Fiscal Year 2024 Budget and Multi-Year Financial Plan: What's Next

Great job, everyone, on submitting your FY24 Budget and MYFP!  

At this point in the process, the budget team will be conducting quality checks, taking the FY24 original snapshot, and preparing for budget meetings, which begin on March 14. 

What's next?  We'll prepare for budget approval at the June Board of Visitors meeting, and make preliminary decisions on funding requests.  Those decisions are pending full budget approval by the BOV and will not be communicated until after the BOV meeting.

Remember, even though Adaptive Planning is currently in read-only status, you can still log in, run reports, and view your data.

UVAFinance: Join us for March Sprint Discussions

It’s March, so no matter what that groundhog said, spring is approaching, and so is our next series of Sprint Discussions. Building on our Allyship discussions from February, we’ll be moving on to the topic of fear in March.

What kind of fear are we talking about? So many different kinds: 

• Social fear that moderates societal behavior
• Fear in black employees
• Fear of black men
• Fear of interacting with other races
• Fear for our children
• Fear of moving beyond our comfort zones
• Fear of demographic change

Don’t be afraid to join us on March 9 and 23 from 4-5 pm (ah see what we did there? PUNS!) for two great sprint discussions with your colleagues and friends. 

 If you missed the Allyship discussions and want to get up to speed, you can always check out The Sprint podcast for February 2023, in which LaVerne and Patty will get you on track in about 8 minutes.

UVA's Annual Financial Report Available

It's not light reading, but it's definitely interesting and has lots of great reference material.  

View UVA's 2021-22 Financial Report on the Financial Reporting & Accounting portion of the UVAFinance website.  

Here's a direct link for your convenience.

Kristin Dinwiddie Award for Commitment to Youth Safety

Kristin Dinwiddie, UVAFinance Senior Manager of Risk Control, received the 2022 UVA Youth Protection Champion of the Year award!

This is a new award from the Department of Safety & Security, created in recognition of a partner or stakeholder at the University who has consistently championed youth protection efforts across Grounds.

Dinwiddie played an instrumental role in connecting many programs and events with the Office of Youth Protection and supported the Office's goal of delivering safe and fun programming to youth through collegial collaboration.

We are so proud to have Kristin on our team!

Sharing the Vision: Accounts Payable

 Contributed by Amanda Lockhart Davis

I've had the pleasure of being here at UVA since early December, digging into the nuts and bolts of my job as Director of Accounts Payable, getting to know my team, and learning about the needs of our customers.  

I joined the procurement team knowing we'd be working through the continuous improvements that come after a large system implementation and the associated business process changes. 

After these first few months of getting settled and identifying priorities, I wanted to share with you my vision for accounts payable moving forward: 

1. Organize  - Prioritize - Solution:  This is step one, and it's ongoing and overarching.  Our work has many interdependencies, and we're still sorting through many challenges post-go-live of Workday Financials.  With your input and the partnership of our internal teams, our team is prioritizing the issues that are causing the most pain to you and our vendors and getting solutions in place as quickly as possible.

2. Obtain the necessary education and training for myself and my team: For us to serve our partners across Grounds and our vendors in the community, we need to bring our best selves to our jobs.  To do that, we need to have all the skills and tools required to best do our jobs.  I've been focused on getting our team up to speed on the tools UVAFinance uses to manage customer issues and the systems we need access to in order to troubleshoot those issues.

3. Partner with our stakeholders and stay regularly engaged:  Who are our stakeholders?  If you're reading this, you are a stakeholder!  You're a finance partner at UVA!  We also serve our internal team in UVAFinance and vendors in the community.  Our team's priority is to provide excellent service to all, and that means we must listen to you continually and understand your needs.  This means you'll see us listening in at meetings and you'll be hearing from us in communication channels.  We're carefully monitoring the cases in AskFinance and working not only to solve individual cases but also to improve our processes based on the trends we see.

4.  Prepare my team for a successful year: I knew coming into this role that the team I was joining was amazing, and I've not been disappointed.  As this wonderful group's leader, I have the task of keeping their morale up and keeping their best interests at heart, and that's a goal I take seriously.  

