SFS April 2013 month-end processing and Book of Record reports generation will take place tonight (Tuesday 4/30/13). The system will close to users at 10:00 PM tonight, and will re-open by 10:00 AM tomorrow (Wednesday 5/1). As in past months, we expect to be able to open the system earlier (likely by 8:00 AM) tomorrow morning, depending on processing times. Refer to the System Status box on the SFS website home page for updates.

The ERT (PRFCAS) testing environment currently contains a backup of data from SFS Production as of 3/29/13 after batch processing. It does NOT include rolled-over Budgets and Purchase Orders, and budgets are set to Track without Budget.

In order to bring PRFCAS back to a fully-functioning, Production-like test environment for agencies, PRFCAS will be unavailable from Wednesday 5/1 through Sunday 5/5. The SFS Program will back up the data from Production at the end of batch processing on 4/30 (5/1 early morning), and load it into ERT (PRFCAS). We expect to make PRFCAS available again on Monday 5/6 with April 2013 Production data - including the rolled-over Budgets and Purchase Orders, and new year Agency KK and 2013-14 Appropriation/Segregation Budgets that have been established in Production.

ERT (PRFCAS) will again have Production Budgetary Controls in place. Agency user passwords will remain the same. Agencies seeding their legacy test systems for bulkload testing against PRFCAS should clone their systems AFTER loading the month-end Master File extracts. Files should NOT be submitted during the outage. Contact the SFS Help Desk with any questions.

The Agency Call held on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:00 AM will continue through at least mid-May. The SFS Program is currently discussing internally and with agencies the future status of this call, with the goal of best utilizing both Agency time and SFS resources. We will provide further updates.

The agenda for the Wednesday 5/1/13 Agency Checkpoint Conference Call (2:00 PM - 3:00 PM) is posted on the Agency Conference Calls and Meeting Agendas and Notes page of the SFS website. NOTE: Conference call dial-in information is now posted in the Agency Resources managed content area in SFS Production. SFS is no longer sending calendar invitations for this call.

The Agency Checkpoint Call appears on the SFS Agency Calendar on the SFS website. From there, agencies may copy it to their own calendar (Outlook or Google) by clicking on a Checkpoint meeting, then clicking one of the Copy options and following the instructions. Agencies may set up their own calendar meeting invitations internally and invite their appropriate staff.

Please review the 5/1 Agency Checkpoint Call agenda and determine which staff members should attend the call based on the topics to be covered. Due to the number of participants on this call, PLEASE ENSURE that your staff attend together as a group (using ONE webinar / phone line if possible), so that all attendees will be able to access the session. This also facilitates cross-team discussion at your Agency. Click the link above to access the agenda.

OSC's Bureau of State Expenditures (BSE) issued Accounts Payable Advisory 27: Voucher Accounting Date on 4/29/13. It states that the Accounting Date recorded on a voucher is generally the date a liability is incurred (e.g., the date on which the goods or services are received from the vendor) regardless of whether a corresponding invoice has been received.

The OSC Guide to Financial Operations (GFO), Chapter XII, Section 5.G: Entering the Appropriate Accounting Date has been updated with a table (also provided in AP Advisory 27) detailing the Accounting Date for various Types of Payments. The GFO also provides information on why Accounting Dates in Accounts Payable may sometimes differ from those recorded in the General Ledger.

Click the links above for full information.

OSC's Guide to Financial Operations (GFO) provides full document text search by using the 'Search this Guide' function on the lower left side of the screen. Putting in a search word(s) will return all Chapters/sections where the word(s) exist. Enclosing a search phrase in quotes will reduce your results to only occurrences of the exact text string (ex. "accounting date").

The SFS Program will be implementing Change Request 333166 this week. It entails changes to the Accounts Receivable and Billing modules in SFS to:

• Ensure that proper accounting practices are upheld;
• Prevent issues that result in "out of balance" conditions; and
• Allow the system to function in compliance with business process policies.

