To: Oracle users
Campus Colleagues,
The Oracle Data Integrity Project (ODIP) was initiated in November 2021 to investigate and address variances in the Oracle Financial system. As defined in the project's Stage 1, the ODIP team has been focusing on variances related to Project Portfolio Management (PPM) projects.
After three months of effort, the ODIP team has found that the primary cause for PPM project variances is missing POET attributes in Oracle Purchase Order (PO) and Accounts Payable (AP) transactions. Missing POET attributes account for almost 90% of the total variances reviewed by ODIP and impact more than 500 projects.
It is critical to reiterate that any PPM-related PO or AP transaction must include POET (Project, Expenditure Org, Expense Type, and Task) in addition to the Chart of Accounts (CoA) chart string. If Oracle users do not include all the required information, the transaction cannot flow to PPM. This causes incorrect project expense reporting, understated sponsored billing, and overstated available budget.
For Oracle users, your partnership in ensuring POET is present in all PPM-related transactions is the fix to this critical issue. If we can collectively ensure all required information is present on every transaction, the variances between PPM and the General Ledger will be resolved.
As a reminder, users can view on-demand training on how to enter POET via the Oracle Toolkit in its Purchasing section .
While we look to our campus partners to ensure all required information is present in transactions going forward, the ODIP team has been working on correcting existing transactions that have missing POET and also working on user experience related to POET as summarized below:
Invoices with Missing POET Corrections
The AP team has developed a template and step-by-step guide that allows users to provide missing POET attributes on AP invoice transactions. The template can be completed and provided to the AP team through a Service Now ticket to correct the missing POET. A specific ticket for this request is being created, but in the interim please submit the request with the DFA General Request Ticket . This partnership between Oracle users and AP will ensure all PPM-related AP activity flows accurately to PPM. Online training via Zoom has been scheduled from 1-2 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 15 to provide additional information and guidance regarding this process.
The corrections request will be part of the AP monthly close process beginning in February. For the February close, these requests must be submitted by EOD Feb. 24 as AP closes on the last business day of the month. Further details and guidance on this process will be provided at the Feb. 15 training session.
Purchasing Requisition Page Improvements
DFA teams have been working on enhancements to the Purchasing Requisition page to streamline entry by populating some of the POET fields once the project and task are provided. The changes summarized below are in response to faculty and staff feedback provided to the Procurement Task Force .
- In production
- Default Expenditure date set to current date: Eliminates the need for users to enter the date manually.
- Filter list of available tasks based on project: Reduces drop-down list of tasks to only the entered project value so users can select the appropriate task more quickly.
- Coming soon
- Default Expenditure type based on project: Expenditure type will default to project value provided, eliminating the need for users to enter it manually.
- Default Expenditure Organization based on task number: Expenditure organization will default based on selected Task, eliminating the need for users to enter it manually.
The ODIP team continues to review variances and make the necessary corrective actions. We look forward to campus users’ efforts and due diligence to ensure their transactions include all required information to help achieve data integrity in our Oracle system.
Sincerely,
Kurt Schnier, Interim Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer
Kelli Maxey, Interim Assistant Controller
