Enhanced oversight and better management of research funding was one of the primary goals of the implementation of SAP’s Grants Management (GM) module, which launched on July 1, 2014. To better manage their research projects, principal investigators and department administrators need the ability to review their revenues and expenditures on demand instead of waiting on their monthly budget statements to be generated at the end of every month.
To address this need, the GM project team developed a report within myOleMiss Analytics that is available to the research community. This report, the “Grant Summary for Department,” provides researchers and administrators with a summary of the activity for the grants and sponsored programs for which they participate. It is totaled by grant, sponsored program, and sponsored class (e.g. – Salaries, Fringe Benefits, Travel, Commodities, etc.).
However, as researchers and department administrators started using the report, they requested additional details about the amounts listed in the report. Specifically, information such as the individual documents and their amounts would be of great use to them as they review and reconcile their accounts. Based on this feedback, drill-down capabilities were added to the report to allow researchers the ability to view the individual documents that make up the total amounts for their current budget, commitments and expenses.
To view the details for an individual line item in the report, click on the desired line and then choose the appropriate button for the column.
This will expand the selection so that the details for the particular category (expense, commitment, or budget) can be reviewed.
The end result is a more robust reporting tool for the research community to use.
But, this was only the beginning…
“For several years, we have wanted to retire the budget statements that are emailed to departments every month,” notes Nina Jones, Interim Controller. “With SAP being a real-time, integrated system, the amounts on those reports were stale by the time they were produced at the end of each month. However, before we could fully retire them, we had to provide a way within myOleMiss for departments to get detailed payroll expenditures.”
To meet this requirement, a new “Payroll Details Report” has recently been added in Analytics that was modeled after the familiar ZPAY_REPORTS transaction within SAP that has been in use for several years. This report allows for the review of payroll expenditures for an entire fiscal year, a single posting period, or a single employee.
These two new Analytics reports, along with the Budget Control System reports that are currently available in Analytics, allow all UM departments to have financial reporting tools available for their use as needed. Like all myOleMiss Analytics reports, these are updated nightly and provide near real-time financial information that is more current than what was provided through the legacy budget statements.
As a result of the launch of these two reports, monthly budget statements are no longer being distributed via email.
These and all Analytics reports are located within myOleMiss. From the Employee tab, click the Analytics link, which will open the Analytics Workbench.
- Reports for non-GM accounts (Funds 10, 25, 30, 60, 70 & Auxiliary Units) can be viewed using the two Budget Control System reports located under the Budget Control System tab.
- Reports for GM accounts (Accounts beginning with 35, 36 or 38) can be viewed using the GM Departmental Report located under the GM Departmental tab.
- The Payroll Details Report is available on both the Budget Control System tab and the GM Departmental tab.
For access to Analytics, please contact the IT Helpdesk at 662-915-5222 or helpdesk@olemiss.edu. If you have access to Analytics, but not to the GM Departmental tab, please send an email indicating your personnel number and which account you are needing access to accounting@olemiss.edu.
Any additional questions should be sent to accounting@olemiss.edu.
Tags: GM, Grant Summary, Grants Management, Report