I look forward to getting to know many more of you in the schools and units this spring.  Look for more from me in upcoming meetings and here in the UVAFinance blog!  As always, if you have questions or concerns about accounts payable, please reach out to us at askfinance@virginia.edu.

 

UVA Appoints Augie Maurelli as Vice President for Finance and Chief Financial Officer

The University of Virginia announced on February 21 that Augie Maurelli has been appointed vice president for finance and chief financial officer.

Maurelli is an experienced financial leader in higher education and has served as associate vice president for financial operations at the University since December 2019. He previously served as associate vice president for strategy and operations in University Finance at the University of Delaware and held leadership roles in athletics both there and at Georgetown University.

As the leader of the UVAFinance organization and the University’s CFO, Maurelli reports to Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Jennifer (J.J.) Wagner Davis. He will work closely with each member of the University’s executive leadership team and partners across Grounds.

Maurelli is responsible for overseeing the University’s consolidated financial statements, along with developing financial strategy and plans for the effective allocation of resources to support UVA’s key strategic initiatives and priorities. He will provide strategic financial oversight of the Academic Division’s operating budget and collaborate with UVA Health finance leaders who oversee its operating budget, each over $2 billion annually. In addition, he will steward the University’s assets, and provide financial counsel to help UVA reach its ambitious goals.

“Augie joined our team during a multi-year strategic transformation of our finance operations. He dove right into learning about UVA and quickly began to collaborate with partners across Grounds,” Davis said. “When we all needed to begin working remotely at the onset of the pandemic, Augie continued to work closely with colleagues throughout the University. He spearheaded a governance committee that oversaw the creation of a new chart of accounts and managed multiple workstreams associated with the transformation. He earned a reputation as a leader who spent time working through the details with partners.”

UVA President Jim Ryan endorsed the selection. “Augie brings years of experience and strategic thinking to this role, and his collaborative leadership style will be an asset to the University,” he said. “I’m grateful to those who participated in the search process, and I’m excited to continue to work with Augie in the years ahead.”

New Senior Sourcing Specialist brings Enthusiasm, On-Grounds Experience to PSDS

Amanda Williamson just joined UVAFinance as a Senior Sourcing Specialist with Procurement & Supplier Diversity Services. Just prior, she was a Finance Generalist for UVA's Facilities Management. Before working in finance, Williamson worked for both the academic and hospital service desks.

Williamson's experience across Grounds has helped prepare her for her new role, specifically her understanding of policies and procedures.

"In this position, I am performing cradle-to-grave functions for the procurement of goods and services with firms, while complying with State procurement laws and University policies and procedures," she shares.

Having always worked in customer service and valuing the relationships she built in Facilities Management, Williamson found many benefits to joining PSDS. 

Williamson and her husband

"I was looking for a way to step into a more service role, while still being able to utilize the skills and knowledge that I had gathered in finance," she says.  "This team is known for being knowledgeable problem solvers under excellent management and I look forward to adding to that reputation."

PSDS positions require fact-finding and verification, which Williamson finds a welcome challenge in her position. She shares that the wealth of resources positions her for success and a lot of information digging.

"I think my biggest challenge will be knowing when and how to use my resources.  There are so many guidelines, rules, suggestions, laws, etc. that knowing where to look to verify and find information will be essential."

The team has enthusiastically welcomed Williamson, "The people that I have met have been fantastic.  Everyone has been so friendly and welcoming."  

Not that she's choosing a favorite but with comradery a part of the role, Williamson shares, "Frank is the best part so far. He has so much knowledge to share and his documentation is on point.  He has a great attitude and makes work enjoyable."

Williamson as a UVA baby

Williamson's roots at UVA are deep and that gives her extra pride in the work she does. 

"My parents were both in college here and I was born at Martha Jefferson hospital while they were in married student quarters," she shares. "My grandmother was full Korean and married a soldier and moved to the U.S. All three of her children graduated from UVA and all eight of her grandchildren went to college.

Outside of work, Williamson and her husband enjoy time with their large blended family. Williamson also fills her time with family get-togethers, horseback riding, cooking, and reading. 

