Budget and Financial Reporting

Process & Information –

for Unit Holders Responsible for

Budget and Administrators

Alumni Affairs & Development

September 1, 2020

Budget and Financial Reporting 101 – Who to Contact

• Tina Gianfrancesco, Financial Coordinator,

AlumniFinance@uoguelph.ca – submitting invoices, general

questions on coding, setting up purchase orders, budget questions,

event processing, etc.

• Jenn Slade, Manager, Financial Reporting – slade@uoguelph.ca,

FRS report requests for budget/actual, budget questions, etc.

• Lauren Hanlon, Associate Director, Financial Services –

lauren.hanlon@uoguelph.ca – requests for budget increases/changes

to base budget, notification of any potential budget overrun for your

unit, provide a copy of annual budget details, forecast discussions.

Budget and Financial Reporting 101 – Key Dates

• Monthly – your reports will be provided showing YTD information and

transaction information for each unit. An acknowledgement email is

requested to confirm your review.

• September – Submission of forecast update for this fiscal year **this

is first year – 20/21 this additional forecast has been requested.

• November/December – Financial Review of your unit with Associate

Director, Financial Services, including budget to actual results, and

discussion of forecast for the rest of the fiscal year for Forecast

submission in January/February, and discussion of expenses for next

fiscal year.

• January – Submission of forecast for this fiscal year.

• February/March – Submission of next year’s fiscal plan to the

Central Budget Office. Presentation to Budget Committee in March.

Budget and Financial Reporting – Key Files

• Financial Reporting information can be found in the AA&D T Drive/P

Drive/ AA&D Division Wide Information/Budget Coding folder. We

recommend you save this as a shortcut.

– The Budget Architecture File provides information on coding, units,

common object codes, and project codes for each unit.

– The Budget Reporting/Invoicing folder contains the monthly reports

and transaction listing, and invoice copies for each unit, and the

overall budget information. These files are limited to those who require

access. The list of Administrators and those with access is on the

‘Approved Administrators’ file.

Budget and Financial Reporting – Key Roles

• Unit Holder = person responsible to manage the overall budget of the

Unit, flag and discuss potential overruns and direct the expenses for

their team.

• Administrators = person responsible to work with Unit Holder to

review the transaction listing and monthly reports and investigate any

issues and submit the monthly acknowledgement to

AlumniFinance@uoguelph.ca.

Budget and Financial Reporting 101 - Coding

• Common coding questions and overview is located in the Budget

Architecture File including units, what types of expenses get coded to

units, common object codes, and project codes for each unit.

• Any revenue/expense that is to be booked in the University’s books

through the financial system (FRS) must be booked with a specific

code. This includes FUND, UNIT, GRANT, PROJECT, OBJECT code.

Fund Unit Grant Project Object

100 0XXXXX 000000 XXXXXX XXXXX

Red segments denote areas to change.

All operating expense coding for AA&D has the following pattern:

Fund Unit Grant Project Object

101 039100 000000 XXXXXX XXXXX

*Fund is 101 (not 100)

For PDR ONLY (personal development reimbursement) credits - *P&M* if this applies

to your role, and you allocated to the PDR account vs taxable wellness benefits

Red segments denote areas to change.

Budget and Financial Reporting 101

• Within the Budget Architecture file all of the Units for AA&D are

summarized on the ‘Summary tab’

Budget and Financial Reporting 101

• Summary of Key Information for all Staff:

Budget and Financial Reporting 101

• Some common expenses and information on coding:

Budget and Financial Reporting 101

• Common object codes can be found on the ‘Object Code’ tab

Object Codes

Budget and Financial Reporting 101 – Purchase Order

• Purchase orders are required to be setup for any cost over $5K and

over. Please reach out to AlumniFinance@uoguelph.ca as EARLY as

possible to start this process during the quote process.

• This process can take time, potentially require non-compliance

justification and approvals from various parties depending on the value.

This process must be complete before an invoice can be paid.

