Accounting and Financial Planning and Analysis
Our accounting team continues to work on the remaining alignment plans for the flow of financial transactions into the Oracle system as part of the Oracle Data Integrity Project. Thei focus is contracts and grants that have the largest variances between the project sub-ledger and the general ledger.
Our budget alignment team has successfully corrected 100% of the contracts and grants identified to have known discrepancies and 97% of those without known discrepancies within the Oracle system. Therefore, currently 98% of all contracts and grants have had their budgets adjusted and verified by your RA.
Please note that both the accounting alignment and budget alignment plans must be completed in the system for us to be assured of complete data accuracy. We are nearing this point but are not there yet as we need to complete the accounting alignment plans, which stand at 65% reconciled for contracts and grants.
Please remember that effective Friday, July 1, all internally funded projects no longer require project portfolio management (PPM) attributes, commonly known as POET, for transactions in our Oracle-based financial management system. The goal of this change was to simplify the management of projects that do not have external billing or reporting requirements. This was summarized in last week’s research newsletter. Please go here for answers to questions such which projects are affected and how to access reports, get a new project value and make budget adjustments.
Please note this relates only to your internally funded projects (e.g., start-up, incidentals, etc..). All of your contracts and grants will continue to require a POET for financial transactions.
Center for Business Services and Solutions (CBS2)
Choose the Best Way to Pay an Individual: There are several ways to pay a person for services or completed work at UC Merced. But which to use? Several university units pooled their knowledge to create a one-stop source that answers that question.
Perhaps you want to issue funds to a visitor but do not know if the payment should be an honorarium, stipend or fellowship. How is payment affected if the recipient is a student? A faculty member? What about individuals participating as research subjects? What are the steps for paying them? How long does it take?
The How to Pay an Individual chart provides descriptions, examples and processing times, along with links to forms, workflow descriptions and additional guidance - all you need to complete a transaction efficiently and accurately. Also available are several one-page PDFs that compare common options such as honorarium vs. independent contractor or stipend vs. fellowship.
This service is a collaboration of the Center for Business Services and Solutions (CBS2), Human Resources, Accounts Payable, Travel & Expense Management, Procurement and the Graduate Division.