AskFinance or OSP-Help?

Trainers and functional experts in finance and OSP, working with our support folks on the Ask Finance team and OSP-Help have been working together to sort out the grants-related questions that come into both areas.  Their aim is to best serve you, our partners across Grounds. 

A lot of the confusion around grants stems from the two units sitting organizationally, plus the transition from Oracle to Workday Financials.

In some instances, your grant questions could either be answered by UVAFinance or by OSP, depending on what the question is, and that makes it very confusing for both you as the asker and sometimes for us, too! 

You can ALWAYS inquire with the AskFinance Team with any grants question, and the OSP team is always happy to help with any question, too -- one way or another, either team will get you to the right person or resource to answer your question.  However, we know it sometimes takes a little extra time for us to sort out the questions on our end, so we wanted to share with you the guidance we developed for the internal teams on where to direct the grants questions. 

When do I AskFinance - only when grant worktag/s are involved:

• If you would ask the same question if it was a Gift or a Designated – not specific to Grants. Ex. I’m using a Grant worktag, but I don’t know how to complete an Accounting Journal.
• Questions about procurement transactions.
• Questions about restricted spend categories on Supplier Invoice Requests.
• Questions about F&A or Fringe Benefits calculation.
• Questions about F&A Revenue Allocation Profiles (forward to Office of Budget & Planning).
• Questions about transactions that are stuck.
• Questions related to Workday or UBI reports.
• Questions related to requests made in Workday (Request Based Access) for departmental Grant roles (Grant Manager, Grant Financial Analyst, Grant Certifier)

When do I ask OSP (osp-help@virgina.edu):

• Anything related to Award set up in ResearchUVA PBH or Workday.
• Requests to change Award Analyst.
• Questions about Award or Grant funding or budget in Workday or ResearchUVA PBH.
• Questions about SIS Allowed flag in Workday.
• Questions about cost sharing, fabrication, program income grants in Workday or ResearchUVA PBH.
• Questions about or requests to change spend restrictions on a grant.
• Questions about the allowability of costs on grants.
• Questions related to Award or Grant Start and End dates or Lifecycle statuses.
• Questions related to F&A rates on grants.
• Questions related to Sponsors assigned to Awards.
• Questions related to sub-award invoices.
• Requests to change the Award ID (either legacy G Award number or ResearchUVA PBH proposal/Award ID).
• Requests to change Cost Centers on a grant.

Note that requests for actions taken to new or existing awards should be taken in Research UVA Powered by Huron via the Award Mod Request (AMR) activity. These include:

• Requests for rebudgeting between grants.
• Requests for early terminations.
• Requests to change the PI.

CommunityHub to Sunset in April

If you worked closely with the Finance Strategic Transformation project and/or UBI, you probably got pretty familiar with the Online Community, otherwise known as the CommunityHub. 

 For over six years, this space has been a place for folks across Grounds to access resources, ask and answer questions, and share ideas.  

With both FST and UBI having stable support options available, the Online Community will be phased out gradually this spring and sunset by April 19.  Plans are being made to make resources easily available via other existing channels, so watch for more details in the coming weeks.

Cartwright to Lead PSDS as Interim Director

Mark Cartwright, Director of Supplier Diversity, has stepped into the role of Interim Director of PSDS as the search for a permanent Director of PSDS continues.

Cartwright, who has led Supplier Diversity for over a year, has a long and varied background in leading procurement teams in both academia and private companies. His experience includes launching the supplier diversity program at Virginia Tech and a stint as Special Assistant to the Governor of Virginia, heading up the Commonwealth’s supplier diversity efforts. Cartwright is also a Certified Professional in Supply Management and Supplier Diversity and has a Doctor of Business Administration in Supply Chain Management and Logistics.

UVAFinance is grateful for Cartwright's experience and expertise during this ongoing transition and thankful to all those on the PSDS team who have continued to step up and help out to keep operations running as smoothly as possible.

Workday Reporting Update: Did you see this?

