CALS Business Operations Newsletter |
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COVID-19: CBO Updates Webpage
Keep up-to-date on business operations updates and guidance related to COVID-19 on the CBO Updates – COVID-19 webpage.
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Business Partners Bi-Weekly Meetings
Previously scheduled bi-monthly Business Partners meetings have been canceled as the CBO and CALS HR are now holding bi-weekly meetings with primary business and HR coordinators to answer questions and provide updates surrounding the COVID-19 situation.
Recordings of each meeting along with the agendas are posted to the CBO Business Partners webpage as they become available. If you have questions regarding these meetings, please contact Molly Bradshaw, Process Efficiency and Training Manager, at [email protected].
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ServiceNow Updates in Effect
ServiceNow has been upgraded to a new platform to allow for better navigation and an enhanced user experience. View the ServiceNow Enhancements Video for a short overview of the changes.
One addition to ServiceNow to note is the new SAR Request process which has been updated to increase transparency, allow for tracking, and expedite approval for requests. View the New SAR Request Process Video for an overview of this change.
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FY2021 - Shop the Marketplace First Initiative Version 2.0
As of 7/1/2020 NC State is moving to required use of the NC State eProcurement MarketPlace for supply purchases of less than $1,000. Faculty, staff, and the CALS community are expected to shop Marketplace first for supply orders $1,000 or less and follow the Decision Process for Purchasing Goods. Shop MarketPlace First is an Initiative which kicked off in July 2017. The initiative is for NCSU Faculty and Staff to purchase all low dollar supplies from NC State MarketPlace.
PCard Impacts: If the supplies are not available in Marketplace then a PCard may be used to purchase from a non MarketPlace vendor. If the supply is available in MarketPlace or if the cardholder purchases from a MarketPlace vendor, supply purchases $1,000 or less paid on a PCard will require justification explaining why MarketPlace was not used.
General Accounting Impacts: Also in alignment with this initiative, supply purchases $1,000 or less can only be paid using a voucher if 1) the vendor does not accept visa/mastercard (will be confirmed by Procurement), or 2) an invoice that is below $1,000 is a portion of a larger PO (totaling over $1,000). Please note: A voucher cannot be submitted to pay a vendor listed in MarketPlace.
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Detailed Business Purpose Required for Financial Transactions
A detailed business purpose is required for the following financial transactions: PCard, MarketPlace requisitions, invoices, and personal reimbursements. A detailed business purpose answers the following questions: who benefits from the transaction, where the purchased item is located (if applicable), and why the transaction was necessary. When the type of transaction may inherently imply a business purpose (e.g., toner, paper, pens, lab supplies etc.), it is still necessary to provide a business purpose that describes which location or project within the department the item was purchased.
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Trade-In of University Owned Equipment
University owned equipment cannot be traded in against the purchase of new equipment without the approval of the State Surplus Property Office. Procurement Services will make this request on behalf of the department. If a trade-in of equipment is requested, departments must provide the following information:
- Description of the item(s) being traded-in.
- Project ID that the equipment was purchased against.
- Current condition of the equipment.
- Original purchase price.
- Date of original purchase.
- Name of supplier offering the trade-in allowance.
- Price of replacement item before allowance.
- Amount of the trade-in allowance.
- Final purchase price.
- Brief justification for trading property in versus selling to the public.
Once a trade-in request is approved by the State Surplus Property Office, Procurement Services will notify the requesting department and complete the purchasing process by issuing a purchase order. Departments are then responsible for retiring the asset(s) from their Capital Asset Management System (CAMS) inventory.
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Confirming Orders
Confirming Orders are purchase orders that are issued AFTER purchases above $5,000, including shipping charges, are made and have been received by employees. These orders are normally unauthorized purchases and are not allowed because all purchase orders should be issued BEFORE goods or services are received.
There are times when Confirming Orders are allowed, but Procurement Services MUST be notified PRIOR to submitting a Confirming Order. An example of when a Confirming Order is allowed is an emergency repair of equipment that causes a research project or departmental process to stop.
Requisitions that are processed as Confirming Orders must include an explanation memo from the Requester explaining why the correct University process was not followed and how their department’s business processes will be changed so this does not happen again.
Requisitions that are submitted without the required documentation will be denied and sent back to the department. Once the proper documentation is attached to the requisition, it can then be re-routed for approval by the department, college, and Procurement Services.
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PCard Deadlines
Please take a moment to review the deadlines and reminders below to help ensure PCard policies and procedures are being followed and transactions are processed in a timely manner.
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October Billing Cycle (Past Billing Cycle)
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The October billing cycle (September 19 - October 20) statement deadline is 5 p.m. on November 20.
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To allow cardholders and supervisors adequate time for approval, reconcilers will approve statements by November 5 unless additional information is required.
