1. ctcLink: The Clark Experience
BAC Meeting▪ June 3, 2019
Sabra Sand, Director of Business Services, Clark College

2. What I am going to talk about:
BPFG: Business Process Fit Gap
Configuration
Validating Configuration
Conversion Cycles
Data Validation
UAT: User Acceptance Testing
Upcoming
Working Go Live Plan
Recommendations
Questions

3. BPFG: Business Process Fit Gap
For Clark, about 8 weeks straight
Summer 2018
Homework and decisions as part of BPFG
Run through each business process
Basic system functionality
Does not address how accounting changes
First step in training – initial introduction
Not end to end training
Purpose: to identify gaps in processes
Difficult to identify without configuration
Difficult to identify because it is all new
No hands on

4. Configuration So many pieces of configuration…here are the big ones
Finance
Department chart field – replaces Organization numbers (working document)
Department chart field crosswalk – crosswalks legacy ‘Org’ to Peoplesoft ‘Dept’ (working document)
Asset Locations – maintain consistency across pillars for location IDs
Purchasing workflow and buyers
Commitment Control (budget) definitions
Small and attractive definitions

5. Configuration Student Finance
Item Types – Charges reflect: receivable/revenue upon posting
Tuition
Mandatory Fees
Course and class fees
Optional fees
Term Fees
Dictates the amount charged per credit for tuition
Dictates the amount charged per credit or class for other mandatory fees

6. Configuration Student Finance Item Types – Payments
Student Payments (credit card, cash, check)
Payments typically reflect: cash/receivable when paid
Third Party Payments
Step 1: the student account is relieved: cash/receivable
Step 2: the third party account is charged: receivable/cash
Make sure cash zeroes out
Payments made by the third party then reflect: cash/receivable

7. Configuration Student Finance Item Types – Payments Financial Aid
Need two journal sets to complete the transaction
Step 1: the student account is relieved: cash/liability (utilizing a control dept)
Step 2: happens in finance, reflects the expense to the aid account: expense/cash
Make sure cash zeroes out
Waivers – flow through a control account: contra-revenue/receivable (clears charge GL’s)

8. Configuration Each configuration assignment builds on past ones:
Some examples…
Department chart fields needs to be designed before item types can be completed
Asset homework needs department chart field to be defined
Asset homework needs asset location chart field to be defined
Recommend having one person oversee all of the finance related items including SF, Finance and Payroll to ensure configuration is aligned

9. Validate Configuration
This is your data…own it!
After your homework has been submitted and entered into Peoplesoft, create a feedback loop to ensure data quality (because we are all human):
Finance Department query
Student Finance Item Type query for 1st journal set
Student Finance Item Type query for 2nd journal set
Student Finance Waiver queries
What waiver’s are setup to pay
How waiver is setup to work
Student Group
Equation variable
Manual post
Student Finance Term fee query: to ensure correct amounts per credit

10. Conversion Cycles 5 Conversion Cycles before the final go live
SBCTC runs conversions
Occasionally ‘B’ cycles
Update the crosswalks for fallout/new values
Item Types
Financial Aid
Charge Item Types
Sponsored Programs
Departments
New orgs
New grants
Timing of the conversion

11. Conversion Cycles
For Clark - on the finance, student finance and payroll side:
Cycle 1: Bio-Demo data only
Cycle 2: Finance data, payroll data and a sample of assets
Cycle 3: Finance data, payroll data and a larger sample of assets
Cycle 3b: Student finance data
Cycle 4: Finance data, Student finance data, payroll data, all assets
Cycle 4b: Student finance data, finance accounts receivable data
Cycle 5: Everything
Cycle 6: Go live conversion

12. Data Validation
Super Important! This is your opportunity to make sure your data is getting converted the way you expect it.
Cycle 2/3/4 Finance: validated all GL data for all accounts using queries and v-lookup to convert data
Compared against GA1331, GA1332, GA1335
Identified errors in the conversion process
Cycle 4 was clean for GL
Goal is to have no errors in Cycle 5
Keeps copies/proof of each validation effort for auditors

