Financial Reporting for Sponsored Projects at the University of Tennessee

Presentation Agenda  Sponsored Projects Ledgers  Overview of the New Ledgers

The Development Committee  Departmental Business Managers and Researchers (UTK and UTHSC)  Controller’s Office  Sponsored Projects Accounting (UTK, UTHSC, and UTC)  IRIS Project Team

Group decided on new ledger  Tailored for Principal Investigators  Sponsored Projects only  Replace old ledger – signed, auditable  Easy to understand terminology  Clean, visual design – readable  Combine existing Financial and HR reports under one cover

Five-part report  Sources & Uses of Funds  Expenditure Budget vs Actuals Summary  Expenses & Income Posted this Month  Commitments for Future Payment  Sponsor Invoicing/Payment History

Sources & Uses of Funds Sponsored Projects Ledgers Part 1

Expenditure Budget vs Actuals Summary Sponsored Projects Ledgers Part 2

Expenses & Income Posted This Month Sponsored Projects Ledgers Part 3

Commitments for Future Payment Sponsored Projects Ledgers Part 4

Sponsor Invoicing/Payment History Sponsored Projects Ledgers Part 5

Selection Screen Sponsored Projects Ledgers

Run Summary Sponsored Projects Ledgers

Cool Things About It Five reports in one Less “noise” than old ledgers General selection omits inactive projects Easy to understand: simplified data, layman’s language More detail on critical information – payroll Immediate view of The Big Number Saves paper: smaller page headers, skip page if no relevant data delivery directly to the PI PDF format Scheduled for automatic running Signable ledger in place of current Available to the same users who run ledgers now

When will it be available?

MondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFridaySaturdaySunday X

Questions?

Laurie Rees Barbara Piskur

Overview of the New Ledgers Sponsored Projects Ledgers present a simplified overview of what principal investigators need to know and want to know for effective fiscal management of their projects. The report is designed specifically for sponsored projects [note, not restricted funds in general, but sponsored projects specifically] as these Funds have characteristics in common that can be well served with a report tailored to their specific requirements. The report consists of from two to five ‘pages’ or sections. Required: Part 1 – Sources & Uses of Funds, a very summarized statement of costs and receipts Part 2 – Expenditure Budget vs Actuals Summary, a breakout of the expense side, by budget-level object codes Supplemental: Part 3 – Expenses & Income Posted This Month (omitted if nothing posted in the requested month), an itemization of specific employees or documents paid and posted during the report month, as well as receipts posted during the month Part 4 – Commitments for Future Payment (omitted if the Fund has no unpaid commitments), an itemization of specific employees, purchase requisitions, purchase orders, business trips, or departmental funds reservations committed on the Fund Part 5 – Sponsor Invoicing / Payment History (omitted if the project does not invoice or use UT billing), an overview of invoiced versus collected, plus an itemization of any uncollected invoices. 1

Overview of the New Ledgers Note that a project never has less than two pages, but may have more than five pages; for example in a month with numerous postings, the report will go as long as it needs to, to print all the lines. When there is a need to know more than is presented in this general overview, there are numerous powerful reports which PIs (or more likely, their delegates) can run to analyze specific types of data, using alternate sorts, filters, drill-down, more detail, and download features. The target audience is principal investigators (PIs). It is assumed that the typical PI does not have access to IRIS; therefore, the main user of this report deals with it in the paper version. This guides a decision not to offer sophisticated options such as drill-down-to-the-source- document, or even download-to-Excel. In addition, the typical PI is not an expert about accounting. So, look for plain English used in place of accounting terms (say commitment for future payment rather than encumbrance) and code text used instead of code numbers (say Supplies rather than ).

Overview of the New Ledgers The program evaluates for a limited number of ‘red-flag’ situations and displays a conspicuous warning to call the PI’s attention to take some corrective action. These ‘alerts’ consist of: Project has over-spent. Project has over-committed. Project has expired. Project has violated fiscal policy by continuing to spend more than 60 days past project end date. Project invoice payments (from sponsor) are overdue. The report is intended to be fairly inflexible, so that for a given Fund and fiscal period, you would always get the same result. This should make the report especially acceptable for audit purposes. Related to this, the report outputs as a.pdf file, thus protecting it further from the possibility of being ‘doctored’. There are run options that can increase the productivity of departmental bookkeepers and others who run numerous ledgers on behalf of others. For example, they will be able to schedule the run, that is, define to the system that their ledgers should run automatically on, say, the 10 th of every month with their specified selection of Projects. For another, they will be able to specify that they want the.pdf reports distributed via directly to the PIs. 3