FMO Newsletter-February 2024

February 7, 2024 Uncategorized

This issue of the Financial Management Office Newsletter includes information about the following:

The Financial Management Office Newsletter is distributed monthly.  Should you have any questions about this newsletter, contact Amy Kunz via email: amykunz@hawaii.edu.

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ISAT Check at UH Login

Target Audience: All

The Information Security Awareness Training (“ISAT”) is a mandatory annual requirement for UH and RCUH employees under the Gramm Leach Bliley Act (“GLBA”) and UH Administrative Procedure 2.215. GLBA is a federal regulation that requires recurring employee security awareness training.

Effective April 1, 2024, you will need to have a current ISAT to log onto KFS. This means your most recent ISAT completion date must be less than a year old. If your ISAT date is over a year old, or you have never taken the training, then you will not be granted access. You will be redirected to a webpage with instructions on where to take the training.

Upon completion of the ISAT, your results will be reflected in ACER the next day. For urgent situations where you have an impending deadline and cannot access the system, ACER contains a link that updates your ISAT results immediately after you have successfully completed the training, allowing you access to KFS.

Four other UH enterprise-wide information systems will have the same login validation requirements as of April 1st: Banner, STAR, PeopleSoft, and myGRANT. In addition to this newsletter article, UH announcements will be sent to the UH community to inform everyone of this upcoming change.

The FAQ page will be updated shortly to reflect this change. For questions or issues, contact the ITS Help Desk from April 1st.

For questions about this article, contact Sandra Furuto, yano@hawaii.edu.

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Clarification on the OVPIT Approval for IT Procurement process in EP 8.200, section III.B.f(1)(b)

Target Audience: All

UH is reverting back to the original 2020 language and offering some clarifying points. The main idea, which was lost with the most recent fall 2023 revision, continues to be that UH System Information Technology Services (“ITS”) requires advance notification of work that will require ITS resources to connect hardware and software with UH’s institutional data systems. In the past, programs have made commitments without ITS consultation, resulting in less than ideal implementations. While the policy revision is being finalized, please follow the intent described in this paragraph to process requests.

PROPOSED REVISION, FEB 2024

“Electronic equipment or hardware or software that will be connected to, and is required to interact or integrate with the University’s institutional data systems and requires UH System Information Technology Services to assist with implementation and/or provide ongoing support for the interaction or integration, regardless of the dollar value. Examples include, but are not limited to, purchases of firewall and related services, Virtual Private Network (“VPN”) appliances, and software or services that require integration with Banner or STAR.

Should any purchase involve the use or exchange of data from the University’s institutional data systems, the Data Governance Process (“DGP”) takes the place of this OVPIT Approval for IT Procurement process.”

For questions, please contact Sandra Furuto, yano@hawaii.edu.

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Adding Missing Asset Serial Numbers in KFS

Target Audience: Fiscal Administrators and CAM Processors

Capital Asset Accounting Office (CAAO) distributes the tags for newly-created asset records to the Fiscal Administrators on a weekly basis.  Asset record(s) with missing serial number(s) is/are highlighted on the CAM Acquisition Report by Fiscal Officer. See below:

Add serial number

Asset records should be completed in compliance with Federal (2 CFR 200), State (Hawaii Administrative Rules 3-130-5) and UH (AP 8.509, Property and Equipment Overview and AP 8.521, Property and Equipment Acquisition) property management standards. 

Prior to e-mailing the certified CAM report to CAAO, please follow the steps below to add the serial number(s) by submitting an Asset Edit e-Doc:

  1. In KFS, go to Main Menu > Lookup and Maintenance > Capital Asset Management > Asset
  2. Key in the tag number or asset number in the Tag Number or Asset Number field and click on Search button or press Enter.
  3. Click on edit under Actions on the bottom of the screen.
  4. Click in the Description field on the Document Overview tab.  The description should include the 3-digit FO Code followed by a short description of the document including the asset number.
    For example:  098 Edit Capital Asset NNNN
  5. Click in the Explanation field and enter “Add serial number”.
  6. In the New section of the Asset Detail Information tab, input the serial number in the Serial Number field.  If no serial number exists, input “No Serial #”.
  7. Click the Submit button at the bottom of the screen. 
  8. You have successfully added the serial number.

For any questions, please email the Capital Asset Accounting Office at caao@hawaii.edu.  Or, you can refer to our Training Manual.

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Salary Overpayment Reminders

Target Audience: Fiscal Administrators and Fiscal Support Staff

Salary overpayment has been on the rise in recent months. As a reminder, all leave earned and taken must be recorded in a timely manner in accordance with applicable bargaining unit contracts to minimize and prevent salary overpayments. In addition, all separations from service must be handled timely to avoid salary overpayment. 

Supervisors are responsible to monitor paid leave balances of subordinate employees to ensure that a salary overpayment does not occur for any employee whose cumulative paid leave balances fall below ten (10) working days of vacation and ten (10) working days of sick (or 160 hours).

Department personnel should individually monitor and track employees’ paid leave balances to ensure that a salary overpayment does not occur.  Timely reporting of any salary overpayment situation to the Payroll Office may avoid potential overpayments.

For questions regarding salary overpayments, please contact the UH Payroll Office at payroll@hawaii.edu.

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eTravel Tip – How to Add Someone as a Preparer

Target Audience: Fiscal Administrators and Fiscal Support Staff, Travelers

If you prepare documents for others, or if you are a traveler and would like someone to prepare travels for you, the traveler must grant the preparer(s) access. Being a Preparer means you have access to personal information for the traveler, frequent flyer accounts, when travelers will be out of town, so the traveler must grant you access to your information. 

To add someone as a preparer, the traveler must do the following:

  • Login to Profiler
  • Click ‘My Position Profile’ on the Main Menu
  • Click the ‘My Preparers’ tab
  • Select the application to create a Preparer section for, such as eTravel and click the Add button
  • Enter the UH Username of your Preparer(s)
  • Click the Update button at the bottom of the page

Once this is done, the preparer will see the traveler(s) name in the Traveler’s list on page 1 of the travel request and will have access to prepare future travel requests and completions on behalf of the traveler and completions until this is rescinded.

For questions, please email etravel-help@lists.hawaii.edu.

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Determining Postdoctoral Fellow, Postdoctoral Scholar or Postdoctoral Associate in AP 8.565

Target Audience: Fiscal Administrators and Staff

There have been many inquiries about the classification of postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral scholar and postdoctoral associate as written in AP 8.565.

While we acknowledge that AP 8.565 defers to the “responsible person at UH” to make the determination, this will still be reviewed as part of the payment approval process.  The majority of postdoctoral payments will fall into the scholar or associate category.  To determine if a payee is postdoctoral fellow or postdoctoral scholar/associate, the primary deciding factor is the source of funding.  If the postdoc is not bringing their own funding as described in the EP 12.227 and is not an employee (scholar), then the payees are postdoctoral associates and they should be coded as such.

Additionally, as specified in AP 8.565, postdoctoral fellows are not doing work on behalf of the University.  Whereas, in contrast, postdoctoral scholars and associates are doing work on behalf of the University.

For additional information on processing payments for Fellows and Associates, please go to https://www.hawaii.edu/fmo/payment-reimbursement/faqs-disbursing/#postdoc.

Should you have any questions on this topic, please contact Kenneth Lum at kenlum@hawaii.edu.

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