Background
Currently, zero dollar rebudgeting on sponsored projects is accomplished by processing a Budget Control Document (NBUD). Sponsored Projects Administration (SPA) is responsible for maintaining awards for sponsored projects, which includes the management and processing of award modifications. These award modifications include changes to any aspect of the award profile, contract or sponsored project. However, modifications to move currently budgeted funds between existing budget categories within a sponsored project budget are not restricted by many sponsors and therefore should not require action by SPA. CAs are responsible for reviewing budget transfers and determining whether sponsor approval is required and, if so, ensuring that their department initiates rebudgeting approval requests to Sponsors and obtains sponsor approval prior to the rebudgeting.
Summary of change
In today’s world, an academic unit administrator or other preparer initiates an NBUD in FFN and it routes to the CA for approval. The document is then interfaced into CUFS. Tomorrow, that same preparer will initiate a sponsored rebudget document using an online Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) form and route it to a CA for review. If acceptable, the CA will approve the BPEL form and log it into the PeopleSoft Projects module to enter the rebudgeting information in the Project Budget pages. The only real change is that the CA will need to manually enter the rebudgeting action into PeopleSoft rather than relying on an automated interface. CA's will now enter budget/account (account being an expense account) changes between existing accounts. In cases where the sponsor has restricted the movement of funds or the change involves establishing a new expense account, the CA will approve and forward the BPEL document to SPA, SPA will approve and do the entry into Peoplesoft. Nothing else changes. Below is more detail related to the process.
The PeopleSoft Way
Tomorrow the process will be very different. The budget for the sponsored project resides in the Projects module within PeopleSoft. Although PeopleSoft does deliver a component for entering project budgets and budget adjustments, the delivered Project Budgets pages do not provide the following desired functionality:
- Automate approval workflow for budget revisions
- Enforce zero-dollar budget revisions
- Restrict users from changing chartfields
- Restrict users from adding new budget categories
- Restrict users from finalizing unapproved budgets
- Automate calculations for F&A changes as funds are moved between budget categories
As delivered, these pages also allow the user to modify options for the budget lines that can affect how expense transactions will be budget checked.
The Solution
Given the limitations of the delivered pages and the directive to limit the number of modifications in PeopleSoft , only Central Business Units and Certified Approvers will have access to these pages. To enable Academic Units to perform budget adjustments electronically, the University is creating a custom form in Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) that will be similar to the current Financial FormsNirvana process for project re-budgeting. The new form will enable the Academic Units to create budget modifications that will then be routed to the Certified Approvers for approval. Once approved, the CAs will manually create the adjustment entries in PeopleSoft and finalize the new budget lines. If the budget modification request is rejected, it will be routed back to the BPEL preparer for corrections. This solution is also used for Cost Share Rebudgets.
Academic Units will not be able to use BPEL to process $0 re-budgeting of funds across multiple sponsored projects within a project (parent/child relationships). This type of re-budgeting requires the ability to perform non-zero dollar budgeting on an individual project in order to increase or decrease the current budget for another project. Even though these types of re-budgeting requests may not be considered award modifications and may not be restricted by the sponsor, they will have to be submitted to SPA for processing.
SPA, however, will continue to be responsible for establishing new budget categories on projects since such changes may require approval from the sponsor.
Specific Details
Security for the BPEL form should be granted to CAs and all users in the Academic Units who have fiscal responsibility for sponsored projects. However, users in the Academic Units should only be able to access projects within their own department. In addition to form access, the CAs will have update access to the budget in the Projects module.
Please note that the BPEL form is not in PeopleSoft; it is contained in a companion application. Security to this form is not based on security to PeopleSoft; access will be granted separately. Below is a mock up of the form and a brief description.
Preparers in academic units will be prompted to enter the Business Unit, Project ID, Budget Plan, Budget Period and Budget Type for the Project needing the budget adjustment. The preparer is then presented with the following page which displays the current project budget for each budget category associated with the project. The preparer can then enter the appropriate adjustment amounts in order to move funds from one budget category to another.
NOTES:
- The preparer can only enter values for the Adjustment Amount and Justification for Re-budget fields.
- As the entry is being keyed, the Pending Amount will be populated if the entry does not balance to zero.
- The Revised Budget will automatically update as an Adjustment Amount is entered.
- The preparer is responsible for manually calculating F&A changes properly based on the Project’s F&A Base and F&A Rate prior to entering the adjustment amount within the BPEL form.
- Once the budget revision has been entered, the preparer either submits the revision for approval or uses the “Save for Later” button to save it as a work in progress.
- The “Approve” and “Reject” pushbuttons will only be visible to the Certified Approver. Once approved, the Certified Approver will manually create the adjustment entries in PeopleSoft and finalize the new budget lines. If rejected, the budget revision should be routed back to the preparer for corrections.
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