Finance Training

Account balances similar to legacy accounts balances are calculated and delivered via the “Account Balances by Organization” dashboard.

Yes, the calculation for “sponsored” account balances is total budget (even if it spans multiple years), less total expenditures to date, from inception of award, and including transfers and capital asset acquisitions.

Yes, the calculation for account balances for department and other non-sponsored accounts is based on opening fund balance, plus current year revenues, less current year expenditures (including encumbrances).

Inception-to-date (ITD) balances represent the total activity, both actual and budgeted, that has occurred since the start of a project. The ITD is most commonly used for contract and grant management and reporting, but is also used for capital projects.

There are three main ways balances are presented in KFS:

• Cash Balances are somewhat similar to today’s account balances in that, generally, revenues increase cash and expenditures decrease cash. Surpluses from prior years would be reflected as cash balances that carry forward. The reason that cash balances in KFS are not exactly the same is that not all revenue and expense transactions are actually cash transactions. For example, when revenue is generated by extending "credit" (accounts receivable), there is no increase to cash until the receivable is paid.
• Available Balances are based on budgeted, less actual activity, and can be viewed by object code (Available Balances) or in summary (Balances by Consolidation) based on the object code consolidation codes.
• General Ledger Balances provide the beginning balance, and monthly and current-year total activity by object code.

All accounts in the following Subfund groups have inception-to-date reporting:

Because KFS was designed for colleges and universities, there was a need for each campus (e.g., individual schools in a state system) to have its own chart of accounts. For Cornell, we mostly will use the Ithaca (IT) Chart.

The conversion is part of the central conversion process and requires no unit-level action. Please note, however, that...

• Budget activity for sponsored budgets, cumulative through May close, will be converted and available as of July 1 or shortly thereafter.
• June budget activity, which may include new budgets and/or modifications, will be loaded after we close our legacy system for fiscal year 2011 (scheduled for the last week in July 2011).

The initial account (a.k.a., the Contract Control Account) will be set up by DFA’s Office of Sponsored Financial Services (SFS) - not by the unit - and established upon distribution of the agreement. Once the account is approved, the budget is entered via the Budget Adjustment e-doc and will route to the delegated fiscal officer (FO). Please note that sponsored budgets are entered as a current budget and are not a base budget adjustment.

The Initiator role for the Budget Adjustment e-doc and the delegated fiscal officer can reside outside the FTC/BSC.

The development and implementation of the Kuali Coeus Award module will integrate with KFS will support the automatic creation of the Contract Control Account and the award budget.

Subsequent accounts (either sub-accounts or project-related accounts) will be created primarily by the unit. Budgets will be allocated to project-related accounts by Sponsored Financial Services (SFS), while a unit can allocate budget to a KFS sub-account as necessary. SFS will, however, create a KFS sub-account for a new sub-recipient agreement and allocate the budget accordingly.

Units can reallocate using line-item budgets, including monthly line-item budgets, consistent with the overall award.

If you get an error message stating that your document does not balance, you can determine where the error exists by viewing the debits and credits you entered in the e-doc. Take the following steps to review your entries:

1. Save the e-doc
2. View your entries using one of the following options:

No matter how you review your results, your debit and credit entries must balance.

An Internal Billing (IB) e-doc records the sales of goods or services between units. The billing of these costs would typically include some overhead costs. This document is restricted to internal object codes to allow the university to eliminate internal entries from our financial report.

A Distribution of Income or Expense (DI) e-doc is used when you are sharing costs.

It's an unfortunate coincidence. What we used to call a Payment Request is actually a Disbursement Voucher (DV). The DV is available in the Financial Processing e-docs section on the KFS Main Menu tab. In KFS, the payment request function is actually the invoice payment that follows a purchase order, and only staff in the central Accounts Payable office can access this.

Currently, there are two payee types: "Vendor" or "Employees Students Alumni." This message is telling you which type of payee you can use with the Payment Reason you selected.