There were so many updates in last week's Finance Reporting & Analytics Release Notes, you may have missed one of the most interesting highlights, the new Expense Budget Vs. Actual, or Simple "BBA" report. 

This new Budget Variance report provides a simple view of Expenses in a format that is modeled on the old “BBA report” in UBI and Recon@. It shows the fiscal year Budget, MTD and YTD Actuals, open Commitments & Obligations, and variance by Spend Line Item and Category. You can use prompts to run by any combination of Worktags. All amounts are drillable to see the details or slice and dice by additional attributes.

This report was designed with input from our Fiscal Administrator Reporting Focus Group and provides a simple budget management tool for anyone who is responsible for managing expenses to a budget.
This report only includes transactions charged to a Spend Category.

Check out more goodies from current and past Reporting & Analytics releases on the UVAFinance Website. 

Research Administrative Dashboard 3.0 illustrates great collaboration across Grounds

One of the most well-loved and useful UBI modules for UVA researchers and research administrators has long been the Research Administrative Dashboard or RAD module.  With its ability to give clear grant and post-award insights, it's easy to see why everyone thought it was, well, pretty rad.  

After Workday Financials went live in July 2022, the Business Intelligence & Data Analytics Team went to work quickly to reassemble the dashboard, this time pulling the necessary data from Workday Financials.  They collaborated with the Enterprise Data Warehouse Team and the University Business Intelligence Team to get the data they needed and build the dashboard.

"We knew the need for the RAD Dashboard would come up quickly," says Bradley Kurtz, senior finance data and tech analyst and primary developer on the project.  As soon as Workday Financials had enough financial data in the system to work with after go-live, Kurtz, along with a broad group of grant administrators across Grounds, began working on translating the needs of principal investigators into a new, improved version of RAD, one iterative version at a time.

VIDEO:  Bradley Kurtz walks us through the RAD Dashboard on YouTube

As Kurtz points out, the data model for the RAD Dashboard itself is relatively simple, but it pulls in huge amounts of data from a variety of sources and requires a tremendous amount of thought from a wide array of UVA research administrators, working closely with their respective PIs, to build something that allows for meaningful comparison and self-sufficiency.

The first iteration post-go-live was made available this past autumn, to much excitement from the research community.  RAD 2.0 provided insight into award spending vs. budget, which was a big first step, just getting the Qlik app to pull journal lines from the new system.

RAD 3.0, released just this past Thursday, February 16, takes a further step toward complete award visibility by offering FA spending vs. obligations.  Kurtz explains that in this latest iteration, the app allows users to see how much money they have consumed at a given point in time, and how much money and time they have left, essential in order for them not to overspend on their grant.  

Access Research Administration Dashboard (RAD) 3.0 by visiting the UBI hub and searching for "Workday Rad"

Crystal Lamm, a unit administrator in Biomedical Engineering, affirms that RAD 3.0 should go a long way toward providing useful information for administrators and faculty. 

"Faculty have been struggling to get a handle on their grant financials since the implementation of the new systems and with RAD, we've put something in place that's going to be so helpful, and that means a lot to me," she says.

While RAD 3.0 offers significant improvements upon the offerings of RAD 2.0, PIs and administrators can be assured that more radical leaps are in the works.  Kurtz and his group of collaborators are keeping at it, with a goal of pulling graduate assistant data from SAFM, so that FA data can be figured in for student workers, as well as getting data from Research UVA powered by Huron.  

"Getting Huron in the loop means that we'll have the entire life cycle, from requesting the award, working through OSP, through the closure of the award, to when the award has been finalized, all as a 360-degree view in the RAD dashboard, with flexible filters, searchable, and with calculations on budget vs. actuals," says Kurtz.  He adds that the team is also planning to include data on clinical trials in the next iteration of RAD.

Gina Correll of the Biocomplexity Institute has been part of the group working closely with Kurtz on RAD and says she has received rave reviews on the dashboard from faculty in her area.  

"Previously, the data wasn't as immediate and dynamic, but now they can get the different elements they need, and it can be as detailed or as general as they require," she says.  She has found the collaborative effort between administrators and the data analytics team quite rewarding, because of how the feedback they share gets put to use.

