Coffee and Collaboration with Colleagues

Hi everyone,

Following on the heels of our recent Coffee and Donuts with Pat series, I wanted to offer another opportunity to increase collaboration and build relationships with our colleagues in other organizations. With special thanks to Ana Lynch for her work with Greenberry’s on this, I am excited to launch Coffee and Collaboration with Colleagues.

Is there an issue that needs resolution, a question that needs to be answered, or a process that can be improved, but you need the help of someone in another department to develop a response or solution? Is there a procedure that you do not understand and it would help your work to get feedback from someone else? Then this is an opportunity for you to work on a common issue or problem in a face-to-face conversation with someone from outside of Finance.

How does it work?

1. Identify your issue/question/topic and who you need to work with for resolution.
2. Invite that person (or persons) to meet over coffee to work through the question.
3. Go to see Lynne Schwar, Kelly Hochstetler, Kelly Mays, Sarah Doran, or Christina Frederick to pick up Greenberry’s gift cards.  
4. Complete a simple log, describing (in 10 words or less) the issue and who you are taking to coffee.   
5. Follow-up on the log to report on any progress made on the issue.  This is important so we can measure success of this program and whether it should continue.

Please let me know of any feedback you have on this or any other ideas that you have to increase collaboration with other groups at UVa.

Regards,
Melody

Affordable Excellence Model Significantly Lowers Student Indebtedness

The Board of Visitors adopted an innovative program of “Affordable Excellence” that significantly reduces student indebtedness for qualifying Virginia residents, affirming U.Va.’s position as one of the best values in higher education.

The new model reduces student indebtedness for both low- and middle-income Virginians and increases grant aid, while offering options for a stronger degree of predictability for families over the course of a student’s four-year career on Grounds.

For about 70 percent of Virginia households, Affordable Excellence reduces the net cost of a U.Va. education.

Click here to read the full story at UVA Today.

Not on Our Grounds: One Green Dot at a Time

The University has been working for some time to develop and implement programs aimed at ending sexual violence and interpersonal violence in our community through a series of awareness campaigns and prevention efforts. In connection with this mission, the University has partnered with the organization Green Dot etc. to bring their comprehensive violence prevention strategy to UVa.

Green Dot is built on the premise that in order to measurably reduce power-based personal violence, a cultural shift is necessary. In order to create a cultural shift, a critical mass of people will need to engage in new behaviors that will make violence less sustainable in our community. Those new behaviors are Green Dots.

The Green Dot program is officially launching on Thursday, March 26 in the Amphitheater from 1 to 4 PM. For more information on the Green Dot and other initiatives, visit http://notonourgrounds.virginia.edu.

Excel Tips & Tricks: Pivot Tables

Pivot tables are one of Excel's most powerful features. They help extract meaningful intelligence from detailed data sets. They also provide quick summaries, and help ‘slice-and-dice’ or analyze large data sets.

Pivot tables have many unexpected uses as well—limited only by your imagination. For example, you can quickly extract a list of unique values from a table to easily compare to two sets of similar data. Or you can create a formatted summary report that is linked to a data set that is regularly updated with new data. If you work with detailed tables and data, don’t miss these examples of pivot tables.

SFS at Days on the Lawn

"Days on the Lawn" are events held every spring that provide admitted undergraduates and their families the opportunity to visit Grounds and experience U.Va. firsthand. This year, there will be eight events: March 30 and April 3, 6, 8, 9, 15, 17, and 20. During each event, the students learn about the various undergraduate colleges and schools, enjoy tours of Grounds, and engage in informational panels and presentations.

Student Financial Services representatives will be on hand at the Resource Fair in Newcomb Hall from 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., then participate in the informational panel for parents from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. SFS staff will answer questions about billing, payment, financial aid, and more to help newly admitted students and parents negotiate the often new and foreign terrain of university financial life. They will also take walk-in appointments to meet with attendees one-on-one. This is an important outreach activity for SFS, as it introduces our office to our newest cohort of students and is an opportunity for us to help them get on the right path from the very start.

For a schedule of Days on the Lawn activities, click here. The SFS presentation that is given at Days on the Lawn is still being fine-tuned for publication. When it is available, you will find it here.

Important Town Hall

On Thursday, March 26, join the Managerial Reporting Project Town Hall. Leaders across grounds have valuable perspective on our projects, and will be a part of this important conversation. We want you to participate in the dialogue, and we’ll also have fun raffle prizes too. Don’t miss this exciting event!

Managerial Reporting Project Town Hall – March 26, 2015

Join the conversation and be a part of our very first Managerial Reporting Project Town Hall. Leaders across grounds have valuable perspective on our projects, and will be a part of this important conversation. We want you to participate in the dialogue, and we’ll also have fun raffle prizes too. Don’t miss this exciting event!

Compliance

University Policy FIN-023 requires departments to reconcile their financial activity at least once a month by the 15th calendar day of the month for the previous month’s activity (or by an approved alternate schedule).

Over the past year, on-time reconciliation rates have increased from 56% to 81% - up by 25 points! This is largely due to implementation of the system-generated emails designed to improve compliance. Reminders are sent to all reconcilers each month 5 days prior to the due date, as well as monthly notices to Deans and Vice Presidents when reconciliations are overdue.

Additionally, we have found that reconcilers appropriately continue to review and approve transactions after the due date passes - resulting in a less than 1% rate of reconciliations not approved.

