University of California Larry L. Sautter Award Submission for Innovation in Information Technology

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1 University of California Larry L. Sautter Award Submission for Innovation in Information Technology Project Name Enterprise Reporting System (ERS) Project Institution University of California, Riverside Project Team Members Ra'ad Bahhour - Programmer Amber Jones - Support Specialist (user requirements, testing, etc.) David Gracey - Director Project Abstract The Enterprise Reporting System (ERS) is a Microsoft Excel-based application that generates extremely sophisticated reports from data stored in the UCR Financial System and Payroll Personnel System data warehouses. Prior to the creation of the ERS, end users had to run manual queries and transfer the results to Excel for processing and manipulation. By automatically producing formatted summary and detail reports (with totals presented as formulas), the ERS has allowed analysts to spend the majority of their time analyzing the reports and engaging in financial planning, rather than performing database queries, transferring data, writing formulas, and formatting information.

2 Project Description In the early 1990s, data warehouses for the UCR Financial System and Payroll Personnel System were introduced to the Riverside campus. Since that time, it has been a typical practice for end users to run queries against the data warehouses and transfer the results to Microsoft Excel for further processing and manipulation. The user continues with the next set of queries, switching between Excel and the data warehouses until the queries have been completed. To facilitate the generation of such reports, UCR has developed a reporting system that operates completely within the de-facto standard environment of Microsoft Excel. After querying the databases and retrieving all of the desired data, the Enterprise Reporting System (ERS) automatically produces formatted summary and detail reports with the following benefits: resulting information is presented as Excel spreadsheets totals are presented as formulas, as opposed to static numbers reports may, at user discretion, consist of multiple Excel worksheets (summary, detail, etc.) spreadsheets can be customized or further manipulated after processing is complete The power of the ERS lies in its ability to queue up thousands of database queries and fully automate the report generation process. Prior to implementing the ERS, campus financial analysts performed database queries one by one, transferred the data to Excel, authored complex formulas, and formatted the information themselves. Now those analysts are able to spend the majority of their time analyzing financial reports and engaging in financial planning. The ERS is deployed to over 70 administrative users across campus. In turn, the information produced by the ERS is provided to the nearly 150 faculty members who are responsible for UCR s 1,965 distinct contracts and grants. The system is widely used within the Vice Chancellor of Administration s unit for analysis of fee-for-service organizations. ERS-generated output also summarizes information across funding sources, which is useful when preparing reports for Principal Investigators with multiple funding sources or to see the status of a department s operations across funds. In order for a system of this nature to succeed, it is imperative to maintain a close relationship with the user community. In 2002 the ERS Users Group was formed. The purpose of the users group is to meet with the end users each quarter and listen to their experiences in using the system, their requested enhancements and improvement suggestions.

3 When ERS is launched, Microsoft Excel is activated on the user s computer and a reporting definition worksheet is displayed: The reporting definition allows the user to define one or more enterprises upon which the system will report. To define an enterprise, the user specifies the particular Full Accounting Unit (FAU) elements of interest, chooses a report output name and a report output type, of which several are available: 1) Expense Overview (EO): This report contains information on expense accounts only for the FAU specified. It allows for a comparison of appropriations and expenditures across specified funds. This report is best used with funds where the income is centrally controlled and budgetary allocations are the authority to expend (i.e campus-wide funds, contracts and grants, and gift funds). This is a good format to provide information to a Principal Investigator (PI) on his/her sponsored project activity and is often referred to as a PI Statement. Recommended for use with funds that are not shared within a department and fund ranges , , To include overhead on contract and grant funds, select function code 80 (this selection will appear as a separate column on the summary output). 2) Operating Statement (OS): This report contains information on revenue and expense accounts for the FAUs specified. It is a basic Profit & Loss (P&L) statement with a focus on the current fiscal year. This report will be beneficial for departments that are responsible for generating income to support their expenditures, such as Sale & Service and Auxiliary operations. Note: The report is most meaningful when budgets are zeroed-out to BC75 at year-end to accurately reflect prior year carry forward/deficits. Recommended for most funds within the range Limit selections to expense FAU combinations as the revenue activity is automatically included. 3) Operating Statement including Fund Equity (OE): This report contains information on revenue and expenses for the FAUs specified and the associated fund equity transactions. On the summary output, the fund equity total will only appear in the first FAU combination, as the fund equity value is for the entire fund and is not separated by activity code. It is a form of a Profit & Loss (P&L) statement, but the focus is on overall performance over the life of the operation. This report will be

