About the Financial Management System Project

The Financial Management system’s objective is to develop a shared resource for University departments to bridge system gaps, streamline processes and allow faculty and senior leadership to better understand their financial position in order to make informed strategic decisions. 

Several departments collaborated from July 2016 to November 2017 to discuss pooling resources to develop one financial/research management and reporting system that will integrate with current University systems. Departments achieved consensus on the needs within three areas:

• Procurement Process (in alignment with current University systems)
• Reconciliation Tool & Data Repository
• Reporting (i.e. projections, dashboards)

A proposal to implement the project was submitted and approved by the VP of Research and the Health Sciences CFO.  The project also has support from the SVP for Health Sciences, AVP for Research, and the Budgeting and Planning Office.  Nine School of Medicine departments committed to join, and other departments or units may join in the future. 

View the full Executive Summary.

Goals and Objectives

Proposed Solution

What is the Project’s Scope?

• The delivery of an online tool that complements existing university enterprise systems enabling departments to run their businesses in their most efficient manner.
• An effort to consolidate multiple department shadow accounting systems and processes into a single tool with aims of moving participating groups to agreed-upon best practices and standard operating procedures to facilitate staff training.
• The need for flexible approval routing and funds control to track and approve procurement requests prior to interaction with University systems. Involving the right people up front results in correct, clean transactions that save time for departments and central offices later.
• The ability to conduct a thorough reconciliation using technology to identify and automatically match transactions that clear as expected so the focus can be on a timely review of variances.
• A beginning solution to meet the needs for interactive reporting and forecasting that includes pending transactions not yet captured in university systems.
• The project is not a replacement for existing centralized university systems and processes (i.e. UShop, Research Portal).

View a full Summary of Project Requirements

Timeline

As the budget was approved to begin the project in FY19, the project is underway and Phase 1 will be live by the end of the fiscal year. The scope of what will be included in this initial phase is still being established. It is expected that this will be a multi-year effort to bring on additional features and integrations.

Participating Colleges and Departments

Who’s Currently Involved?

Interested In Joining The discussion?

Please contact Jane Hou at the information listed above if you’d like more information or want to know how to participate in this initiative.