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If additional information is required in order to approve a statement, cardholders will received notification by November 5 from [email protected]. Please be on the lookout for these communications.
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Additionally, cardholders who did not have their receipts uploaded for this billing cycle into the PCard Center as of 3:30 p.m. on October 21 would be required to submit a JV request via ServiceNow if the transaction was not charged to the appropriate project.
November Billing Cycle (Current Billing Cycle)
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The reconciliation deadline for the November billing cycle (October 21 - November 20) is November 24. However, in order to guarantee reconciliation of transactions, receipts should be uploaded by 3:30 p.m. on November 23.
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Anything uploaded after the November 23 deadline will be reconciled for this billing cycle only if time allows and the cardholder will be responsible for submitting any JV requests via ServiceNow if necessary.
As a reminder, to ensure deadlines are met, cardholders should do the following:
- Upload receipts within 1-3 days of the transaction date and avoid uploading all receipts the day before or on the day of the reconciliation deadline.
- Be sure receipts have written on them the project phase to be charged, a detailed business purpose, and the travel authorization number (if applicable).
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CALS Cardholder PCard Distribution
NCSU PCards are set to expire November 30, 2020. The last date for PCard pick-up was November 9. PCards were mailed to cardholders who were not able to pick up their PCards. Each of these cardholders have received an email with a notification to anticipate delivery of their card and instructions on how to activate their card once received. PCards for off-campus locations have been delivered. A list of those locations can be viewed here. County Extension individual PCards and Department PCards distribution will be facilitated by Nikki Kurdys so that cards are received prior to November 30.
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CALS Cardholder Training
To improve CALS PCard program compliance, all cardholders will be required to complete CALS CBO Cardholder training. The training module focuses on CALS CBO PCard processes, purchasing guidelines, travel guidelines, and documentation requirements.
Cardholders should know:
- They will receive an email with instructions on how to access the training.
- They must pass the end of training assessment with 90% or higher and complete the cardholder acknowledgement form before training is marked complete.
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They will be required to complete the training by January 28, 2020. The training may be completed in multiple sessions.
- They will receive email reminders until training is completed.
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Travel for Students
Beginning August 10, 2020 research restart submissions which involve undergraduate students may be sent through the Research Restart Phase III Process and no longer require a special research exception, but the student must fall into one of the following classifications:
- Undergraduate is working as an NC State University employee
- Undergraduate is working in research spaces for class, program, or project credit.
Undergraduate student employees must be marked as mandatory in the HR System.
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Travel Reimbursements - Submit On-Time to Avoid Taxation
As a reminder, travel reimbursements should be submitted within 30 days after the trip. If they are not submitted within 30 days, the University does have a right to report it as taxable income.
NC General Statute 138-6(c) requires that all travel reimbursement requests must be filed for approval within 30 days after the travel period for which reimbursement is being requested and reimbursements submitted 30 days after the travel period may be reported as taxable income.
The IRS requires that if an entity has an Accountable Plan under IRC Regulation 1.62-2 three rules must be met.
- Establish the business purpose and connection.
- Substantiate expenses within a reasonable period of time.
- Return any excess amounts.
If any of these are not met, then the expense must be added to the employee's W-2 statement and taxed accordingly. Since this falls outside the timeline of "a reasonable period of time" the University must tax this accordingly.
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Accounts Receivable - Deposit Drop-Off
CBO Business Services will continue to be available to retrieve deposits from you in-person per the following schedule:
- Monday (Missy Grissom, 919 513-1749, 9 a.m. - 12 p.m.)
- Wednesday (Paul Ballance, 919-515-2747, 1 p.m. - 3 p.m.)
- Friday (Tiffany Bryant, 919-515-7919, 9 a.m. - 12 p.m.)
Deposits can also be mailed to the CBO, CBO Accounts Receivables, Campus Box 7644, Raleigh, NC 27695-7644.
If you are dropping off a deposit, please call the person listed above upon arrival and they will retrieve the deposit from you.
For other access needs to Patterson Hall, phone numbers and contact names are printed and taped to the Patterson Hall entrance/exit doors.
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Reminder - Shortened Due Date for December Grant Close-outs
As a reminder, if you have a grant close-out due December 31st, University C&G will require the Close-out Form to be completed and routed to them by December 15th. This is due to the University Holiday and the need to submit all Financial Reports before the Holiday break. Therefore, please work with both your department contacts and Post Award Consultants to process any necessary SDCs, J/Vs, etc. within the next two weeks.