4 beneficial for departments that have activity flowing through the unexpended balance account (e.g. depreciation, debt payments, transfers to plant), such as Sale & Service and Auxiliary operations with Reserve and Renewal & Replacement funds. The report is most useful when the funds are limited to one activity and purpose. Note: It is important to zero-out budgets to BC75 at year-end to accurately reflect prior year carryforward/deficits. Recommended for fund ranges Limit selections to expense FAU combinations as the revenue activity is automatically included. 4) VCA Budget Reporting: This report produces a type of Profit & Loss (P&L) statement for self-supporting organizations within the Vice Chancellor of Administration (VCA). The VCA report type includes additional forecasting capabilities for comparing actual expenses to appropriations within a given budget year. This report can be generated in General format, which includes a Sources of Funds summary, or in Revenue format, which presents an Accumulated Earnings recap. Additionally, the user can instruct the ERS to: Include salary projections Include pending funding augmentations Include pending expenditures Allocate funds by cost center within a given funding source Allow for budgeting by cost center. Run in stand-alone mode Run completely integrated with the Expenditure Only (EO) report Produce a Management Report, including an overview of allocations by cost center, expenditures, and balances With the reporting definitions completed, the user is prompted for username and password. Upon authorization, the user is prompted for run-time parameters, such as fiscal year, accounting period, whether salary and non-salary projections should be produced, and other preferences. The user clicks Run and the ERS system performs all of the necessary queries against the UCR data warehouses to generate reports per user settings. Upon completion, various financial reports are readied for viewing and further manipulation.

5 Summary Worksheet Example Output:

6 Detail Worksheet Example Output (page 1):

7 Detail Worksheet Example Output (page 2):

8 Objective Customer Satisfaction Data The traditional method of generating reports was tedious and time-consuming, with an inherent potential for errors. With the introduction of the ERS, users were empowered to produce their reports much quicker and with increased accuracy. Over the years, many users have expressed their sincere gratitude for the ERS. Below are excerpts from actual messages: From: Deborah Terao Subject: ERS testing Amber: I love this new report- it is very user-friendly and fairly quick, especially compared to what I am doing now (it would take me two weeks from the date the ledgers close to generate this type of report for my faculty) From: Cindy Williams <cindy.williams@ucr.edu> Subject: VCA Budget Reporting David, Thank you so much for the VCA Budget Reporting System. You did a terrific job! As you could tell everyone was very impressed by what this system will do and after the meeting many of the managers said that they thought this was a wonderful tool for them and their budget assistants. Mike Webster even made the comment that it was 'awesome'. Thanks again! From: "Millie Garrison" <millie.garrison@ucr.edu> Subject: Entomology's New Enterprise Reports Dear Entomology Faculty, I am happy to report (distribution of) the new financial system "Enterprise Reports", from Chuck Rowley and his competent staff at Computing and Communications. These new reports replace the manually prepared summary reports and "Financial Transaction Detail" reports that we formerly printed directly from PeopleSoft. In my opinion, the most important enhancement in the Enterprise Reports is the new personnel detail. For the first time you are able to see whom you are paying BY NAME, and how much your benefit costs are BY NAME. Another feature that is available with these Enterprise Reports is payroll forecasting. For the first time, making changes and creating "what-if" scenarios appears to be relatively simple. Many thanks.