Campus financial changes planned

A series of business process changes are set to take effect on July 1, with additional changes planned for coming months, and campus financial offices can plan for the adjustment. The goal of the changes is to eliminate UW–Madison’s legacy Accounting Control system, built in the 1970s, and replace it with processes running in the UW System’s Shared Financial System (SFS).

The most significant change, says Mike Matschull, communications coordinator for Business Services, is the elimination of internal encumbrances, a mechanism which is currently used to reserve funds to pay internal service providers (such as the Division of Information Technology or Physical Plant) for services ordered by customers. The Internal Requisition form, which previously was used to create the encumbrance, is being replaced by an Internal Work Order form that may be used to communicate information between customers and internal service providers about what is being ordered and what funds will pay for the services. The Internal Work Order form will be prepared in the My UW-Madison portal on the Services tab, as the current Internal Requisition Form is now prepared.

Although the changes will require new processes, there will be more data in SFS and WISDM for analysis and inquiry purposes, and old, outdated computer programs that are becoming expensive to modify and maintain will be eliminated. These changes help the UW System move to a more centralized approach for business operations at a systemwide level.

Changes related to External Purchases that will be put into place for fiscal year 2008 include:

• Encumbrances will be created for external requisitions by creating a purchase order in Shared Financial System that will appear in Shared Financial System once the Shared Financial System purchase order is issued. This will result in those encumbrances appearing later in the process than they currently do.
• Change orders will be created only when a true change in the commitment to the vendor occurs.
• Encumbrances in Shared Financial System will be left open for a longer period of time to ensure payments can be made. A purchase-order close process will occur twice per year to close appropriate purchase orders and encumbrances.
• Open vendor blanket orders will be eliminated, as Shared Financial System does not support this function.
• Blanket orders for “as-needed” purchases will be encumbered for $1 per the institutional direction on encumbrances approved by the Administrative Council.

All changes will be described at Fiscal Year 8 Process Changes.