UCRFS Feeder System Requirements:

• Introduction
• FSSC Approval
• Changes in PAN System Requirements Over Time
• Contacts for Feeder System Approvals
• Journals with Errors
• Journal Contents Requirements
• Special UCRFS / PeopleSoft Fields Used in the General Ledger Process
  • Special Fields: Transaction, Work Order Based Feeder Systems
  • Special Fields: non-Transaction, non-Work Order Based Feeder Systems
• Notes Concerning Revenue Lines in Feeder System G/L Journals
• Default Transactors, Non-Work Order Based Systems
• Complete List of Fields Used for Feeder System General Ledger Transactions
• Technical Requirements for Journal Header and Journal Line Data Submission
• UCRFS Feeder System File Requirement for:
  • Financials
    1. Journal Header
    2. Journal Line
  • Budgetary
    1. Journal Header
    2. Journal Line

In general, the Financial System Steering Committee (FSSC) classifies feeder systems in two broad groups: those feeder systems that require Post Audit Notification (PAN) review and those feeder systems that do not.

Typically, feeder systems that provide the General Ledger with detail transactions by work order will require PAN review. Feeder systems that do not provide transaction level to the General Ledger (and have non-General Ledger electronic or paper based methods for reviewing charges) will not require PAN review.

 

Examples of transaction based work order systems that will require PAN review include the following:	Examples of non-transaction based General Ledger charges that will (generally) not require PAN review include the following:
Physical Plant work orders. Communications work orders (requests for network or voice adds, moves, and changes)	Communications recurring charges (monthly charges for phones, lines, etc.). Mail Room charges (metered mail, etc.).

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Importantly, PAN review requirements may change over time. It is very important that electronic feeder systems be designed to send transactor information to the G/L for each debit and credit contained in the journal, even if this functionality is not utilized during initial submission of data to the General Ledger.

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Requests to submit feeder system journals to UCRFS will be made to Chuck Rowley and Bob Grant. (Andrew Cullum will provide technical support as required.) After a technical review, these requests will be submitted to Accounting and ultimately the FSSC for approval.

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Journals with errors (out of balance, invalid FAU values) will be rejected by the General Ledger (these journals will fail the General Ledger edit check). The feeder system will be required to re-submit the entire journal (with corrections). Feeder system "owners" will be contacted by Accounting or UCR’s Controller’s office when feeder system journals have been rejected. Feeder system owners may be given read only access to the PeopleSoft standard journal panel to determine the reason the journal was rejected.

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As a general goal, all feeder systems should strive to allow users to specify a General Ledger "Full Accounting Unit" (FAU) distribution for each expense line in the work order. While this will not be possible for many feeder systems, most feeder systems should allow users to specify multiple FAU distributions per work order.

When data from these systems is submitted to the General Ledger, charges should be summarized as follows:

• Transactions, Work Order Based Feeder Systems:
  • Charges should be summarized by work order and by unique FAU combination within the work order. In other words, one General Ledger line per work order for each unique FAU combination within the work order.
• Non-Transaction, non-Work Order Based Feeder Systems:
  • Charges should be summarized by unique FAU combination for the period. For example, 10 telephone equipment charges, for a given activity and a given month, could be summarized into a single General Ledger line if the FAU distribution were the same for all the equipment charges.

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There are four fields used in the General Ledger journal process that deserve special mention. The use of three of these fields will vary depending on the type of feeder system submitting the General Ledger journal. The four fields are as follows: Journal Header Description, Journal Line Reference, Journal Line Description, and Transactor.

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Special Fields: Transaction, Work Order Based Feeder Systems

• Journal Header Description.
  • This is a 254 character field that describes the journal. The Journal Header Description should specify the department generating the charges, the billing period, a descriptive overview of the journal, and any other pertinent data.
• Journal Line Reference.
  • This is a 10 character field that should be used to record the feeder system work order number. The use of the Journal Line Reference in this manner will allow users to "tie" General Ledger charges back to feeder system work orders.
• Journal Line Description.
  • This is a 30 character field that should be used to describe the work order (at an overview or summary level). For example, the Physical Plant work order system has a field for Order Description. The contents of this field might be "Remodel Client Server Programmer Offices", "Keys for Client Server Staff", or "Air Conditioning Service for Client Server Administrative Offices". If the feeder system description is longer than 30 characters, it should simply be truncated prior to submission to the General Ledger.
• Transactor.
  • This is an 8 character field that should be used to record the Alpha username of the individual that requested the service (that in turn is generating feeder system charges). While this username DOES NOT have to be a valid PeopleSoft operator ID, the username must be a valid Alpha username. Since e-mail is such a central aspect of the new financial system, feeder systems must provide the General Ledger with transactor usernames that can be used to generate valid e-mail messages.

