FINANCE STAFF MINUTES

FEBRUARY 10, 2004

9 A.M. – CONFERENCE ROOM B

 

Present:   Debbie Jozwiak, LaRue Ninke, Tamye Crockett, Linda Syverson, Melody Olsen, Linda Turley, Angela Hartmann, Kathy Caylor.

Absent: Deana Waida (attending Defensive Driving Course), Kaci Lopez (Tuesday was not a regular workday)

Relocations:   Toni discussed the anticipated Finance office relocation.   Melody asked if the Mail Lock Boxes would be removed.   Toni will follow up on this.  

Space available to Finance will be the following:   Lydia’s office, Mail Room, Greg’s office, the space outside of Greg’s office except for one desk (June’s) that will be reserved for Bursar’s use.    Those moving into the Finance office space will be Linda Turley, Angela Hartmann, Kathy Caylor and Student Worker. 

 Considerations   for determining the relocations will be the following:

1.       How the current office furniture would fit.

2.       Faculty/Staff traffic to Linda’s and Angela’s offices

3.       Traffic through the Bursar’s door.

4.       Storage for Grants Coordinator (Dr. Chao’s purchases)

5.       Office space for Melody?

TASSCUBO Conference:   Toni discussed “Online Statements and Payment of Tuition and Fees” as presented at the conference.   Highlights as presented for Texas A&M were as follows:

1.       Implementation – Spring 2003-Decision was made to convert 100% to online statements for Fall 2003 semester.

2.       Fall 2003-Online statements only and weekly change to account balance emails.

3.       Notification-Email notices sent to all students in spring of 2003 advising of change to online statements in July, for fall semester.   FY03 – all official communications to students were done by email and included in Student Rules Handbook.

4.       Ads in the student newspaper and post cards sent to students at permanent address reminding of change and how to access statement online.

5.       Payment Options: Print and mail payment to lockbox processor with stub, pay using campus drop boxes or at cashier; online using AggiE-Pay-e-check or credit card. (convenience fee charged of $2 for e-check which is less than the credit card charge); Link to apply for Emergency Tuition and Fee Loan. Note:   The online pay by check was the payment of choice in August 2003.   The savings includes postage, handling, lockbox processing, elimination of returned mail, less address maintenance, etc. 60% of the payments are received by e-check.

NACUBO Conference:   Debbie highlighted the conference in Florida that she and Deana had attended.   Items mentioned during the training were on the following:

1.       Recording pledges.

2.       FASB & GASB websites

3.       NACUBO tutorials

4.       Cash Flow Report

5.       IPEDS Reporting Structure

6.       Gifts & Scholarship – record as contra revenue, not as revenue

7.       UMIFA – Uniform Management of Institutional Funds Account

8.       Capital Issues

PS Website:   Linda Turley distributed a copy of the PS Website and asked for comments.

Everyone seemed to be happy with it except for the printing of “UHV Houston Victoria” down the side.   Is this repetitious?

Travel:   Tamye stated that the 2nd Annual Travel Training session had been held with 21 people attending.   No faculty attended.   Participation was good.   Training included Web searching, Policies/Procedures.   The session was 1 hr.   Travel training will be held at UHSSL on Thursday, February 12th.   Linda Turley will accompany Tamye to discuss PeopleSoft. 

Fee Bills:   It was noted that an increased number of questions regarding Fee Bills have been received by Finance lately. Since the student must be redirected to the Bursar’s office, perhaps the phone operator could be reminded “how to direct” phone calls regarding the fee bill.   Also, additional information could be included in the phone book, Financial Aid publications, UHV Catalog, and Student Handbook.

Cash Handling:   Departments need to be reminded that UHV’s cash handling policy, B-6, states that for receipts less than $100, the funds must be transferred to the Cashier within five working days; for receipts greater than $100, the funds must be transferred to the Cashier within one day.   Linda will remind department personnel during her PS training, Debbie will remind department personnel during AP training.   Checks were received recently from a department that were dated “August, 2003”.   Specific e-mails have been sent to two departments reminding them of the policy.

PS Training:   The first class for 8.4 training will be held next week.

Update:   PS 8.4 Purchasing training that had been scheduled for Monday 2/16/04   has been rescheduled for 2/23/04.

Update: All UAT training that had been scheduled for the week of February 16, 2004

Thru February 20th has been rescheduled for the week of February 23, 2004 thru February 27, 2004.

Linda will be going to Houston on Friday, 2/13/04, to attend Main campus training where the “masses” will be introduced to PS 8.4.   Interactive training on the website will be available.   Final UAT testing for Finance will be next week.

Linda will be assisting non-exempt staff with a “sneak preview” of PS 8.4 on Thursday, February 12, 2004 in the a.m. and at UHSSL in the afternoon.

