• Introduction

• Where to begin?

• Financial Systems

• Training

 

Introduction

Finance Service Group provides training opportunities to university administrative staff and MPPs pertaining to financial, procurement and payment policies and processes. Training is offered through formal class sessions, online tutorials or manuals, and in Finance Open Lab.

Where to begin?

For Administrative Staff

University employees will be working with Finance in some capacity if their role and responsibility for their department includes one or more of the following:

• Budgeting
• Purchasing or requesting goods/services for department.
• Requesting payment to vendors or reimbursing employees for goods/services provided to department.
• Monitoring or reconciling activity in department funds.

For MPPs

MPPs have the responsibility to examine and approve financial related transactions entered or requested by their staff to determine that all charges are for a valid business purpose, for the university's benefit, and not for the personal benefit of any person. For more information, please refer to the Delegation of Authority for Approval of Financial Expenditures .

Subscribe to FinanceConnect

Administrative staff and Approving Officials can receive news and updates pertaining to Finance policies and processes by subscribing to FinanceConnect Blog.

Financial Systems

Most accounting and budget transfers plus purchasing and payment requests are initiated in the financial systems.

The Administrative Applications manages these systems and is responsible for providing training to access them. For a course information, see Administrative Applications Training for Employees .

The financial systems commonly used by staff for most finance processes are:

• Financial Transaction Services (FTS): The system used to initiate purchasing/payment requests, expense and budget transfers, hospitality payments, and HR LCD Adjustments.

• Common Finance System (CFS): The system used for checking the status of purchasing/payment requests, enter confirmation of receipts/inspections for Purchase Orders, and reconciling ProCard and GoCard transactions.

• Data Warehouse: Reporting tool used to monitor financial activity affecting your department’s funds.

Training

All university employees should familiarize themselves with Finance policies and procedures, Procurement Pathways, and Chartfields used by their departments.  Finance provides policy training while Administrative Applications is responsible for system training. 

Besides attending training offered by Finance and Administrative Applications, we encourage employees take the opportunity to:

• Utilize Administrative Applications Office Instruction Manuals.
• Refer to Finance website for guidance on policy, guidelines and procedures.
• Drop in to Finance Open Lab for one on one assistance.
• Contact FinanceConnect for assistance pertaining to finance and procurement policies or Administrative Applications for system assistance.

Classes

Finance offers courses pertaining to finance policies. The following courses are offered:

• Intro to Finance  (This course is a pre-requisite to classes offered by CMS for access to using FTS and CFS functions.)
• Finance Overview for Approving Officials
• Procurement Pathways
• Travel