Bookmark This: GMS Interface Codes & Contact Info

If you are preparing or approving a monthly reconciliation, you may have asked “What are these transactions that begin with GMSA-?” The prefix GMSA- tells us that the transaction was uploaded to the Integrated System from a file generated by a school or department. Check out the GMS Interface Contact Information sheet to crack the code found in the transaction number that tells which area created the batch. To navigate to this document from the Comptroller's home page, click "Important Links," then "ISP Contact Information."

SFS Launches MyIntuition Quick College Cost Estimator

In September, SFS launched MyIntuition, a new tool for estimating the amounts of financial aid and family contribution a student can expect for one academic year. With just 9 questions, it is much simpler and faster than the Federally mandated Net Price Calculator, but maintains a very high level of accuracy.

U.Va.'s use of this new tool was highlighted by The New York Times and EAB. The articles quote President Sullivan, who said she hopes this tool will help “avoid the possibility of losing prospective students due to misperceptions about cost.”

You can try the MyIntuition calculator at virginia.edu/costestimator.

MRP New Team Members

Navya, Steve and Katie

Navya Kommalapati is also a new ETL Developer on the MRP team. She is originally from Hyderabad, India, and came to the United States to attend graduate school in Alabama. Navya was an ETL consultant for five years, so like Steve, she brings valuable business and data experience—but from the telecom, retail and healthcare sectors. Navya is excited to learn and use the many new MRP tools and applications, and is eager to get involved in other project tasks in addition to her ETL work.

Navya enjoys outdoor activities, and is even teaching herself how to swim! She recently spent an entire weekend cooking an authentic Indian feast, so the MRP team hopes Navya will bring one or two delicacies to Fontaine someday.

Steve Patterson joined the Managerial Reporting Project as an ETL Developer. That is extract, transform and load—tech jargon for transforming data from our various source systems, and bringing it into the new data warehouse. ETL is a critical step for the project to deliver the future reporting environments. Steve has more than 15 years of business intelligence, technical and leadership experience in the financial services, publishing and not-for-profit sectors.  He also adds valuable Agile methodology experience to the team—he is a Certified Scrum Master, and will help advise the team on Agile/Scrum best practices. 

Outside of work, Steve enjoys spending time with his wife, Jen, and their four children (ages 8,10,13 and 15), as well as reading and long distance running. He has run the Charlottesville Marathon, and three half marathons, and enjoys running the Rivanna trail right outside his Fontaine office.

Katie Lake is the new Office Manager for the Managerial Reporting Project. She is a recent UVA graduate, with a degree in linguistics. While in school, Katie was a research assistant for a study on the Mopan Mayan language. As an alumna, Katie is excited to kick off her career at UVA, and is thrilled that the Managerial Reporting Project will provide an opportunity to work with many new people around the University. The rest of the project team is also excited to welcome Katie and her enthusiasm for UVA.

As a linguist, it is no surprise Katie admits to “nerding-out” about languages. She also loves Battlestar Galactica and classical music—and even plays the guitar, drums and piano! Like many other newly-employed recent college graduates, Katie joined her first fantasy football league. She says it is “not going too well.”

Comptroller's Office: Updates on Audit and Cardinal

The audit is in its final two weeks and going smoothly. The APA is frantically trying to wrap up their audit. The University submitted its consolidated financial information to the State on 9/23 (as required) for the State’s CAFR.

Cardinal implementation is entering its training phase where several UVA folks will be attending both on-line and in-person classes with the Cardinal training team. This will continue until the end of October. We have already done testing on “Mock” data, comparing CARRS reports to Cardinal reports and noted NO exceptions. February 1^st is till the “Go Live” date for Cardinal.

2015 Day of Caring

This September, 36 volunteers from the Associate VP for Finance area completed three projects at area schools for the annual United Way Day of Caring:

 A group of 8 went to Walker Elementary School, where they attended 4 different lunch periods with 5^th and 6^th grade students who were asked to sit at tables where they didn’t know everyone. They played Bingo, which required that they interact with those other students who they might not know. Math seemed to be the favorite subject of most of the students-- Sarah Doran said, "I told them if they keep up the good work, they could come work for us some day!"

A group of 11 went to Western Albemarle High School, where they had a great day landscaping and assembling two picnic tables.

A group of 17 went to Nathanael Greene Primary School, where they created two 10 x 10 number grids on the playgrounds--a great project for a bunch of accountants and project managers! It was a total team effort, the group NEEDED and utilized all of the planning, analytical, and project management skills its members had to offer.

Excel Tips & Tricks: The Quick Access Toolbar

Do you ever find yourself clicking through the Ribbon in Excel (or other MS Office programs), because you can’t quite remember which tab you need?  The Quick Access Toolbar allows you to easily customize your favorite or most often-used commands, saving time and reducing frustration.

OE "Spotlight on Excellence" Recognizes Two AVPF Employees

The Organizational Excellence Spotlight on Excellence peer-recognition program highlights individuals who exhibit the principles of OE in their daily work and contribute to an institutional culture of quality. Two of our own were recently recognized:

Jim Bowen (OSP)

Jim's nominator summed up his contributions as a “wizard.” While specializing in accounts with outstanding receivable balances that have been in collection, Jim remains solutions-oriented and dedicated to understanding the problem and seeing it through to resolution. This work requires extraordinary collaboration to untangle and uncover the root cause and bring it to closure.