Budget and Financial Reporting 101 – Invoice Refresher

• All invoices are to be sent directly to AlumniFinance@uoguelph.ca for

payment. The Financial Coordinator will submit them onto Payment

Services for processing.

• Please forward copies of any AA&D internal invoices (such as

hospitality), or P-card expense invoices/receipts to the

Administrator of the Unit to save to their Financial Reporting

‘Invoice’ folder. This is to ensure we have copies of these financial

records as ZERO details of the expense other than the cost are

included in FRS. If it is related to Associations or anything outside of

AA&D units, please send copies to AlumniFinance@uoguelph.ca.

Budget and Financial Reporting 101 – Invoice Refresher

Tips on Sending Invoices to AlumniFinance@uoguelph.ca :

• If not on the invoice, please add a note either on the invoice or in the

email describing the purchase (event, attendees, etc.)

• When you send the invoice, please provide the coding required,

including at a minimum the unit, project code (if applicable) and object

code. The Financial Coordinator can assist you determine the correct

object code if you are unsure.

• If you are sending an invoice as information, and NOT for

payment, please ensure in the Subject Line and in the email you

let us know that this is only an FYI and NOT for payment. This

will avoid any potential duplicate payments.

Budget and Financial Reporting 101 – Expense Claim

• Employees can utilize ECS system to process expense claims. Please

ensure you know what unit/project code to book these expenses against

before processing your claim.

• Expense Claim System (ECS), Travel & Hospitality Policies and PDR –

https://www.uoguelph.ca/finance/departments-services/treasury-

operations/travel-expense-claims

• Best practice is to submit expense claims promptly – within 30 days of

them being incurred. This ensures accurate financial reporting. If you have

expense claims that are very small, some exceptions can be made to

submit more than 30 days, however ALL expense claims must be

submitted in the fiscal year they occur.

Budget and Financial Reporting 101 – P-Cards

• Some units utilize P-Cards for purchasing.

• It is critical that these costs are reconciled and re-allocated to their

correct object codes and units for accurate financial reporting.

• Otherwise we will see a large bucket of costs in only a few units under the

63356 – Procurement Card Object Code.

• It is preferred to use direct invoice over P-Cards where possible as it

allows for more detail in our financial reporting system.

Budget and Financial Reporting 101 – Overall Budget

• Every November/December, Associate Director, Financial Services will sit

down to review the components of your budget. A high-level copy of the

budget will be provided in the Budget Reporting & Invoicing folder for you

to review at anytime.

• It is expected that you know your annually recurring vendors and costs for

services/goods, so these can be reviewed.

• For any potential budget overruns, and costs that you want to incur

that are outside of your base budget, these must be discussed with

your SLT member, and approved with Director, Advancement Services

and Associate Director, Financial Services.

*2020/21 Savings Identified from Base Budget

• Specific savings on travel and discretionary costs have been identified

off of the base budget due to COVID-19. These have been separately

communicated to SLT members and will be flagged in copies of the

budget in your Budget Reporting folder.

• These will NOT be in the FRS system or shown in the reports off of

the base budget. You will need to manually review to ensure we are

tracking close to the savings identified.

• Professional Development is an area identified across the board,

that we are looking to target a 50% reduction. This should naturally

occur due to reduction in travel and lower training fees (virtually

based). Please ensure when you are reviewing your Object Summary

– Project Reports for Project 800050, that you ensure we are tracking

to that level. If there are special exceptions requested to this, please

review with Director, Advancement Services, and Associate Director,

Financial Services.

Monthly Report Review Process

Monthly Report Overview

• Each Unit Holder with their Administrators support reviews

the monthly YTD results, and the transaction listing to:

– Identify any transactions that do not belong to their unit

(and notify AlumniFinance@uoguelph.ca immediately if

you notice any).

– Review how they are tracking budget to actual to monitor

their spending. Any potential overruns should be

discussed with Associate Director, Financial Services.

• Monthly reports will be targeted to be updated by the

15th of the following month (with the exceptions of

calendar and fiscal year-end which may be slightly delayed).