13. UAT: User Acceptance Testing
6 “Sprints” of 2-3 weeks each
Training in the morning
Expectation for testing in the afternoon
End to end testing
Each day builds upon prior days
Difficult to keep up if something isn’t working correctly
Not enough information provided on the front end of what would be needed
Not enough lead time as to days/times of UAT
Time conflicts between Student Finance, Payroll and Finance
Time conflicts between UAT and Common Process Workshops

14. UAT: User Acceptance Testing
Recommendations for UAT
Create a college level plan and a structure prior to the start of UAT
Document all of the scenarios (including account specific data) you may want to create, ahead of time
For Finance – work backwards to develop the plan
Need Assets to load from Accounts Payable
Accounts Payable needs a PO to be paid for asset type items
Purchasing needs to create a requisition for the assets to go to PO
A budget needs to be established to create a requisition
Identify the entire chart field string that a budget needs to be created in, share the info with Purchasing

15. UAT: User Acceptance Testing
Recommendations for UAT
For Student Financials
To calculate tuition, students need to be registered in classes
Classes need to be setup to register students
Student groups need to be defined to attached students to them
Clear understanding for how waivers are setup in order to actually test

16. UAT: User Acceptance Testing
Recommendations for UAT
Test as much as you can
Involve as many staff as you can
There is a ton of testing, spread among staff
Make sure they understand the expected output
Opportunity to test Configuration
Identify configuration errors
Identify areas where things are not working as expected
Request changes to configuration, then retest

17. Upcoming… Cycle 4b Continued UAT Parallel Testing Payroll
Financial Aid
Student Financials
Cycle 4b
Student Finance
Finance Accounts Receivable
Continued UAT

18. Upcoming… Cycle 5 Training – August through October
Test go live
Final chance for review
Training – August through October
Develop and present college-wide training (Purchasing, Accounting, Payroll) - August
Cycle 6
Go Live
Late October

19. Working Go Live Plan Go live tentative date: October 28, 2019
Legacy tentative takedown: October 23, 2019, end of day
Control as many variables as you can
Clark Plan – work in progress
October 17, Last day for all enrollment, financial aid and student finance transactions
October 18, 2019
Ensure all student refunds are processed
Close out all tuition payment plans, post outstanding amount
Run invoicing for all third party sponsorships
October 21, 2019 – Process all pending payments, changing future payment date to current
Take down Web Transaction Server October 18, 12am

20. Working Go Live Plan Clark Plan – work in progress
October 21, 2019 – 10A payroll runs
October 22, 2019 – post payroll and force pay vendor payments
October 23, 2019
Run tuition distribution
Run VPA report
Run all reports
General Ledger (GA1331)
Fund Ledger (GA1332)
Program/Organization Trial Balance (GA1335)
Accounts Receivable Sub-ledger (BM1781)
Balance payroll liability accounts (fund 790) – know who we still owe
Run datax or SQL report of all outstanding open tuition items in cashiering
Clear all suspense accounts

21. Recommendations Consistency
Certain values really should be global – consistency among colleges
Tuition chart fields, for the most part
Waivers
Entire GL chart string
How they are applied
Financial Aid
Why?
Simplify configuration
Ongoing training
College’s ask for help
FAM Manual

22. Recommendations
Strong collaboration between Finance, Financial Aid and Enrollment
Own your data
Validate as much as you can
Understand item type setup
Confirm all values are setup correctly
Understand your processes
Keep a log of areas of concern
Follow up on all concerns
Advocate for your college – don’t be afraid to push back/ask more questions if something doesn’t seem correct
Be involved in every step of the process
If you don’t understand something, ask, and keep asking until it is clear

23. Recommendations
Need training on how the accounting is different, both during configuration and after
Transaction codes will be a thing of the past
Understanding the required debits and credits for each transaction
Sometimes debits/credits will need to be split so they can be loaded into AFRS successfully
Understanding the changes in pooled cash
Understanding the changes in VPA
Item types
Financial Aid
Waivers
Payments
Charges

24. Final Thoughts Your staff will be overwhelmed
They likely will feel the weight of your institution on their shoulders to ensure the data is correct and the system is working the way they expect
The work they are doing may be invisible to you
Be mindful they really are doing a ton of work
Make sure they take vacations
Don’t forget to thank them

25. Questions?