A big thank you to all of our reconcilers who strive to ensure this important internal control is met!

Bookmark This: Tax Information

It’s tax season, and for most of us, that means W-2s and tracking down every last possible deduction.  For those of us with college-age children or who are taking classes ourselves, though, it also means tracking down 1098-T forms to file along with our federal tax returns.  The University of Virginia prints and sends a 1098-T form to students who qualify for one.  Students have the option to receive their form electronically through their SIS, instead, and we make an effort to steer them that direction to save time and money. 

The 1098-T form is the driver of hundreds of phone calls and emails to the SFS Contact Center during tax season, and while we can help customers understand why they may not have qualified to receive a form for the prior tax year, we stop short of providing them tax advice on how to account for their education-related expenses, referring them instead to IRS publications or a qualified tax preparer.  To help the majority of people who have questions about the forms, however, we have prepared a section of the SFS website to address the most common questions about 1098-T forms and other tax information topics.  We invite you to take a look for yourself, especially if you will be claiming any education tax credits yourself for 2014.

Excel Tips & Tricks: Ctrl and Alt-Enter

A recent edition of Excel Tips & Tricks showed how to combine Ctrl and Alt to navigation keys like the arrows or PgUp/PgDown to quickly move around a workbook or worksheet.

Now take a look at using Ctrl and Alt with the Enter key to accomplish a few quick tasks.  Alt-Enter creates a line break in a cell to make text or formulas easier to read. Ctrl-Enter lets you quickly enter the same data or formula into multiple cells at once instead of using Copy/Paste. Check out the examples, and there is a bonus tip that may help you speed up the keying of formulas.

All Tips and Tricks are archived on the blog.  We are also working with UHR to create a training class to bring all these topics together in a more structured class format – more information to come soon.

Barbara Deily's Retirement from U.Va. on January 11, 2015

On January 11, exactly thirty-two years and one day after she started her career at U.Va., Barbara Deily retired from the University of Virginia.  In honor of her long career of service to the University and the Commonwealth, we have reproduced below comments that Pat Hogan shared with University deans and other administrators, as well as with Barbara’s team in Carruthers Hall, back in November; the transcript of a Board of Visitors Commending Resolution from the November 2014 BOV meeting; and finally some comments from Barbara herself.  It seems fair, after all, that she should have the final word.

We will miss very much having Barbara as our colleague, benefitting from her profound perception, her command of the bigger picture and the smallest detail both, her unfailing kindness and commitment to her friends and co-workers, and the exemplary integrity with which she goes about whatever she does.  We are grateful for her work and for her collegiality, and we wish her health and happiness in whatever lies ahead.

Excel Tips & Tricks: ‘COUNT’ Functions and ‘SUM’ vs ‘SUBTOTAL’

Here are two Excel tips—one was raised by a team member in Managerial Reporting and thought that it was worth sharing; the other is common in Excel files where an alternative approach can make a file easier to understand and maintain.

1. The first topic involves a spreadsheet used to track meeting frequency and attendance, and which of the various COUNT functions is appropriate for the task.
2. The second topic is about the SUM and SUBTOTAL functions and when each is the most
appropriate.

All Tips and Tricks are archived on the blog.  We are also working with UHR to create a training class to bring all these topics together in a more structured class format – more information to come soon.

Orange Team Success: Cost Transfer Automation

Cavalier Computers is excited about the recent cost transfer automation that will significantly improve turnaround time and data quality in their operation—as they deliver critical technology and physical assets to the University community. The Managerial Reporting Project team, the Cost Transfer team and the wider Orange Team stakeholders are excited about this recent accomplishment and what it may mean for other departments around the University.

MRP: Recent Trainings

In January, the MRP team delivered three small group training sessions on the fundamentals of the University Financial Model and demonstrations of the UFM Reporting tools. These sessions were similar to this fall’s first two waves of trainings, and included 15 participants (who currently don’t have access to the reporting tools) from both schools and central services units. Find out more about the current Managerial Reporting Project training opportunities.

SFS: Financial Aid Application Deadline March 1

The thermometer screams “February”, but in Student Financial Services, we already have springtime on our minds.  The deadline to apply for need-based financial aid is March 1, just around the corner, and we are busy contacting students, parents, and high school guidance counselors to do all we can to ensure no one misses out on State and University funding sources.  Students need to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and either the CSS/Profile (for entering and transfer students) or the University Financial Aid Application (UFAA, for all returning students).

After the application deadline, we begin to review application materials, request additional information when necessary, assign awards to students and then notify them by email that their award is available to view in their SIS Student Center.  For first-year undergraduates, we have a very tight turnaround, as regular decision applicants learn of their admission decision right around April 1.  Since they have until May 1 to decide whether to attend U.Va., we work long, hard and smartly to get their awards to them so they have all the financial information they possibly can to make an informed decision about where to attend University.

After the middle of May, when we have also completed the same process for fall transfers, we turn our attention to the returning undergraduate and graduate students, all with an eye to having their awards complete by the time the Fall 2015 statement of term charges comes out in mid-July.  Whew!  It sounds like a lot of time to get things done, but when you factor in the individual counseling sessions with parents and students who want to understand the details behind their awards, as well as other regular activities, our financial aid team is tying up their track shoes for a marathon effort.