The changes will affect interagency billings and receivables for online and bulkload agencies, and will prevent users from making some common mistakes that result in reconciliation errors and subsequent clean-up efforts. The CR 333166 changes will:

• Prevent users from creating manual deposits for interagency bills;
• Prevent agencies from processing an interagency voucher before billing accounting entries are complete or bills are loaded to the AR module;
• Prevent users from manually closing interagency items using maintenance worksheets; and
• Prevent users from editing AR distribution in bills, as well as from using expense coding in Billing or AR.

Click the link above for full information, including several scenarios and screen shots.

The SFS Program has created a new Agency security role in the SFS that will allow additional Agency users to perform the most commonly-requested Agency Security Administrator (ASA) functions: lock/unlock user accounts and reset SFS user passwords.

This new "reset-only" security role, which will be available on 5/1/13, can be assigned to any Agency user who would provide security support for SFS at your Agency. This will allow agencies to reallocate their security tasks, as desired or needed, so that ASAs can focus on ASA-only tasks (add / change / remove SFS user accounts, change roles and permission lists, run security queries) while others can now perform lock/unlock and reset tasks. (Note: lock/unlock and reset can still be performed by ASAs).

In conjunction with the launch of this new security role, the SFS Program requests that ASAs review (and modify, if desired) their Agency's ASA assignments to best suit your Agency's needs. Click the link above for full information.

The following new / updated / revised items are posted to the SFS website:

• 5/1 Agency Checkpoint Conference Call Agenda (posted 4/30)
• Revised Job Aid: JAA-CN201-002 (Creating a Contract Revision) (posted 4/29)
• 5/2 Revenues User Group Meeting Agenda (posted 4/29)
• 4/4 Revenues User Group Meeting Notes (posted 4/26)
• Updated OGS list of Master Contract VARs (posted 4/26)
• Commodity Codes Account Mapping Update (posted 4/26)
• Revised Job Aid: JAA-AP210-020 (Paying an Interagency Bill) (posted 4/26)
• Updated Quick Start Guide: Validations for Interagency Billing and Related Vouchers (posted 4/25)
• Validations for Interagency Billing and Related Vouchers presentation (posted 4/25)
• Bulletin: Changes to AR and Billing Modules to Ensure Proper Accounting Practices (posted 4/25)
• Bulletin: All Agencies: New Security Role, and ASA Validation Needed (posted 4/25)
• New Job Aid: JAA-PO000-016 (Purchase Order Rollover Overview) (posted 4/23)
• 4/24 Agency Checkpoint Conference Call Agenda (posted 4/23)
• Revised Bulkload Inbound and Outbound Agency Configurations (Agency Interface Profile) (posted 4/19)
• 4/3 Agency Checkpoint Conference Call presentation (posted 4/18)
• Bulkload Agency Interface Layouts moved to Production (posted 4/18)
• 4/17 Agency Checkpoint Conference Call Agenda (posted 4/16)
• Bulletin: Summary of Interagency Billing Issues Addressed in Fix for Defect 8310 (posted 4/15)
• 3/14 Procure-to-Pay User Group Meeting presentation (posted 4/15)
• 3/14 and 2/14 Procure-to-Pay User Group Meeting Agenda and Notes (posted 4/12)
• 2/20, 3/6, 3/13, 3/20 Agency Checkpoint Conference Call Notes (posted 4/12)
• 3/6 Agency Checkpoint Conference Call presentation (posted 4/12)
• 3/11 GL/KK User Group Meeting Notes (posted 4/12)
• 4/10 Agency Checkpoint Conference Call presentation (posted 4/11)
• Reporting Toolkit Update: Now Three Separate Catalogs (posted 4/11)

Click the link above to access the Latest Web Updates page of the SFS website. Be sure to check this page often, as new items are posted daily.

Contact feedback@sfs.ny.gov with any questions. 

Thank you.