Currently, there are two payee types - "Vendor" or "Employees Students Alumni" - and the payee type must be valid with the Payment Reason you selected. For example, if you selected Payment Reason O - Honoraria and put an employee's last name in Person Last Name, the name would be returned in the search results, but there would be no "return value" option. This is because the individual is the payee type of "Employees Students Alumni," but this payment reason only allows payee type of "Vendor." So, if you don't see "return value," make sure that you are searching on Vendor Name when the payment type indicates that only payee type of Vendor is valid. Conversely, if the payment type indicates only the payee type of Employees Student Alumni is valid, then do your search using the Person Last Name.

If the payment is taxable, the individual must be set up as a vendor. Prizes, awards, and stipends require vendor setup, even if the individual is a Cornell student.

The vendors with the most activity were set up in KFS first, so you will not be able to find all previous vendors yet. If you need to create a Disbursement Voucher for a previous vendor that is not yet set up, we can expedite the setup if all the vendor information we have is current and valid. Use the following process:

• Submit a request to kfs-help@cornell.edu.
• Enter in the Subject field, "Vendor Conversion" and the name of the vendor.
• Enter in the body the legacy vendor number and name. It’s OK to include a list.
• Provide a sense of how urgent each individual conversion request is.

If we were not able to validate the information, the normal new vendor setup process must be followed, complete with a W-9. See the Disbursement Voucher Vendor Standard Operating Procedure for details.

This is a known issue in KFS and occurs when a fiscal officer (FO) or delegate initiates a Disbursement Voucher (DV). It doesn't matter what accounts are used, it is related to the FO/delegate status of the initiator. We are investigating a fix for this. In the meantime, many users are able to copy the DV with the error an successfully submit it. Alternately, the DV can be initiated by staff who are not FOs or delegates.

The Disbursement Voucher uses address information maintained in PeopleSoft as the address for reimbursements to faculty and staff members, alumni, and students. The home address is used for faculty, staff members and alumni. Any address information is updated by the employee through Employee Essentials.

The address used for students is the best address we have on file in PeopleSoft. Any address is updated by the student using Student Center, a self-service application.

In the legacy world, applications like JEMS and the Payment Request System were completely separate applications from the actual financial system on the mainframe. KFS is different in that we are processing our transactions in the live production system. As a result, occasionally you may be trying to make a transaction using an item (e.g., an account, vendor, etc.) that someone else is also working on, thereby "locking" that item. When this happens, you will not be able to save or submit your e-doc, but you can resolve the situation by doing the following:

• Make note of which document is locking yours (the error message should tell you this).
• Open a new browser window and search for that document.
• Review the route log to see what actions are pending.
• Call the person who needs to take action on the e-doc, and request that they approve it.

This should release the "lock" and allow you to complete your document.

You may see an error that reads something like, "kfs-prod:the KFS Form you were using:Could not open OJB PersistenceBroker; nested exception is org.apache.ojb.broker.PBFactoryException: Borrow broker from pool failed, using PBKey org.apache.ojb.broker.PBKey: jcdAlias=enWorkflowDataSource, user=null, password=..."

This is a Known Issue. Please report this condition to the KFS Help Desk immediately (you can submit the Incident Report). Unfortunately, you will likely need to redo your e-doc.

There are two ways to see what roles a person has in the system. If you are a KFS User, go to the Administration tab, then in the System panel. Under the Identity header, you will see "Person, Group, Role..." From there, choose one of these methods:

1. Click on Role. In the fifth selection box down (Principal Name), enter the person's NetID, and then click Search. In the the third column of the results, Role Name shows which access, if any, the person has. If no results are found, the person has not been set up with access. More information about the different roles and how to request access is available on the KFS Access Requests page.
2. Click on Person. In the first selection box (Principal Name), enter the person's NetID, and then click Search. In the first column of the results, click on the Principal ID. In the window that appears, click Show on the Membership tab. Either Hide or scroll past the Groups to the Roles section to see what role names the person has.

The Kuali (Financial) Data Warehouse (KDW) replaces the Accounting Data Warehouse (ADW) as the repository of financial data, beginning in fiscal year 2011-12, with the implementation of the Kuali Financial System (KFS).  

