Monthly Closing Calendars

The August 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.

Unrelated Business Income Tax (Form 990-T)

Florida International University is required by Federal law to prepare an income tax return for net income from activities unrelated to the exempt mission of the University. This tax return (Form 990-T) must be filed annually with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The IRS has provided the following criteria to identify activities that are unrelated to the mission of an exempt organization. An activity is an unrelated business (and subject to unrelated business income tax “UBIT”) if it meets three requirements: (1) It is a “trade or business”; (2) It is “regularly carried on”; and (3) It is “not substantially related” to furthering FIU’s exempt purpose. Since these terms are given a specific meaning within the rules set forth by the IRS and several important exceptions exist, guidelines for these criteria are available from the Tax Compliance office for your review.

The Tax Compliance office has begun gathering the data for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2019 and cannot identify all activities that are unrelated and subject to Federal income tax from the accounting records alone. Therefore, we are asking that all Departments review their operations for the 2018-2019 fiscal-year and determine what activities, if any, are potentially unrelated business income. Please keep in mind that Florida International University must account for and report all unrelated business income pursuant to the Internal Revenue Code.

A reminder email was sent on August 12th to Department Leadership & Finance Managers with UBIT activity in prior years, with links to the UBIT questionnaire and additional UBIT information. The information will also be available on the Controller’s website.

If you have questions about unrelated business income or are conducting an activity/collecting revenue and are unsure if reporting is required, please contact tax@fiu.edu or call (305) 348-2655.

Changes in myFIUmarket

Beginning in October 2019 all myFIUmarket orders will be invoiced electronically.

What will not change:

• Vouchers will still be created in PeopleSoft.
• Receipts will still need to be created before a payment is issued.

What will change:

• Accounts Payable will be received the invoices electronically through a secure cXML file.
• Invoice copies will not be mailed or e-mailed to FIU. Invoice copies can be requested directly from the vendor if absolutely necessary.

These changes will only effect myFIUmarket orders. All orders placed outside of the marketplace will remain the same.

Delivery of Invoices

Please remember that invoices attached to requisitions are NOT forwarded to Accounts Payable. If the vendor does not send the invoice directly to Accounts Payable, the department must do so.

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

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 August 31, 2019) loaded into PantherSoft on September 4, 2019 and must be completely processed by the end of the business day on September 17, 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

Credit Memos and Vendor 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.