Fiscal Year End 2018-2019

The General Ledger for FY18/19 closed August 1, 2019. University Departments can now run reports for FY18/19.

Monthly Closing Calendars

The July 2019 period in the general ledger has closed. When running your reports, please keep in mind that the reporting environment has a 24 hour delay in displaying data. The current and future month-end processing deadline schedules can be found at: Monthly Closing Deadlines.

Update From Office Depot Regarding Import Surcharge

As communicated by FIU’s Office Depot representative, Import Surcharge went into effect on July 26, 2019. The Import Surcharge reflects economic impact that Office Depot has incurred as a result of the governmental tariffs on items imported from China. Please note, NOT ALL ITEMS have a surcharge, only the items that are affected by the tariffs. If departments do not want to pay a surcharge, Office Depot can offer an alternative product on their site that does not have the surcharge. The majority of the products affected by the Import Surcharge will be private brand products, but again, not all will be affected. In myFIUmarket The Surcharge will be identified once the item has been placed in the cart. Office Depot has worked very hard to keep the surcharge as low as possible. Through vendor negotiations and other programs, each item has been evaluated individually so Office Depot can pass the lowest possible cost on to our customers.

Please check the Import Surcharge document for additional details. If you have further questions please contact Office Depot support team.

Supplier vs Employee

Please review the Supplier or Employee document to determine whether to pay an individual as an employee or an independent contractor (supplier) when services are being provided. If there is any question, the individual should be hired as an employee. The initial evaluation of whether to pay an individual as a supplier shall be made by Procurement Services. Complex situations may require consultation with the following areas for a final determination (Tax Compliance, Human Resources, General Counsel) and may delay the supplier registration process. All determinations are based upon the actual facts and circumstances of each case.

Supplier Portal: Suppliers should review the Supplier or Employee document to determine if the services being provided to FIU are considered as an independent contractor or employee. The factors relevant in designating the worker as an independent contractor should apply to your firm and the services being provided.

Coming Soon: Card Integrity

The Credit Card Solutions Team is happy to announce FIU’s new partnership with Card Integrity, starting in early FY20!

Card integrity provides a full service, 3rd party expense monitoring solution. Their service will analyze 100% of the University Pcard and Travel & Entertainment Card spend on a monthly basis, incorporating both algorithmic diagnostics and human review with experience in audit and review practices.

Reporting will include detailed analysis for compliance with the university policies and procedures, including prohibited/non-allowable items, potential personal purchases, double dipping (Pcard to out of pocket reimbursements), split transactions, and weekend transactions. They will also provide the university with detailed analytics on performance, patterns, and anomalies, Alert Workbooks, Procurement Workbook, Monthly Summary, Spend by Category, Alerts by Cardholder, and Spend by Cardholder. Reporting will also provide the university with detailed category and supplier reports to strengthen our strategic sourcing.

Card Integrity sets the gold standard in card spend analytics, improving compliance, oversight, and internal controls in university card programs nationwide.

New Foreign Supplier Registration, Approval & Payment Process

Effective immediately, the Office of the Controller has implemented a new process for registering, approving and paying foreign suppliers. Departments are to follow these instructions.

Blanket Purchase Order Requisition

Effective immediately, Blanket Purchase Orders (BPO) requisitions must be entered with an origin of “BPO”. Any new BPO requisitions that do not have the “BPO” origin will be canceled, and the department will have to create a new requisition using the correct origin. For specific instructions on how to correctly enter a BPO requisition, please refer to page 51 of the Purchasing through eProcurement Manual.

Avoid Duplicate Entry

Receiving Transaction E-mail Notifications

If you are receiving this notice, Accounts Payable has already received and entered the invoice in PeopleSoft. Please DO NOT send the invoice to AP when you have entered the receipt. PeopleSoft will automatically match the invoice to the receipt. If you continue to receive the notification that a receipt is pending after the receipt has been entered, please notify Liza Del Campo. Do not send the invoice to invoices@fiu.edu. This will cause a duplicate entry of the invoice.

Delivery of Invoices

Also, the PO number should be printed (not handwritten) on the face of the invoice. This will expedite the processing of the invoices. Please work with your vendors to ensure that the PO number appears on the invoice. If it does not, the PO number should be included in the body of the e-mail when sent to invoices@fiu.edu.

Airbnb No Longer Restricted

At the direction of the Governor for the State of Florida, effective June 11, 2019 state agencies may now reimburse state employees, contract employees, and vendors working on behalf of the state for expenses incurred through the services of Airbnb while on official state business. This directive follows the removal of Airbnb from the Scrutinized Companies List by the State Board of Administration. This includes FIU employees, FIU students, and non-employees whose lodging is paid in part or in whole by FIU, regardless of funding source. This information has been removed from the Travel and Other Expenses Manual.

Travel Presentation

We created a presentation to familiarize University employees with the travel provisions of Florida Statute 112.061 and the Florida International University Travel Expense Policy 1110.060. Click Here to become more familiar with the policies that govern the use of public funds entrusted to the University.

Travel

Let’s expedite approving Travel Authorizations, Cash Advances, and Expense Reports. Documents that have not been completely finalized and are older than 90 days will be cancelled or deleted by the Travel Department. A list of pending documents is located here. Information regarding report status abbreviations and how to close or cancel Travel Authorizations and/or Expense Reports can be found here.

Departmental Card Deadline

As a reminder, departmental card billing transactions regularly load the first business day of the month; program participants will have 10 days to process this activity in its entirety. This month’s billing statement (dated July 31, 2019) loaded into PantherSoft on August 1, 2019 and must be completely processed by the end of the business day on August 15, 2019.

Any charges not processed by the closing deadline will be automatically charged to the cardholder’s default accounting on file and will not be eligible for a transfer. Cardholders with three unjustified non-approvals in the same fiscal year will have their card temporarily suspended until they complete a retraining session

Credits and Statements

As a reminder, all credit memos should be processed on a timely basis. They should be sent to invoices@fiu.edu for processing. Please do not wait until you have an invoice pending to offset the credit. PeopleSoft should reflect all invoices owed to vendors and credits owed to FIU

All vendor statements should be sent to Maria Castillo

Entering Receipts in PeopleSoft

The receiving against the PO should be done as soon as the items are received or services are rendered. Please DO NOT WAIT UNTIL AN INVOICE IS RECEIVED.

The receiving date in PeopleSoft should always be the date the product was received or service rendered – not the date that the actual receiving entry is made. This is a mandatory field.

Below is an excerpt from the job aid:

The job aid can be found under the Procure to Pay header at the Controller’s Training website.

Should you have questions regarding this course, please call the Financial Systems and Support Services Help Desk at 7-7200 or email controller@fiu.edu.

If you have completed the receiving entry for an order or an invoice and continue to receive an e-mail requesting a receiving transaction, please contact Accounts Payable at 7-2161 to clear the match exception. Please do not resend the invoice to invoices@fiu.edu.