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December 2012

Dear Colleagues,

 

You are receiving this message because you are part of the lsafinstaff@umich.edu group. This email list is used by the LSA Budget & Finance team to provide you with financial related news and updates, which we feel will be useful to all units.

Cell Phone and Portable Electronics SPG and LSA Policies (NEW)

The UM Standard Practice Guide (SPG) on Tech Tools: Cell Phones and Portable Electronic SPG Resources (514.04) was issued in May 2012. The LSA Implementation Guidelines for new SPG was distributed to department leadership on December 7, 2012, for implementation on January 1, 2013. Please click to find the SPG 514.04 and LSA Guidelines.

LSA Extended Travel Policy (NEW)

This policy governs reimbursement for University travel lasting more than three weeks, and applies to graduate students, faculty, and staff who travel using LSA‐managed accounts, regardless of the source of the funds (with the exception of sponsored funds where the sponsor has approved the expenses).  In addition to following LSA policy, all reimbursements must adhere to the University’s Standard Practice Guide for Travel and Hosting (SPG 507.10-1). Please click to find the LSA Extended Travel Policy.

LSA Moving and Reimbursement Policy (UPDATED)

The LSA Moving Policy has been updated to make a couple clarifications in the FAQs regarding lodging while enroute during the final move and temporary lodging once the employee arrives in Ann Arbor. Please click to find the updated policy.

Procurement Updates

If you have not already subscribed and would like to receive the Procurement Services newsletter, please visit MCommunity (https://mcommunity.umich.edu), and search for the group Procurement Services News.  Simply click the Join Group button to subscribe.  Or, e-mail procurement.services@umich.edu and request that your name be added.

 

Past news from Procurement can be found at: http://www.finance.umich.edu/procurement/news-events

 

Some recent important highlights are restated below:

• - Supply purchases should be made through Internal Service Proivders, University strategic contract vendors, ePro requisition whenever possible. P-Cards should only be used if the items are not available through these other purchasing options. P-Cards should not be used for any personal purchases.

 

• - Multiple Report Submissions - A review of expense report submissions by Procurement over a 6-month period showed the University averaged 12,600 report submissions per month, resulting in \ class=msonormal style='margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal;background:white'50,000 annually in additional costs. Procurement has asked that an employee submit no more than one or two P-Card expense reports per month (e.g. two reports, if there is a large volume of transactions). While P-Card transactions should be reviewed on a weekly basis to ensure that erroneous charges are caught in a timely manner, this does not mean an expense report should be submitted weekly. Concur allows for flexibility in report creation and submission, by being able to create one expense report per month and adding transactions to it throughout the month. The Business Purpose and Department Reference fields on the expense line can be used to tie each expense to a specific trip, event, project or other tracking and reporting need, so that multiple trips/events/projects can be submitted in a single report.  Multiple Out-of-Pocket expenses and P-Card expenses can be combined in a single report by the same process.

 

• - Business purpose is required for each expense and should capture why it is a University business expense. Currently, only the first 30 characters of the business purpose and 10-character department reference are captured in the general ledger systems, so we encourage you to use those fields effectively. Perhaps one way is to not repeat information that is captured by other fields (e.g. what-airfare, lodging, etc. is captured by the expense type, who-person may be captured by the cardholder unless cardholder is purchasing on behalf of someone else). However, please feel free to continue to include additional information in the expense line comments to provide clarification when needed. For example, you might put an abbreviation for the conference name and location in the business purpose, and then use the comments to spell these out in full.

M-Reports Updates

New! eReconciliation data and annotation capability have been added to the Project/Grant reports in M-Reports.

• - If your department uses M-Pathways eReconciliation, you will now see the reconciliation status (i.e., Y/N flag, notes, last updated by and date) in the detail reports (e.g., P/G Voucher Detail).
• - You can now maintain notes for your project/grant using the new Add Note function on the PBSR or P/G Info in M-Reports. Active notes also appear on the Summary of Projects. Notes can be added or inactivated at any time. More than one note can be maintained, but only the most recent one displays on the Summary of Projects and the Project/Grant Budget Status/Activity report.

 

Please let your analyst know if you have any questions or needs related to any of these items.

Thank you for all of your efforts.

The Budget and Finance Team