The BPRs available for viewing in “View GW Monthly Financial Reports” were produced at historical points in time and may or may not include all data for the period that they represent. They are basically a “point in time” report of data recorded through the time of their being run.
If you are looking at a report for last fiscal year after communication has been sent that the closing period has ended and the University’s financial statements have been prepared, you can rest assured that the data is complete. Otherwise, the data on the reports in “View GW Monthly Financial Reports” are complete as of the date that they were run, but since data is sometimes posted to prior periods, the total recorded activity for a prior period may change. Changes to prior periods may be recorded for adjustment purposes or to allow comparative reporting that reflects not only what was recorded through those points in time but also to make comparative reports properly reflect the University’s activity for those periods of time. Since the Enterprise Accounting System (EAS) can account for prior period adjustments and update beginning balances appropriately, until financial reports are submitted to the Board of Trustees, prior period adjustments may be recorded. Occasionally, adjustments are recorded if the adjustment does not change the financial statements. A prior period adjustment of this nature may change a BPR without changing a financial statement.
Therefore, to obtain a BPR report that includes all up-to-date adjustments, it is recommended to run the BPR through the run Standard Request option. This version re-reads the system and builds the report when you run it.
Also, the Standard Request version of the BPR allows the user to run a range of reports at one time instead of having to view each one independently. For example, a school can run all of their department’s BPRs at one time. Or, a department can run all of their C-fund and R-fund BPRs at one time.
A user with a GL Entry responsibility can record a journal for a deposit at the Cashier’s Office or record a journal for business activity for which they are authorized to journalize. The GL Inquiry responsibility cannot. Otherwise, the GL Entry and GL Inquiry responsibilities have access to the same reports and inquiry forms.
All budget journals and other journals are routed to a departmental approver before further approval routing. Once the supervisor approves the journal, journals with a balance type of “Actuals” are forwarded to the Office of the University Controller for approval. Journals with a balance type of “Budget” (aka Budget Change Requests) are forwarded to the University Budget Office for approval.
Contact IT to request that your journal be forwarded to someone other than your designated approver.
If you know that your supervisor or approver will be out of the office for an extended period of leave, contact IT to request a temporary change in your designated approver.
Your approver has 5 calendar days during which to act upon your journal. After 5 days, all journals are automatically rejected back to the journal creator. You will need to resubmit your journal for approval once your approver is available to act upon it. Once the approver(s) is available to approve your journal, resubmit the journal by clicking the Approve button.
The portion of the name of a responsibility following either GW GL Entry or GW GL Inquiry aid in identifying the data restrictions associated with that responsibility. For example, if the string of characters begins with “O-”, then the data restrictions are based on Organization values. If “A-”, then Account based, “E-”, then Entity based, “F-”, then Funding Source based, or if “L-”, then Location based.
Responsibilities that begin with “GW IP” give you access to the Interdepartmental Procurement (IP) form. The IP form is used to request goods and services from certain Interdepartmental Procurement Service Providers. See the above FAQ for information on the “O-” portion of the responsibility name.
In the IP form, make sure the cursor is on the charge account field, click on the “?” button on the Toolbar. A listing of the IP service providers and the allowable accounts by service provider will appear. Only these accounts are allowable for use with the designated IP service providers.
This message is displayed when there is, in fact, no data matching your search criteria. It is also displayed when your data restrictions do not allow you to retrieve the data requested.
If you are not aware of your data restrictions, contact the IT Support at 202-994-4948, option 1, and identify your need. Alternately, you can send an email to [email protected]. The Help Desk personnel will log your request and notify Financial Systems Security to assist you. Financial Systems Security will run the report GWU User Responsibility Report [SA-034] for you and send you the results. Copies will be provided to your department head and, if you are an academic user, to your “security approver.” Alternately, this data is provided periodically to the “security approver” for your school and you can contact him or her for this information.
Contact the IT Support at 202-994-4948, option 1, and identify your need. Alternately, you can send an email to [email protected]. The Help Desk personnel will log your request and notify Financial Systems Security to assist you.
