Newsletter 2022-2023 Volume 4
News
Monthly Closing Deadlines
The October 2022 period in the general ledger has closed. The current and future month-end processing deadline schedules are located at Monthly Closing Deadlines.
Supplier Portal
All prospective suppliers, including Honoraria, must meet one of the following criteria to register as a supplier with FIU through our Supplier Registration page prior to delivering any goods or services:
- Suppliers whose quote is approved on GovSpend.
- Suppliers who are awarded a winning bid from solicitations posted on Jaggaer.
- Suppliers with pending business with FIU that need a supplier ID for a requisition, PO, contract, or payment to be created.
Suppliers should not register on FIU’s Supplier Registration page if they do not meet the criteria above as their application will not be reviewed.
Reminder of New Supplier On-Boarding Requirements
Departments, please remember that all new Suppliers will be required to submit a description of services or products being purchased by FIU, this can be done at time of submission of the new application via the Portal or the Department can submit it to vendors@fiu.edu when it is requested by the Supplier Relationship Team. Please remember this is part of the requirements to become a Supplier for FIU. Please see The Office of the Controller Supplier portal website https://controller.fiu.edu/departments/procurement/procure/supplier-relationship/ for instructions and requirements.
GovSpend
To set up your FIU GovSpend account contact Clementina Valladares at cvallada@fiu.edu or Natalia Avella at navella@fiu.edu at StartUp FIU Procurement.
When posting a Quote on GovSpend it must be set up to post to the public by selecting “all companies selected within the categories selected” under Notify. To help ensure two quotes are received conduct a Google search for suppliers that meet the requirements and send the GovQuote URL to those suppliers, along with suppliers that you have used in the past. All you need is their email address.
GovSpend RFQ and Quotes module notifies all companies within the GovSpend system (companies who have subscribed to GovSpend) when a quote is published and that have matching product codes to their company profiles, (i.e., a quote published for landscaping, notifies landscaping companies). The Quotes team at GovSpend helps find vendors by making three attempts to call and email vendors who offer the products or services.
- They do not share the quote on any public platform outside of GovSpend.
- They do not share with other third parties like a bid board, or on social sites like LinkedIn.
- It is recommended that the publisher shares the RFQ to improve the number or quality of responses they need which assist with making the quote more publicly available.
If a vendor who is not subscribed to GovSpend is interested in responding to your quote the GovSpend Quotes support team will assist with setting up the suppliers account with them and help them provide a response to the quote.
Please see the training video to help post your quote on GovSpend. You can also schedule a support call with GovSpend at any time to learn more. Schedule a support call at GovSpend’ s support calendar link .
Pcard Purchase Alert Go-Live
In September, the credit card solutions team, in collaboration with Card Integrity, our 3rd party audit partners, implemented an email notification process to inform our cardholders of infractions and/or errors identified in their Pcard reconciliation. The purpose of these emails is to better educate card holders and improve overall compliance; providing guidance when corrective action is needed.
In the coming months, additional identification alerts will be added; the first 3 alerts implemented are:
- Identifying sales tax over $100
- Identifying sales tax under $100
- Identifying travel reconciliations with incomplete long descriptions entered.
International Travel Screening and Reporting and Foreign Influence Risk Travel
Screening and Reporting Requirements
Prior to departing abroad, all employee travelers, not their proxy, must complete, as part of the TAR workflow, a short questionnaire pertaining to foreign influence and other travel risks, as well as acknowledge their understanding of FIU foreign travel guidance. Contingent on the traveler’s responses and where the destination is a Foreign Country of Concern (FCC), which includes China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela, a compliance reviewer will promptly communicate any risk mitigation measures, if necessary, to the traveler. Once the compliance reviewer is satisfied that risks have been addressed, the TAR will follow the regular process towards approval by the supervisor. This process was already embedded in the TAR workflow since Summer 2021, and travelers have navigated it successfully.
Upon return from an international trip, all employee travelers must report any payments or honoraria made directly to the traveler or on behalf of the traveler (i.e., to cover some or all expenses) by an entity or person, including for travel, food, or lodging at any time related to the trip. Payments on the traveler’s behalf may include some or all expenses, or other complimentary items provided, that are not promotional items customarily given at conferences, such as pens, plaques, etc. Should one or more international destination(s) be an FCC, additional information will be required. It will be the proxy’s responsibility to obtain this information from the traveler and to enter it together with all other expense records in the ER. The traveler will be asked to certify the accuracy and completeness of the information by signing the ER. This post-trip process will be effective in PantherSoft as of July 1, 2022. Travelers who went abroad between January 1 and July 1, 2022, have already or will receive an email request to report this information via a Qualtrics survey.
Guidance on How to Navigate the New Processes
Detailed information on international travel, foreign influence, and compliance concerns is available on our Guidance for International Travel website.
Reminders & Deadlines
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 October 31, 2022) loaded into PantherSoft on November 2, 2022, and must be completely processed by the end of the business day, November 15, 2022.
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 expense transfer. Additionally, cardholders with three unjustified non-approvals in the same fiscal year may have their card limits temporarily suspended until they complete a retraining.
Pending Travel Reports
Please approve Travel Authorizations, Cash Advances, and Expense reports in a timely manner. Documents that have not been completely finalized and are older than 90 days will be canceled or deleted by the Travel Department. A list of pending documents is located here. For information regarding report status abbreviations and how to close or cancel Travel Authorizations and/or Expense Reports, please click here.
Name Changes to Activity Numbers
In the past name changes to activity numbers were rarely approved, however, the Controller’s Office has re-evaluated our position on name changes for activity numbers and will now approve name changes for many requests. The process remains the same, enter the desired change on an electronic Activity Number & Department Maintenance Request eForm which will be sent for approval electronically. Changes in Universal Speedtypes can only be processed the Friday through Wednesday of a payroll week to avoid issues with payroll processing.
Please be aware that you will lose the ability to lookup the activity number by name when a name is changed, and any issues caused by changing names will need to be resolved by the Finance Manager in an area. In addition, if names are changed several times, it may be difficult to track the transactions unless the Speedtype is used. Keep in mind it is possible to effective date activity numbers, so when viewing the activity number in PantherSoft online you can include history to see previous names. However, it is not possible to put this on most reports and queries, therefore, it may be difficult to track the changes.
Name changes that will not be approved include:
- A name change when two or more activity numbers are combining. For example, if an activity named “Controller Business” and another activity number named “Controller Finance” wanted to combine to “Controller Business and Finance”.
- A name change when one activity number is being split into two or more activity numbers. For example, if an activity number was previously named “Controller Business and Finance” and the desire is to separate to an activity number for “Controller Business” and another activity number for “Controller Finance”.
- In both of the examples above new activity requests should be submitted and when the new activity number is established the old activity number should be deactivated.
HR currently allows name changes for departments. The change in policy for activity numbers is an exception to the normal procedures in the Controller’s Office, name changes will not be permitted on any chartfields other than department and activity number.