Grants interactions

Section 2 - How Grants interacts with the rest of

the CUFS modules.

We're also going to cover a little bit about what funds

checking actually is.

So on this slide we have got Grants sitting here as the centre

of our universe, which for
purposes of this course is

actually the scenario.

And as you know, um, all our
awards and grants run for the

whole lifetime of the award.
When you do your reporting, it's

on the lifetime of that award, and not on on a monthly or

annual basis like we do in the general Ledger. However, Grants

obviously does have a bearing on the rest of the University, what happens in

Grants, has a bearing on what happens in the rest of the 

University, so you do have to
pay some attention to the

monthly General Ledger month

ends and also, obviously, try and keep your reporting as up to

date as possible. So Wendy will have mentioned/has talked about

the General Ledger dates and when they closed and all that in

the previous presentation.

So we're now going to be looking at how these other modules all feed

into grants. But just before we do that Wendy would have

talked about exception reports
and I keep talking about the

funds checking tool. So what is it? It is, as I said, a tool that

lives in the grants module and
it checks not only whether

you've got funds available, but
it also checks to see whether

you are meeting the terms and
conditions of your funders.

So the timing of when this tool kicks in 

depends on which module you're looking at in CUFS. So we have

got iProcurement here in this little box on the side, and

as it says, this is where all your commitments live. So whenever you

look at a grants report and you
see anything to do with

commitments, then you know that it's coming from the 

iProcurement module. And in this case, the funds checking tool is

invoked as soon as the person tries to raise that requisition.

So it checks it at its source, and if it fails, funds checking at

source, it stays in the iProcurement module, and it never touches your

grants module at all.

Likewise with Accounts Payable. This is where your Actuals come from.

Whenever you look at any Actuals in your Grants

reporting, it's coming from the
accounts payable module, and

once again you'll find checking
takes place in the accounts

payable module. When that person tries to raise an invoice, if

you haven't got sufficient funds
or you are violating one of the

terms and conditions of your funder, it will have/that

person will get an error message
at that time and they will not

be able to raise the invoice.

So they would probably come back
to you as the grants

administrator and actually ask you to sort out what's wrong

with that. OK, then on the other side, we have got Inventory

which only five departments use at Cambridge. And we've also got

the payroll data coming in here from the CHRIS Module, and we've

got our non direct costs which Wendy also talked about: Our

overheads and all the central
charges that that get posted in

by Central and Research Accounting. So these items plus

your journals that you actually

are raising, which we're going to be doing today - Sorry, not

today, but whenever you get to
that part of this course.

You will... the funds checking then takes place within the

Grants Module. So that means that it's not, that the funds checking

isn't going to happen
immediately because the actual

process has to run. It's usually overnight, but in some cases,

like in journals, it it's
actually checked at midday as

well as overnight.

Um? Anything else I need to
tell you about that, um?

You will need to be able to
check whether you have got funds

available and the calculation for that is your budget, LESS

your actuals LESS your commitments gives you your Funds available.

And, in order to look at this equation, you need to either run

your award status enquiry or your project status enquiry. Or

if you want to, you could run the report from CUFS as well.

But if you want a quick one, you obviously do the enquiry.

And that's basically covering
all that I've got to tell you

about the interaction with with
grants and the rest of the

modules. Just bear in mind that
there is a timing difference. If

you do want to know a little bit
more about this, I'm just going

to go back to 

where we were...

OK and I'm now going to 

stop sharing that screen and I'm going to share the

There we go, so this
is the Finance Division website.

There is the web

URL if you need it and where are we're going to go is to the Training

Guidance and FAQs.

Get yourself down to the...

Right, into Research Grants.

And then, right at the bottom of research

grants, you've got your

Other procedures, and
there's actual and

commitments in the grants
module.

So this basically gives you the different timings for

iProcurement and it gives you obviously the iProcurement module, 

what type of transactions can happen in the

iProcurement module, what the status of those transactions

are, and then across this line it tells you when it appears in

the various grants enquiries or reports -and over here you can

see that there's an overnight
process in order for it to post

through into the rest of the

grants module. On page 2 you've got your Accounts

Payable, and then at the top here it tells you, um,

overnight when it posts into all the different grants 

functions, and then you've got your Grants

Journals, which as it says are posted at midday and overnight. So if

you need to refer to that, it
is there in the help.

On our Training page > Guidance and FAQ, hopefully that will help

you. I'm just going to stop

sharing that. And, um, that's
all that we've got to do in

this particular recap, and we
will be going on to our next

one next video.