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Special Fields: non-Transaction, non-Work Order Based Feeder Systems

• Journal Header Description (same use as Transaction Based Feeder Systems).
  • This is a 254 character field that describes the journal. The Journal Header Description should specify the department generating the charges, the billing period, a descriptive overview of the journal, and any other pertinent data.
• Journal Line Reference.
  • This field may be optionally used at the discretion of the feeder system submitting the General Ledger charges.
• Journal Line Description.
  • This is a 30 character field that should be used to describe the service at an overview or summary level. For example, for recurring Communications charges and toll charges, the Communications feeder system might submit "Comm Equip, Line, & Tolls".
• Transactor.
  • This 8 character field will currently not be used with non-transaction, non-work order based feeder systems.

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All feeder system G/L journals must be balanced before the journals will pass the PeopleSoft edit check. Therefore, feeder system journals must contain one or more revenue lines. The following notes apply to revenue lines within feeder system journals:

1. Debit (expense) entries should be POSITIVE and credit (revenue) entries should be NEGATIVE.
2. Feeder system revenues should be summarized by unique FAU combinations (in other words, multiple feeder system revenue entries with the same FAU information will be posted to the General Ledger on ONE journal line).
3. The Journal Line Reference may optionally be used for revenue lines entries for both transaction based and non-transaction based feeder system journals.
4. The Journal Line Description should provide some pertinent information concerning the revenue journal line.
5. A transactor is required for "revenue journal lines" for work order based feeder systems. PLEASE NOTE: the transactor information for revenue journal lines must be "hard coded" in the extract program or be selected from a table. Why? Work orders from end users will only contain transactor information for the debit (expense) journal lines. Feeder system owners will be responsible for naming transactors for the revenue journal lines contained in their PeopleSoft journals. Please see the following note on "Default Transactors".

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As stated earlier in this document, transactor information is NOT REQUIRED for non-work order based feeder systems. However, this requirement may change in the years ahead. If the requirement does change, "default transactors" will be required on an activity-by-activity basis for each non-work order based feeder system. Hopefully, this transactor information would be table based and merged with billing data upon submission to the General Ledger. For example, Communications recurring billing is a non-work order based feeder system. If transactor information were required for this feeder system in the future, departments would be required to establish default transactors for this feeder system (e.g. Sally Avila for Computing). Upon submission to the General Ledger, the Communications system would associate Sally Avila with the debit lines for Computing contained in the Communications recurring billing General Ledger submission.

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Journal Header

• Source. (2 or 3 character field from FSSC.)
• Date. (Date of feeder system extract that will be used as the Journal Header reference.)
• Description. (See above.)
• Journal Date. (Used to determine FY and Period to Post: 1 to 12, 1 = July, 2 = August, etc.)

Journal Line

• Account. (Please see Feeder System Requirements for details on FAU submission.)
• Activity.
• Fund.
• Function.
• Cost Center.
• Project Code Department.
• Journal Line Reference. (See above.)
• Journal Line Description. (See above.)
• Amount.
• Transactor. (See above, field is Operator ID in PeopleSoft.)

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UCRFS Feeder System File Requirements - Financial

Filename: Three (3) character Source concatenated with an eight digit date (MMDDYYYY) and a variable length user defined sequence number. The date will be the date the file was produced. The file extension will be "txt". Example: File submitted by Physical Plant on February 24, 2000, sequence number 49 would have the filename "php0224200049.txt".

If you want to replace a file before it has been processed, submit a new file with the same name. If you want to submit an additional file on the same day, the file should have a different sequence number.

File will be ASCII type and transferred via FTP as ASCII.

All dates will be in the format MMDDYYYY with leading zeros. Example: 02032000

All fields except the Amount field will be left justified. Carriage return and line feed characters are NOT allowed within the data fields. The Amount field will be right justified. The negative sign must immediately precede the leading digit. Example: -89.01

The Journal Header record must be followed by its corresponding Journal Line records. The first field of the Journal Header record is a delimiter field and must contain the value "H". The first field of the Journal Line record is a delimiter field and must contain the value "L".

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UCRFS Feeder System File Requirements - Budgetary

Filename: Three (3) character Source concatenated with an eight digit date (MMDDYYYY) and a variable length user defined sequence number. The date will be the date the file was produced. The file extension will be "txt". Example: File submitted by Physical Plant on February 24, 2000, sequence number 49 would have the filename "php0224200049.txt".

If you want to replace a file before it has been processed, submit a new file with the same name. If you want to submit an additional file on the same day, the file should have a different sequence number.

File will be ASCII type and transferred via FTP as ASCII.

All dates will be in the format MMDDYYYY with leading zeros. Example: 02032000

All fields except the Amount field will be left justified. Carriage return and line feed characters are NOT allowed within the data fields. The Amount field will be right justified. The negative sign must immediately precede the leading digit. Example: -89.01

The Journal Header record must be followed by its corresponding Journal Line records. The first field of the Journal Header record is a delimiter field and must contain the value "H". The first field of the Journal Line record is a delimiter field and must contain the value "L". Each ledger, TEMP and PERM must balance.

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