Sections E & F: Fiscal Year-End & Designated Restricted Funds
Section E: Fiscal Year-End
Special care is taken each fiscal year-end to make sure that financial transactions are recorded in the proper fiscal year. To ensure that this happens, Accounting & Budget Services issues both “Fiscal Year Closing” and “Fiscal Year Opening” information that advises and reminds budget managers of special year-end and year-beginning procedures and time frames.
Accounting & Budget Services plans to publish the fiscal year closing information for the current budget/fiscal year by April 15. When published, it will be posted on the Special Notices page of the Accounting & Budget Services website.
Please visit the Accounting & Budget Services website by April 15 and follow the links to “Special Notices” and “Fiscal Year Closing.”
Contact Information
Please contact the Accounting Operations Coordinator or the Associate Vice President for Accounting & Budget Services with any questions about fiscal year closing.
Section F: Designated and Restricted Funds: Grants, Donor Gifts and Faculty Travel
1. Grants, donor gifts, and expendable endowed funds
Separate funds are established to track grants, restricted donor gifts, and the expendable portion of endowed funds. The index number for these funds is the same as the fund number. Expenditures are processed as usual in accordance with the terms of the grant and the donor’s restricted purposes.
Budget manager responsibilities for grant and/or donor restricted gift funds
1. Ensure that expenditures are made in accordance with the terms of the grant or the donor’s use (purpose) or time (e.g. spend by a certain date) restrictions.
2. Ensure that all reporting requirements are met.
2. Faculty travel
For faculty chair positions, in addition to your departmental budget, you will have budget administration responsibility for faculty travel funds.
Academic department faculty travel funds policy
a. Your department is allocated $350 per tenure-line and ongoing instructor position in the department, excluding faculty in endowed positions who have discretionary funds available to them from endowments to cover professional travel and other such expenses.
b. Departments are free to allocate departmental travel funds in ways that best meet the professional travel needs of faculty in that department. Some departments treat the annual allocations as belonging to individual continuing faculty members. Other departments pool some or all funds to support particular faculty travel needs in a given year, including support of visiting faculty, or to support departmental travel needs such as faculty recruitment or attendance at a curricular conference.
c. Funds are not allowed to accumulate in excess of three times the annual allocation. The process will work as described below for a department of five continuing full-time faculty members for a current budget year:
Budget year 1 = two years prior to current budget year
Budget year 2 = prior budget year
Budget year 3 = current budget year
Baseline: 5 x $350 = $1,750 for budget year 1, plus 5 x $350 = $1,750 for budget year 2 = $3,500 for both years.
Scenario 1: If the accumulated travel funds at the close of budget year 2 are $3,500 or below, the full amount from the department’s faculty travel transfer account #80050 for budget year 3 will be credited to the designated travel fund (index). In this example, 5 x $350 = $1,750.
Scenario 2: If the accumulated travel funds at the close of budget year 2 are above $3,500 (example: $4,000), the amount credited to the department’s faculty travel transfer account #80050 for budget year 3 will be the difference between the funds already accumulated and the ceiling of three times the annual allocation (in this example, 5 x $350 x 3 = $5,250), so the designated travel fund would receive $1,250 ($5,250 - $4,000). Any funds remaining in the budget for the department faculty travel transfer account #80050 (in this example, $500) will be transferred to University Enrichment Committee (UEC) program funds to support faculty departments.
d. Code (charge) all travel expenditures to the designated travel fund (fund # = index #) using the 702xx series of accounts. Do not code travel expenditures directly to your departmental budget since the entire budget, subject to the above caps, was transferred to your designated travel fund.
e. Academic operating funds from other portions of the budget should not be diverted to support faculty travel.
Accounting & Budget Services staff are available to assist faculty with questions about travel, grant, and donor gift funds.
3. Contact information
Designated travel funds policy: Associate Academic Dean
Entries to designated faculty travel funds: Accounting Operating Coordinator
Entries to your university funded grant funds (faculty enrichment, Lantz/Nelson, student research, etc): Senior Accountant/Analyst
Applying for, spending, or reporting on externally funded grants (federal or private): please contact: Senior Accountant
Entries to your donor gift funds: Senior Accountant/Analyst or Senior Accountant
Entries to your expendable endowed funds: Senior Accountant
Concerns or ideas for improving services: Associate Vice President for Accounting & Budget Services
Please visit the Accounting & Budget Services department website for more information and resources for budget managers.
[1] If your department does not have a disbursement stamp, please contact the Accounting Operations Coordinator.
[2] See Section B.2 – Budget Organization and Coding (What is FOAPAL? – Chart of Accounts), for a definition/description of budget index, account, and other budget coding terms.
[3] See Section C - Spending Your Budget, and your Online Purchase Order (PO) Creation and Approval Training Manual for more information on the Banner Online Purchase Order (PO) system. If you do not have an Online PO Manual, you can download one from the Online Purchase Orders page.
[4] Your division vice president and his /her key administrative staff have access to your budget information. Accounting & Budget Services staff have access to all university budget information. For the Academic Division, the Associate Academic Dean also has access to all Academic department budget information.
