April is closed, so you may run April reports after 10 p.m. tonight.

An update is occurring to the Encumbrance calculation on the Finance and SPFF Dashboards. Below are the changes:

• Encumbrance costs will be relieved when actuals are posted. They used to be relieved based on calendar days. The change addresses the issue of payroll costs being posted before the end of the pay period, which caused the remaining balance to be understated as both actuals and encumbrances were posted for the same pay period.
• The new encumbrance calculation now supports automatic calculation of fringe based on the assignment category. This eliminates the need to maintain a fringe line for all assignments. The Labor Distribution Administrator will be required to create a fringe rule only when the fringe costs do not follow the salaries and wages costing.
• The hourly employee pay period amount will now be correct. It was overstated.
• F&A on Tuition remission costs for the MTDC burden schedule projects will stop being calculated.
• The award overview page will stop duplicating projects with encumbrance costs.
• Added the LD comment field to the labor distribution details

These changes are expected to take effect this Friday, May 2nd.

March is closed, so you may run March reports after 10 p.m. tonight.

The office hour tomorrow March 12 will be on student awards through Payables with special guest Monique Smith.  We’ll talk about student awards as we go into the academic year end, how these charges show up on the finance dashboard, tips for the purchasing and payments and expenses dashboards, and take your questions on all things Payables and Expenses.

Join Zoom Meeting https://riceuniversity.zoom.us/j/96837277242?pwd=oF8bDGPHoCPs7HabVDcbbOKo6lJbbB.1

Meeting ID: 968 3727 7242 Passcode: 229392

The meeting will be recorded and available in the FBDI folder afterwards if you are unable to join.

The Zoom recording will be here https://rice.box.com/s/t92f6qrgzebxgxk9wl0hpyad0chwovvz

and that folder includes all the documents discussed during the office hour.

February is closed.

This is my 411^th and final period close at Rice University, since I will be retiring with my last day of work on April 1, 2025. The new general accounting manager is David Christopher.

Please stop by for a doughnut at my retirement party on March 19 outside COB/Allen Center from 8 – 9:30 am.

It has been my pleasure and my privilege to work with all of you.

Today’s topic is faculty funds and the special guest is Joel Mendoza.  The documents we will discuss are available in the Zoom folder https://rice.box.com/s/zvkapr2l3zy163ymoknutmkkrl9u65mg

The meeting is at 1 pm and the Zoom link to join is

Join Zoom Meeting
https://riceuniversity.zoom.us/j/96837277242?pwd=oF8bDGPHoCPs7HabVDcbbOKo6lJbbB.1

Meeting ID: 968 3727 7242
Passcode: 229392

The recording will be in Box afterwards, same folder as above.

January is closed, so you may run January reports after 10 pm tonight.

December is now closed again, and the final transaction will be reflected in the dashboards after 10 pm tonight.

There was an integration issue for payroll for the last two weeks of December.  It ran before we closed but didn’t feed to the general ledger.  We have posted an accrual in December for the charges, for the exact amount and to the correct chart of accounts strings.  The accrual was reversed in January.  The detailed payroll transactions including employee name are in the general ledger in January.

Looks like part of payroll did not go through, so December will be re-opened to post that missing payroll information.

December is closed.  You can safely run final reports after the dashboard updates at 10 pm tonight.