Monthly Report Overview – Location of Files

• All monthly reports

are available the

Budget Reporting

and Invoicing folder

• Each unit has its own

folder, with OVC and

OAC having

summary folders.

• Every year will have a

new fiscal year folder

– so copies of

previous years

reports and invoices

will be retained.

Monthly Report Overview

• In each folder, you can

select the fiscal year, and

select the month you are

looking to review.

• For fiscal 2020/21 – the

reports start from July

onwards and include YTD.

• Each monthly folder

includes a Unit YTD high

level summary and a Unit

Project YTD summary.

• Outside of the folders, the

Transaction Summary

Project includes a tab for

each month with every

transaction in the Unit.

• The Invoices folder will include a copy

of all invoices sent to

AlumniFinance@uoguelph.ca and

should include copies of hospitality

invoices and P-Card expenses that

have been forwarded to administrators.

For 2020/21 – the folders will

ONLY contain YTD reports from

July onwards (transaction listing

will show all month May-April)

Monthly Report Overview – Confidentiality Note on Salary

Note for most units, we have left payroll costs included within the reports

(with the exception of OVC/OAC as unit administrators are not responsible

for payroll administration).

Please be mindful that although the high level Unit reports will combine all

individuals in the unit together, if your Unit only has one or two individuals, it

may be transparent as to an individual’s salary. Also, for some units, the

salary costs are isolated in Project Codes (i.e. by College), which can also

allow an individual’s salary to be seen in the Project reports.

Please do not circulate these reports without being very certain that

you are not sending out information that allows someone’s confidential

salary to be visible.

IMPORTANT NOTE ON CONFIDENTIALITY OF THESE

REPORTS – SALARY INFORMATION!

Monthly Report Overview – Object Summary Unit Report

This report is a high-level view of the Unit’s financial state for the fiscal year

and consolidates all project costs by Category and Object code, and shows:

• Month-to-date (MTD) costs

• Year-to-date (YTD) costs

• Any commitments (COMM) which can include committed payroll (TFT

that have started and any RFT) and any purchase orders (POs). (*Note:

COMM will not include any part-time salary costs or any TFTs who have

not began and it will only show the committed length of the TFT contract).

Note if you have MULTI-year PO’s – the entire PO value will be shown,

not just this year – so it might show more commitment than exists).

• The balance or funds available is the amount of budget you have

remaining after taking into account the YTD costs and the COMM costs.

Monthly Report Overview – Object Summary Unit Report

Month-

to-date

Costs

Year-

to-date

Costs

Committed Costs (salary excluding PT, and

TFT not started and POs)

Date

report

is runMonth End

Date of

Report

Unit #

and

Name

Budget

for the

UnitFunds available (Budget less YTD +

Comm)Category

Object Code

Monthly Report Overview – Object Budget Misalignment

• Note that the Object spend may not line up to a Budget amount.

• Sometimes we budget in certain categories, but the spend may end up in

another.

• Sometimes we allocate carryforward to a unit for extra spend for special

activities – and it will show up at the bottom of the report as Budget

Adjustment line item. If you have this line item and you are unsure what

it relates to please reach out to us.

You can see no budget assigned for the 62411 Hospitality Object Code, so

it shows as overbudget, however; there is a $10K general Travel budget

assigned to the unit. As long as you are below budget for the Unit as a

whole you are OK.

Monthly Report Overview – Object Summary Project Report

• If you have created or have costs that should be booked to particular

Project codes in the budget architecture, this report is used to assess the

costs to date for these Projects.

• Note that most projects will NOT have budget assigned to them. We

anticipate that most unit holders will have separately assigned their high-

level budget to projects. You will need to manually assess whether the

costs in these projects are on budget.

• Project Code 800050 is for Professional Development and this

project DOES have budget assigned (note that some units may have

the PD budget centralized for the Director to better decide how these

costs will be allocated). It is expected that leaders ensure they are not

overbudget for PD.