Brio (Hyperion Interactive Reporting) will no longer be used to deliver monthly accounting reports. Financial information will now be delivered using Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE+) dashboards.

The new tools are very interactive and allow users to “query” their financial information in a number of ways – right on the dashboards, without having to write their own ad hoc queries.

While Brio (Hyperion Interactive Reporting) is no longer being used to deliver monthly accounting reports, the tool itself is still available. A copy of the data warehouse (without the labor detail) called KDW-Prime can be used by Brio Designer users to remediate local reporting systems.

KDW-Prime is a copy of KDW, but without any labor detail. This was made available by CIT, and supported by DFA, as an interim solution for units who have developed, and now need to remediate, local reporting systems using Brio Designer. The long-term objective is to transition to using the new OBIEE+ tools. Brio Designer users can request access to KDW-Prime by e-mailing Sarah Christen.

Another OBIEE tool called Answers allows more ad hoc query capabilities, and will be made available to a number of unit-level individuals. Two important things to understand about Answers is that is does not allow data modeling (like Brio Designer), and queries can only use data that exists within KDW (so it if data has not been modeled yet, it is not accessible by Answers).

There is a business rule in KFS that prohibits users from creating Requisitions (REQS) on an expired account. If you receive this message, check first to ensure that the purchase is allocable to the correct account and that the expiration date is correct.

If you're using a Contracts & Grants account, has the project been extended? If the project is continuing, confirm that an extension has been requested of the sponsor and, if so, edit the account to remove the expiration date. If the account has truly expired, purchasing supplies is not expected to occur.

When we loaded users and their access rights into KFS, we used a snapshot (around the end of April) of existing e-SHOP users. If you were granted access to e-SHOP in May or June 2011, it is possible that your access was not converted to KFS. You will need to contact your unit's authorizers to reestablish your e-SHOP access. See the list of approved authorizers by financial transaction center.

Also, please remember that your old e-SHOP login and password are no longer valid. You now must use your Cornell NetID and password.

The "permissions" are set up to enable e-SHOP users to use the look-up and return functions for various items like chart, account, building, vendor, commodity code, etc.). Usually, the information returned in the search is sufficient to allow the user to make the appropriate selection (by clicking on "return value"). Currently, however, e-SHOP users (and other individuals who are not KFS users) cannot perform a direct inquiry on the actual value (by clicking on the value itself). If you receive this error, just close the Incident Report page, and continue your transaction. Please do not submit the Incident Report - the application is working as it should (though perhaps not the way we would like it to work). If you are unsure that you have selected the right value, please contact your in-house expert for guidance. If you believe that you actually should have the KFS user role (which is required to create other types of transactions other than e-SHOP purchases), please follow the KFS access instructions.

There is another option you can use, as indicated below:

1. Under the Delivery tab, click on the "building not found" button, and then on the search (magnifying glass) button
2. On the Building Lookup screen, enter the name of the building with an asterisk (e.g., East* to find East Hill Office Building)
3. Click on the returned value (on the left side of the screen)

This should return the building information. Remember to add the room number, which can also be searched.

If when trying to log in to e-SHOP, you see a screen that reads, "The application was unable to route the session back to the login page," you are most likely using the old e-SHOP link. See a screen shot of the message.

Please update your bookmark to use the Shop Catalogs or access the Shop Catalogs link from the KFS Transactions section on the Admin tab on the myCornell portal. You can also access Shop Catalogs from the KFS Main Menu tab, under Purchasing/Accounts Payable in the Transaction e-docs.

This is not the most intuitive message, but it means that you have no other items in your Action List (Cynergy Inbox).

Yes, toward the right side of the action list item, there is s drop-down box, which defaults to NONE. Select FYI from the drop-down, and then click the "take action" button. You can select FYI for multiple items, and then taking action will clear them all.

If the doc is not in your Action List, you cannot take any action other than to send an ad hoc request, reload, close, and in some cases, copy docs.