Reporting, Reconciliation, and Corrections.
Reporting and reconciling our accounts every month is one of the easiest ways to create a solid foundation for evaluating our School’s performance and financial health. The BUworks Finance component provides an integrated infrastructure that supports the budget, finance, procurement, and research administration and intended to improve the University’s ability to plan, manage, and transact financial data. Access to the reporting feature in SAP is dependent on a user’s role at the School of Public Health.
This section gives an overview of reporting, reconciliation, and corrections. Detailed instructions for these actions are available on the BUworks help website. Faculty and staff may also contact the SPH Finance Team for assistance.
a. Report Types
BUworks categorizes reports into two types:
- Funds Management refers to unrestricted and designated/restricted accounts. This includes general use, pilot, discretionary, endowment, and gift accounts.
- Grants Management refers to all sponsored programs.
These reports are available on the Reporting tab >> Accounting (FI) section of BUworks.
Business Warehouse (BW) reports accesses a tremendous amount of data at both the summary and detail level. Reports are flexible, customizable, and easy to use once you become familiar with the basics of BW reporting.
- Transaction detail. The Transaction Detail report provides detailed information on each transaction and allows the user to view actual postings as well as committed funds for the account.
- Unrestricted budget to actual by FC – GL/CI detail. The Unrestricted Budget to Actual report displays a summary view of unrestricted accounts for one or more fund centers. It provides a snapshot of budget (can be broken out by recurring and non-recurring), income/expense actuals, payroll actuals, and commitments and includes unexpended budget and percent of budget expended.
- Designated/restricted balance and activity – GL/CI detail. The Designated/Restricted Balance and Activity report display a summary view of designated and non-grant restricted accounts for one or more fund centers. The report provides a snapshot of balance carry-forward from the prior year, income/expense actuals, payroll actuals, and commitments. Also, it includes an unspent budget and percent of the budget already spent. Data is displayed for fiscal year-to-date through the period specified.
Some helpful notes about reports:
- Some cells may be merged; this will prevent filtering or sorting the data. Be sure to unmerge the entire spreadsheet to alleviate this problem.
- Period/fiscal year is a required field. BU’s Fiscal Year runs from July 1 through June 30. Thus, July is the first fiscal period and is represented as period 001 in SAP. August is period 002, and so forth.
- The transaction details report indicates how the item was purchased via document type (PCard, invoice [purchase requisition]). Purchases made using Ariba Guided BUying also display the vendor invoice, PO number, purchase requisition number, etc.
- It is possible to store custom reports. Once a View has been saved, it can be reused, saving time, reducing the chance of errors, and increasing efficiency. See How to Save and Use a View.
Helpful Links
BUworks Training – Intro to BW Reporting
BUworks Finance
FM/GM Data Glossary
How to Export Report Data to Excel
Add, Remove, and Move Data within a Report (needs Kerberos Login)
How to Run FM Unrestricted Budget to Actual by Fund Center
How to Run FM Designated Restricted Balance and Activity
How to Drill down to Additional Detail
b. Reconciling monthly expenses
Reconciling expenses is how to ensure the expenses within the fund center are accurate, and the department is staying within their allocated budget. Reconciling an account means proving or documenting that an account balance is correct. Performing reconciliations is important and should be completed monthly. This will ensure that all transactions posted to a fund center or internal order are complete, accurate, and recorded in the appropriate account. Reconciliations also help SPH departments identify and quickly report fraudulent transactions, compliance issues, or any other inappropriate or unusual activity.
To reconcile the transactions listed within your fund center or internal order:
- Download the appropriate report within Business Warehouse
- Export these reports into an Excel spreadsheet
Account administrators should evaluate the following when reconciling their accounts:
- Budgets are not overspent; expenses are correct and allocable
- Commitments are accurately reflecting upcoming expenditures
- PCard and Travel Card transactions have posted appropriately
See BUworks Finance Tools for Reconciling and BU After-the-Fact Review for monthly reconciliation training and tools.
c. Journal Entries and Corrections
Corrections and adjustments are made via a journal entry. Journal entries are an essential part of managing revenue and expenses within the University.
Please see BUworks Finance Help Resources for detailed instructions on creating and tracking journal entries.