View the “Inquire on Account Balances” training materials that provide instructions and examples for the best use of the form. Instructions will include:
Find all “ACTUAL” USD transactions posted to a cost center for this fiscal year;
Find where a known amount paid by credit card is deposited to an unknown AFF
Find all journals posted to accounts = 44xxxx (gifts) for this fiscal year that did not feed from Development, Banner Student Accounts, or Banner Payroll (potential deposit or other data that may not be known by Advancement);
Find where a known account balance originated and the transactions causing the balance;
Show the effects of encumbrances across fiscal years and view detail encumbrance journals. (NOTE: GL BPRs do not show detail encumbrance journals. Detail BPRs net all encumbrance journals into a one line summary journal and only show the net change in encumbrance balances between the beginning encumbrance balance for an Accounting Period and the ending encumbrance balance for an Accounting Period.)
Summary Accounts enable users to group data for inquiry purposes and can be used with the two main GL inquiry forms that retrieve data based on ranges of Accounting Flexfields.
The structure of Summary Accounts is the same as an Accounting Flexfield (Entity.Account.Organization.Funding Source.NAC.Functions.Locations.Activity.Future Use).
Summary Accounts recognize data when transactions are posted. This is important to understand in relation to the Inquire on Funds Available form because, for this form only, the detail Accounting Flexfields for a range that make up a Summary Account will not sum to the total showing on the Summary Account if a detail Accounting Flexfield has unposted transactions.
Summary Accounts enable online summary inquiries, including inquiry on details accounts that compose the summary account.
A segment of a Summary Account can be composed of one of the following three choices:
D = detail value
T = total of all child values for this segment
Rollup Group = a grouping of parents and/or detail values
Currently Defined Summary Accounts:
Template Name Template
10000-Assets Rollup D.10000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
11000-Cash Accts Rollup D.11000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
12000-Cash Equival Rollup D.12000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
13000-Acct Rec Rollup D.13000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
14000-Investments Rollup D.14000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
15000-Work Cap Adv Rollup D.15000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
16000-Inv and Prepaid Rollup D.16000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
17000-Loans Rec Rollup D.17000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
18000-Dep w Trustees Rollup D.18000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
19000-Fixed Assets Rollup D.19000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
20000-Liabilities Rollup D.20000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
21000-AP and Accr Exp Rollup D.21000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
23000-Prov for Settlement D.23000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
24000-Def Inc and Dep D.24000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
25000-Work Capital Liab Rollup D.25000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
27000-Reserves Rollup D.27000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
28000-LT Debt Rollup D.28000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
30000-Net Asset Bal Rollup D.30000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
31000-Fund Bal Rollup D.31000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
32000-Endow FB Rollup D.32000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
33000-Net Assets Rollup D.33000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
39000-Suspense Rollup D.39000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
40000-Revenue Rollup D.40000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
41000-Tuition and Fee Rev Rollup D.41000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
42000-Patient Ser Rollup D.42000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
43000-Cont and Grant Rev Rollup D.43000.T.T.T.T.T.T.T
View the training materials on using the Inquire on GL Accounts form that includes examples using Summary Accounts (see examples 1, 2, 3 5).
Summary Accounts cannot be used in journals or used in the Purchasing, Payables, and Grants systems. They are currently not used in any standard reports. They can be used in Financial Statement Generator reports (but are not currently used in any).
The Funds Available Inquiry form combines information from the Account Balances table and the BC Packets Table (a table used to track reserved funds until the transactions for these funds are posted to the Account Balances table).
The Inquire on Journal Entries form is best used when retrieving data for specific journals or data based on information stored at the journal batch or header level. This includes the following:
When the journals were created
When they were posted
To what periods they were posted,
Types of journals (actual, budget, or encumbrance)
Sources of journals
Categories of journals
Status of journals (Posting status, approval status, reversal status)
Financial Statement Generator reports (FSGs), are spreadsheet reports that read the GL’s “balances table” and report the data in a spreadsheet format of rows and columns.
Data in the general ledger can only be included in a single column per FSG row, but columns can be calculated from data in other columns. If data is defined to be included in multiple columns for an FSG row, the Accounting Flexfield indicator for that row will be blanked-out to indicate that the report contains an error.