Update: The following e-mail was received from Mike Glisson on Monday, February 16, 2004.

  Upgrade training material is posted on the Finance website Training page: http://www.uh.edu/finance/Training.html

The PeopleSoft 8 Online Training link contains online tutorials and printable instructions for various tasks in 8.4 (creating journals, looking up cost centers, etc.).  In addition, the Finance Upgrade Overview handout from today's and yesterday's training sessions with UH departments is also posted.  We plan to add several more online tutorials and printable instructions in the next two weeks and will indicate the date added on the web page.

The PeopleSoft 8 Test Logon Instructions link contains the hyperlink and instructions for logging onto the 8.4 test database.  When the current test upgrade pass is completed, the hyperlink to the test database will be updated.

Grants:   Today, February 10, 2004, is the deadline for Teacher Quality Grants.   The proposals are to be submitted on-line now.   Dr. Foley and Dr. Chao have not required any assistance in preparing their proposals.   Angela & Kathy have helped Dr. Hutto extensively with her proposal on line. Dr. Foley is submitting two, Dr. Chao is submitting two, and Dr. Hutto is submitting one proposal.

Kathy Caylor, Sr. Secretary for the Grants Coordinator, has been working a few extra hours for Linda Turley editing PS Cheat Sheets to correspond with PS 8.4. The software program, “Full Shot” has been purchased to enable the screen shots in PS 8.4 to be printed and filed.

Budget : Darlene has been attending PS 8.4 testing and training for Finance/HR.   The following will attend PS 8.4 UAT training for Budget & Research on Friday, 2/20/04: Angela Hartmann, Linda Turley, and Darlene Pullin. (See” Update” for training)   Darlene has been reviewing cost centers to clean up negative balances and revenue by the end of February, 2004.

Budget Hearings will be March 15th and 16th.   Instructions are on the web and will be presented by Darlene and Toni at the next PS Managers’ meeting on February 26th.

Debbie asked if a deadline for vouchers should be set.   Roth, the contractor for UW remodeling has been notified of the “down time” March 12th thru March 22nd.   Should the departments be notified also?   Toni will follow up.

Central Receiving :   Linda Syverson stated that the workload has increased due to the purchase of furniture for the UW addition.   The half-way point has been reached for the furniture purchases. A follow up meeting with Shirley Jung for Property Management will be set up in the near future in order to confirm that the State Property Management, PS Asset Management, and the PS GL B11 are reconciled.  

Auditing:   Melody stated that she had lost some time in auditing recently due to working on the Job Analysis Questionnaire, JAQ, for her position.   As of today, all vouchers have been audited through the 28th of January. (10 days lag time).

Update:   Melody will be out of the office from Monday, February 16th, thru Thursday, February 19th due to a death in the family.

Newsletter:   Debbie mentioned that perhaps a reminder should be included in the Newsletter regarding having every department run their “Open Commitment Summary”   and be sure open commitments are up-to-date before the conversion.   Lydia will clean up Purchase Requisitions and Debbie will clean up the GL FY02. Concern in outstanding P.O.’s for Ledger 5, will they convert correctly?   As of this time,    PS 8.4 cannot budget check Ledger 5 vouchers.   There is no budget reference in 8.4 for Ledger 5.  

There will be work sessions after March 22nd to assist departments in preparing Bank One vouchers, etc. in PS 8.4.   Debbie will help Linda with these sessions.

Desk Audit :   LaRue mentioned that Toni is conducting a desk audit during the month of February for her position.   If her response time is a little bit slower, please be patient.  LaRue will be attending a TINS/Vendors (Texas Identification Notification System) training in Austin on March 3rd.  Training will include putting Vendors on “hold” via on-line.

Flex Schedules :   A change in flex schedules has been approved for Deana, Toni, and LaRue. Please see posted Flex Schedules for changes.

Travel Meeting :   Melody has asked that the procedure for auditing travel vouchers be reviewed.   A meeting will be set up with Melody, Tamye and Toni to review the process.

Mail Distribution :   The question was asked, “How will mail be delivered after Business Services relocates?”.   At this time mail is delivered to each recipient in the Finance office.   Perhaps after the move, all mail can be placed in one “in box”.   Tamye offered to distribute to individual offices in Finance.

Vouchers:    Suggestion: All vouchers that are received by Finance are placed in one “in box”.    Then Martha, the student worker, will pull vouchers that require immediate attention, e.g. utilities, when she comes to work at 7:30 a.m. and forward to Melody.

Mail Boxes : Debbie and Darlene share a mail box in the mail room.   Mail is sometimes being given to Debbie that is intended for Darlene and vice versa.   Susie will be asked if separate mail boxes could be designated for Debbie and Darlene.   This may not be necessary though after the relocation since all mail will be placed in one “in box”.

Meeting adjourned at 11:30 a.m.