSoft system requirement that “cash” be managed at the fund and not the project level. So, each award (regardless of whether or not it has single or multiple projects associated with it) is established as a discrete fund. For example, if you have a 5 year NIH R01 award, your award will have the same fund number for the 5 year PROJECT period (G9999). The “G” fund in LBFDN is for sponsored projects. That 5 year “G” fund will have annual BUDGET periods such as: G9999 G999911100 8/1/2011 – 7/31/2012 G9999 G999912200 8/1/2012 – 7/31/2013 G9999 G999913300 8/1/2013 – 7/31/2014 G9999 G999914400 8/1/2014 – 7/31/2015 G9999 G999915500 8/1/2015 – 7/31/2016 We have attempted to put some logic into your project numbers. Your 5 character FUND number is derived sequentially from the next “G” fund available. Your project number is 10 characters. The first 5 characters of your project number are a repeat of the fund number; Positions 6 and 7 are the calendar year when the budget period started (this corresponds to the last 2 project number digits in the IFAS system); Position 8 is the budget PERIOD within the entire project period; and Positions 9 and 10 will normally be two zeroes (unless tasks, etc are used). Please consult your Grants and Contract Administrator, if you have any questions.