Data to be included in a row can be retrieved using parent values for a segment of the Accounting Flexfield if the same parent value is provided as the low value and the high value for that segment. If a different value is provided as the low value and the high value, then only the child values in that range are included. An FSG row can be defined with multiple ranges of data.
FSGs can retrieve data based on Reporting Attribute values for a segment. Reporting Attribute values for a segment of the Accounting Flexfield can be viewed on the View Segment Values form. This form is only available to core administrative office users.
You can run an FSG through the Report Manager option if it is listed under your GW GL Entry or Inquiry responsibility. However, because FSGs are not protected against deletions and modifications by other users, only core office users are allowed to create FSGs. Processes have also been developed and given to the Office of the University Controller to allow them to copy FSGs into a protected area and to retrieve FSGs from that protected area and overlay them over “erroneously changed” FSGs that are in Production.
Departmental users whose business need is best met by an FSG have their FSGs developed for them. Once built and identified for them, the user can run the FSG using a pre-written “Content Set,” which filters the data to be included on the report, or use “Segment Overrides” to filter the data to be included on the report. The difference between “Content Sets” and “Segment Overrides” is that “Content Sets” must be pre-built for users and may contain multiple filters for the same segment of the Accounting Flexfield. “Segment Overrides” on the other hand are ad hoc and added when the report is run, but you can only choose one segment value (parent or child) as the “Segment Override”. You can choose a “Segment Override” for as many segments of the Accounting Flexfield as you need.
FSGs are best run using Report Manager (formerly ADI). With Report Manager, users can publish the output report, that is, bring the output report into Excel. Also, with Report Manager, users can drill down to the transactions composing the summarized amount on the report. Without Report Manager, users cannot view the detailed transactions making up the summarized report amount. However, if the transactions are composed from transactions on detail segment values, these detail transactions can be retrieved by the report, GWU Account Detail Report - CSV (Secured Version) [GL-329].
Instructions on running FSGs is available on the Training page.
You do NOT need Report Manager to run FSGs. However, Report Manager enables drilldown to journals composing summarized amounts on FSGs and enables publishing to Excel. If additional assistance is needed you can send an email to [email protected]. The Help Desk personnel (202-994-4948, option 1) will log your request and notify FSS.
FSGs are protected by only allowing core office users to create FSGs.
Departmental users whose business need is best met by an FSG have their FSGs developed for them. Once built and identified for them, the user can run the FSG using a pre-written “Content Set,” which filters the data to be included on the report, or use “Segment Overrides” to filter the data to be included on the report. The difference between “Content Sets” and “Segment Overrides” is that “Content Set” must be pre-built for users and may contain multiple filters for the same segment of the Accounting Flexfield. “Segment Overrides” on the other hand are ad hoc and added when the report is run, but you can only choose one segment value (parent or child) as the “Segment Override”. You can choose a “Segment Override” for as many segments of the Accounting Flexfield as you need.
FSGs recognize the data security restrictions associated with the responsibility under which the FSG is run. Therefore, users can only retrieve data that they are authorized to view.
If you run an FSG via ADI, ADI will require you to choose a responsibility under which to run the FSG and, therefore, the data security restrictions for that responsibility will filter the data that can be retrieved.
For assistance with running FSGs within EAS you can send an email to [email protected] or call 202-994-4948, option 1. The Help Desk personnel will log your request and notify FSS.
ADI is a spreadsheet-based extension of Oracle Applications. It provides access to GL balances table data within the comfort and familiarity of a spreadsheet. By combining the ease of use of a spreadsheet with the power of Oracle General Ledger, ADI provides true desktop integration. With the Journal Wizard, you can design and automatically generate journal entry worksheets, which utilize popular spreadsheet data entry techniques. Enter journal entries directly in a spreadsheet so that spreadsheet data entry shortcuts can be taken advantage of, such as copying and pasting, dragging and dropping ranges of cells, or even using formulas to calculate journal line amounts. ADI validates your data against the accounts and reference information you defined in the GL. It also enforces segment security and cross validation rules. You can then automatically upload your journals. Before uploading, however, you can save and distribute your journal worksheets for approval.
In addition to building and uploading GL journals, you can run FSG reports through ADI Report Manger and drill down to the detail transactions supporting FSG line summary totals.