In the last several months, Jim helped collect nearly $150,000 of difficult-to-collect accounts. His patience, persistence, and relationship-building skills brought closure to these problematic accounts that would otherwise go to settlement.

Andrew Yeung (MRP)

Andrew's nomination highlighted his proactive identification of a streamlining opportunity to automate a labor-intensive manual process. His collaboration and solutions-orientation helped create a new process tool that saves time and reduces errors when billing for A/V Services in the Jordan Hall Conference Center.

Andrew's nominator not only cited his technical competence but also Andrew's patience, flexibility, and excellent customer service. Andrew engaged key stakeholders and maintained open communications throughout the process redesign. In sum, Andrew's work was described as exceeding expectations.

Finance Job Openings

Looking for a new position within the finance area? The Job Openings page of the AVPF Blog has available positions within the finance departments and is updated with every edition of the blog.

Everything you should do before hitting 'send' on your work email

Harvard Business Review Associate Editor Gretchen Gavett breaks down the do's and don'ts of work emails and highlights how you can make your message stand out.

Click here to read the full article from EAB.

New: UVA BBA and Revenue Report in Discoverer

As a result of the Orange Team’s efforts, the MRP team pleased to announce the availability of a new report in Discoverer.  The UVA BBA and Revenue Report provides additional information not in the Versus report, including:

• Revenue not yet installed
• Amounts funded, but not budgeted
• Budget balance available

Additionally, a new view structure was utilized that allows results to be returned in a couple of minutes, as opposed to 15 or more minutes for the Versus report.  Read more about the new report and its best practices.

From Melody's Desk

Well, summer is over and school is in session. We know this from the students crowding the Student Financial Services’ counter last week, the traffic on Emmet Street, the long lines at Chipotle, and football and marching band practice occurring on Lambeth and Carr’s Hill Fields. :)

Congratulations to the folks in SFS who handled 4,800 phone calls, 1,547 emails, and 742 walk-ins from students and parents over a span of 9 business days. Put the calculator away, I’ll do the math for you. That’s 533 calls, 183 emails, and 82 walk-ins per day. I appreciate the hard work, patience, and professional approach from each SFS team member!

Speaking of UVa football, I snapped the below picture at Lambeth Field, as I walked from my office at the newly renovated O’Neil Hall to Carruther’s Hall (making sure to count my steps for the Hoo’s Well FallFitness Challenge).

Have you ever listened to a TED talk that you just wanted to share? A friend shared a TED talk from Shawn Achor, positive psychology guru, with me:  http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work. This one combines the best characteristics of a TED talk:  funny, fast-paced, and an easy take-away. Two excerpts:

“If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work even more successfully as we're able to work harder, faster and more intelligently.”

“In just a two-minute span of time done for 21 days in a row, we can actually rewire your brain, allowing your brain to actually work more optimistically and more successfully.”

Do you have a favorite TED talk? Send me an email or post a link in the comments – I’d love to see it.

PS:  Don’t forget to subscribe to the EVP/COO Area newsletter to keep up on the news from other corners of the University.

Finance Team Gears Up for Day of Caring

The United Way Day of Caring on September 16 is a time to make real improvements in our community and team-build at the same time. Forty-four volunteers will be working at three different sites:

1) Walker Upper Elementary School: Walker Upper Elementary School (5th and 6th Grade) participates each year in the annual Mix-it-up-at-Lunch event where students are assigned to a new lunch seat with the purpose of giving them the opportunity to get to know students outside of their social circle.  Research shows that when students feel like they know each other and can find things in common, they are less likely to bully one another and more likely to help each other out.  Volunteers will help with a "get-to-know-you-bingo" game that allows students to see what they have in common with the new students that they are assigned to sit with.

2) Nathanael Greene Primary School: Volunteers will help paint 100-charts on the blacktops at the school. They will create a 10x10 grid with 100 spaces.  Stencils will then be used to paint the numbers, 1-100, in each box. They may even  create large 100-charts on tarps to be used within classrooms.

3) Western Albemarle High School: Volunteers will weed and mulch the grounds and do some painting.

A kickoff breakfast rally will be held at the Albemarle Square Shopping Center beginning at 7:30am.  A fresh breakfast and lots of coffee will be available. Thanks to everyone who is willing and able to participate!

Data Governance, Continued

Last month, we shared a quick video explanation of various data governance topics. This month, Forrest and Tom are back with the second half of that discussion—to help you better-understand data governance at the University, and how the MRP team is involved. Watch and share this video!

Finance Outreach & Compliance Has a New Home

Come visit the team in our new space in Carruthers Hall.

Excel Tips & Tricks: The Ugly “#DIV/0”

When you create formulas in Excel worksheets you will often find that your formula is set up correctly, but certain cells will return a result of “#ERROR,” “#N/A,” or “#DIV/0!.” These outputs are generally not desirable when sharing the worksheet with others.

Add the “IFERROR” function to your formula to dictate what is displayed instead ofthe error message. For example, to tell Excel to display “-“ instead of “#DIV/0” whenever it encounters a divide-by-zero error, write the formula as “=IFERROR(A1/B1,”-“) where the characters in quotes at the end are what will display if Excel formula results in an error.