- 90 Day Reallocation Due Date: November 24th
- Bi-Weekly SDC Due Date: November 27th
- Monthly SDC Due Date: December 1st
- Please see the Business Services Section for PCard, Marketplace, and JV cut-offs
Additionally, please be sure to share with your Post Award Consultants any expenses or SDCs which are pending, so they can be included in the Close-out Form as a reconciling item. Finally, as a reminder, University C&G has the authority to submit a Financial Report to the sponsor, even if the Close-out Form has not been routed to them, if it is 5 days before the Financial Report due date. This means both CALS C&G and the PI will not have control over what is submitted as the final expenditures and any expenses not included in the Financial Report will be the responsibility of the PI. Therefore, please be proactively working with your department and Post Award Consultants.
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Ending Grants Early - New Option per Uniform Guidance Updates
In August, the Office of Management & Budget revised Uniform Guidance (terms and conditions governing the majority of federal awards) in several areas. One of these areas was the ability for Federal awarding agencies to terminate Federal awards.
OMB is revising §§ 200.211 Information contained in a Federal award and 200.340 Termination to strengthen the ability of the Federal awarding agency to terminate Federal awards, to the greatest extent authorized by law, when the Federal award no longer effectuates the program goals or Federal awarding agency priorities. Federal awarding agencies must clearly and unambiguously articulate the conditions under which a Federal award may be terminated in their applicable regulations and in the terms and conditions of Federal awards. The intent of this change is to ensure that Federal awarding agencies prioritize ongoing support to Federal awards that meet program goals. For instance, following the issuance of a Federal award, if additional evidence reveals that a specific award objective is ineffective at achieving program goals, it may be in the government's interest to terminate the Federal award. Further, additional evidence may cause the Federal awarding agency to significantly question the feasibility of the intended objective of the award, such that it may be in the interest of the government to terminate the Federal award.
As shared by SPARCS, potential indicators utilized by the federal agencies may be burn rate and progress reports.
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Upcoming Changes to ability to charge to Ledger 5 Projects post close-out
It is anticipated by the first of the year that University C&G will roll-out changes to the Financial System that will impact ledger 5 projects. One of these changes is the system’s ability to update a grant from “active” to “pending”. The distinction is that charges can post to an “active” grant, while charges cannot post to a “pending” grant. This status update will occur, based upon an algorithm, approximately 30 days after the Final Financial Report has been submitted to the Sponsor. The Final Financial Report is typically due 30 to 90 days after a grant has ended. Therefore, it continues to be important that faculty work closely with both their department contacts and Post Award Consultants to timely and successfully close-out their ledger 5 project. As more information is shared with the colleges, we will share it with the CALS Community.
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Conflict of Interest Reminder
If you have not already completed your Conflict of Interest in the RED System, please note you will continue to receive weekly non-compliance notifications. Additionally, these will be sent to your Supervisor. If you have any questions or if you have successfully completed the COI and are still receiving these emails, please reach out to the COI Office: [email protected]
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Effort Reporting Reminders
The Annual Effort Reports were due on September 30, 2020. Therefore, if you have not yet completed your report, please do so as soon as possible, as you are currently in non-compliance.
The Summer Effort Reports were issued by the University and will be due December 31, 2020.
If you have any questions please reach out to CALS Cost Share Coordinators via [email protected].
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Reminder: Effective October 1st - NSF Biosketch and Current Pending Forms Required
NSF requires the use of NSF-approved formats for the biographical sketch and current and pending support sections of NSF proposals starting October 1, 2020.
ORCID ID and SciENcv Biosketch Information and Steps:
If you plan to submit or participate on an NSF submission, please follow the below steps to first create an ORCID ID, then a SciENcv biosketch. If there are any questions regarding the process, please contact the NCSU librarians for assistance at [email protected].
Please follow the instructions below to complete this task as soon as possible.
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Create or link your ORCID record to your Unity ID by clicking "Get Started" at this link: https://ci.lib.ncsu.edu/
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Add your publications to ORCID by following these directions: https://ci.lib.ncsu.edu/user/search-and-link
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If you need help importing publications into your ORCID record, send your CV to the Libraries through this link: https://ci.lib.ncsu.edu/user/cv-service
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Log into SciENcv: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sciencv/ and select "Click here to start"
- Select "See more 3rd party sign in options" and choose "North Carolina State University"
- Log into SciENcv using your Unity ID
- In the upper right corner, go to Settings by clicking on your username
- In Settings, scroll down to "Linked Accounts" and click the "Change" button
- Search for "ORCID" in the "Search for account name" box and select "ORCID" from the results (you should now see your ORCID record in the "Your Linked Accounts" section above)
- Click on "MyNCBI" in the upper right corner to go back to the main dashboard
- Proceed to the "SciENcv" section to start creating biosketches
Additional Information Regarding the SciENcv requirements:
If there are any questions regarding the SciENcv biosketch process, please contact the NCSU librarians for assistance.
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