"It's a challenging time when you change systems," she says, "but the analytics team really listened to our feedback and we've seen the tool evolve.  They don't wait until it's perfect to make something that's useful available.  They put it out there, get feedback, and then make it even better."

Speaking for the data analytics team, Kurtz says the great feedback has indeed been important.  "OSP and the grant administrators have all just dove in and worked with their PIs to get great feedback," he says.

At the end of the day, Lamm sums it up best:  "You want to feel like what you're doing is helpful, and this is one of those projects I know will make a difference to the University."

Meet the Workday Support Team

As a part of the Finance Strategic Transformation project, new systems were implemented and processes were changed.  To support our users across Grounds, UVAFinance also created new teams within central finance as a part of the transformation.  The Ask Finance Team likely springs to your mind first as one of those new teams.

Another new team that was also created as part of the project to support Workday Finance users is the aptly named Workday Support Team, headed up by Sue Clements. 

The team consists of a wide variety of experts who have both a breadth and depth of experience from working in different areas of UVAFinance as well as working with Workday at other organizations.  Their priorities include troubleshooting Workday Finance, adjusting the configuration and business processes to resolve issues, as well as reviewing and assisting with business process failures.

The team also functions as the highest level of support for the cases that come in through Ask Finance.  They're where the really thorny questions related to system configuration end up -- the ones that can't be addressed by functional expertise, but instead, need someone who can take a metaphorical "look under the hood."  The Workday Support Team has solved over 1300 such cases since go-live on July 1, 2022. 

The team will continue to work behind the scenes to work out the issues with Workday Finance, but they will also be looking toward the future, working on implementing new functionality to improve the system and adjusting the current configuration to address user needs as they develop.

Needs are escalated to the Workday Finance Support Team through askfinance@virginia.edu

Recent Expense Updates

These expense updates were previously shared with your Expense Ambassador, so don't hesitate to reach out to them if you have questions or concerns. 

1. File Types for Attachments:  Workday supports image files such as JPG, PDF, PNG, or GIF for viewing and printing but does not support DOC, DOCX, or XLS for printing. Users should not include DOC, DOCX, or XLS files since they will not be able to print. We often need to print PDFs with receipts for grants and other audits.
2. Delegating Approvals while on Vacation/Leave:  Please help us spread the word to approvers that they must delegate their approval responsibilities when on vacation or leave. We've had numerous reports get "stuck" waiting for an approver who is away. This can cause cards to be suspended and delayed reimbursements.
3. Expense Item Update: Software Licenses & Subscriptions is now mapped to spend category SC0309 Rent Software
4. Error Message Improvements: We are working through all error messages to add context and directional information where we can. Hopefully, this will help users know where the error is that needs to be corrected. We will send more details once these updates are complete.
5. Gift Card Reporting: The gift card reporting process has changed with Workday Expenses. When expensing gift cards for employees paid using a T&E card, please use the expense item Employee Award Taxable. Enter the names of each gift card recipient and the dollar amount of the gift card. This information will be included in a feed to Payroll, resulting in the employee having a gift tax deducted from their pay. The previous process of submitting this information to AskHR@virginia.edu is no longer required. If both processes are completed, this may result in the employee being taxed twice. (Gift cards are not allowed to be personally purchased and reimbursed.)  

Read more about Gift Card Reporting on the blog.

Change to Gift Card Reporting Process

The gift card reporting process has changed with Workday Expenses. When expensing gift cards for employees paid using a T&E card, please use the expense item Employee Award Taxable. Enter the names of each gift card recipient and the dollar amount of the gift card. This information will be included in a feed to Payroll, resulting in the employee having a gift tax deducted from their pay. 

The previous process of submitting this information to AskHR@virginia.edu is no longer required. If both processes are completed, this may result in the employee being taxed twice. (Gift cards are not allowed to be personally purchased and reimbursed.)

There is one exception! Employees may opt to purchase gift cards via the Marketplace using American Gift Card. Because this method does not include documentation of the employee for whom the gift card was purchased, you will need to use the previous process and submit the information to AskHR@virginia.edu.