• Each Project Code will have its own page in the pdf document, including

a Non-Project Activity report on the first page. This includes all costs

NOT booked to a project code. So if you have no project costs in your

Unit, this report will be exactly the same as the Object Summary – Unit

report.

Monthly Report Overview – Object Summary Project Report

• Below is the Object Summary Project Report first page report for the

previous example – Unit 039489. The Non-Project Activity Summary.

• In all cases this first page is meaningless, as the Unit Holder will have

decided how this budget should be allocated, but it will not be

represented in these reports. IGNORE the Budget in this report.

This summary is not useful – as the Unit Holder will have manually discussed allocating this

budget into Project Codes, but will not have updated it in the system. The Object Summary

Project report is to primarily view the Costs YTD by active Project code to determine

whether it looks reasonable to what budgets have been discussed.

Monthly Report Overview – Object Summary Project Report

• Project Codes 80001-800020 are only used for salary/benefit information

for certain teams to help segregate College costs.

• Project 800021-onward are used at the discretion of the Unit holder, to

help define buckets of costs that should be tracked.

• For example for 039489 – project codes are used to track the costs of

each Senior Development Manager by College.

You can see no budget assigned for the 800023 Project code. The budget is assigned as

Non-Project Activity for this unit. It is expected that this Unit Holder has provided the person

who is charging costs to this code a budget that they should stay within. This will need to be

compared manually to what has been decided.

Transaction Summary Excel Report

• The Transaction Summary excel spreadsheet has every transaction of

the unit detailed by Month along the tabs at the bottom of the sheet.

The transactions will be grouped by Project code.

– US BANK NATIONAL is from Procurement Card purchases. These are to

be re-coded to their appropriate Object Code to ensure accurate financial

reporting.

– Spreadsheet/Hosp are from Internal Hospitality purchases.

– Payables with an employees’ name are from Expense Claim System

(ECS), but there will be no details on the vendor. The employee will have

submitted the expense claim to their supervisor for approval, so you should

have a copy if you are the supervisor. If you are not the supervisor, we

recommend you reach out to the employee for further details.

• Please review each transaction to ensure it is appropriately

booked to your unit.

Project

Full Coding – If you want to know what the detailed

transactions are for an object code from the Object Summary

report – look for the object code here – last 5 digits.

Monthly Review & Acknowledgement Requirement

• Due by the end of the month (unless otherwise specified),

please send the following email confirmation to

AlumniFinance@uoguelph.ca :

• Subject Line – Budget/Transaction Review Unit #0XXXXX –

Approved OR Action Required (Month/Time Period covered of

approval)

• I have reviewed with the Unit Holder the Object Summary – Unit and

the Detailed Transaction Report for unit #:000000 for [month/fiscal

year] and can confirm that I have reviewed the budget to actual

expenses year-to-date and that all expenses booked to this unit

appear accurate for the period.

• If there are any unexpected costs that you do not recognize,

please work with our team to identify the appropriate unit to re-

book these costs as soon as possible.

• Note that if there are costs above your base budget for your unit

(or costs that are not factored into your budget that will likely

cause an overrun), that these should have been pre-approved

as one-time funding with your SLT/Director Advancement

Services and Associate Director, Financial Services.

Ad hoc/Specialty Reporting

• If you have the need for any reports outside of the standard reporting,

please email AlumniFinance@uoguelph.ca

Resources

Resources

• Payment/Procurement Information -

https://www.uoguelph.ca/finance/departments-services/purchasing-

services

• Purchase Order Requirements/Thresholds -

https://www.uoguelph.ca/finance/departments-services/purchasing-

services/making-purchases

• Purchasing Detailed Policies -

https://www.uoguelph.ca/finance/policies-procedures/procurement-

payables-policies-procedures including Purchase Policy -

https://www.uoguelph.ca/finance/purchasing-policy

• Expense Claim System (ECS), Travel & Hospitality Policies and PDR

– https://www.uoguelph.ca/finance/departments-services/treasury-

operations/travel-expense-claims

Questions?