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Introduction:
First, let's start with some background information. As most of you know, Berkeley Financial System
(BFS) is the system we use to manage the financial transactions in our general ledger. Many of these
transactions originate from third party feeder systems such as the Travel Reimbursement System, the
Cash Deposit System, the Campus Accounts Receivable System, and the Payroll Personal System (PPS).
We will focus on the relationship between BFS and the Payroll Personnel System (PPS).
PPS is used to track UC Berkeley salaries and benefits. At the end of each month, after the payroll
department generates paychecks, PPS feeds thousands of payroll transactions to BFS. BFS accepts most
of these entries without issue. However, the system may reject some transactions due to an incorrect
chartfield or mapping issue. BFS places these rejected transactions in a default suspense chartstring
where they await correction. Keep in mind that suspended transactions are recorded in a liability
account so do not appear as payroll expenses in BAIRS reports. This makes managing your budget more
difficult - especially as the number and dollar value of these suspended transactions increases. That is
why the PPS Suspense Correction function is so important. It allows users to see these suspended
transactions and take steps towards clearing them out of the suspense chartstring.
So how do departments clear out their suspended PPS transactions? The PPS Suspense Correction
function allows departments to see a list of their suspended transactions. To clear them from the
suspense chartstring, examine each transaction and determine if the correct chartstring was used. If the
chartstring is correct, request a Journal Entry (JE). Now you might be asking yourself, how did a correct
chartstring end up in suspense? Most likely, this is a Contracts & Grants fund, and PPS fed the chartfield
combination to BFS before it was added to the PC Mapping Table. Or, in more rare instances, one of the
chartfields was inactivated with an effective date that is before the accounting date on the PPS
transaction.
By running a journal, BFS conducts Chart of Account (COA) validation. If the transaction passes, it means
the PC Mapping Table now includes this chartfield combination. Once approved, the entry will clear out
of the suspense chartstring and appear as a payroll expense in your BAIRS report. If it does not pass
COA validation, contact CGA and see if they received your budget that uses this chartstring. Once CGA
updates the mapping table with this chartfield combination, request another journal. This journal should
then pass the COA validation process. If the rejection is due to the inactivation of a chartfield, submit
another journal entry with a note explaining why the chartfield should be reactivated. Now suppose
that the wrong chartstring was entered into PPS. In this case, submit a Payroll Expense Transfer (PET)
and type in the correct chartfield into BFS. Campus Shared Services (CSS) will reverse the original
incorrect entry in PPS and replace it with a corrected chartstring. Once that is done, the transaction will
fall out of suspense at the next PPS feed cycle.
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The menu path to get to the new PPS Suspense Correction component is Main Menu – CAL Components
- GL – PPS – PPS Suspense Correction
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There are six search criteria available for users. Fund, Department, Chartfield 2, Employee ID, Pay End
Date and OrgNode. You may enter as much search criteria as you would like to narrow your search.
Once criteria have been specified, the SEARCH button is clicked. The program populates the grid and
sorts the grid given the criteria specified.
In the below example we have entered ‘31867’ in the ‘Fund’ field. Click ‘Search’ and the following
information will be displayed:
Note: You must enter at least one search criteria for results to be displayed. If you do not enter at least
one search criteria, the following error message will be displayed.
A brief description of the information that is in the grid is outlined below. The columns PPS AcctgDate,
PPS LineNbr and Employee ID appear in all tabs.
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There are four tabs. Tab one is ‘Chart of Accounts’ (COA) which contains all of the COA information
from the original journal.
Click on the ‘OrigCOA’ hyperlink and the original PPS COA values will be displayed.
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Click on the 'Notes' hyperlink. This is an editable page for user's to enter notes/comments. When the
page is saved, notes/comments will be saved in history for future reference. Upon clicking the 'Save'
button, the ‘Last Updated On’, ‘Last Updated By’ and ‘Role’ will be saved. Once saved, these notes
cannot be deleted or edited. However, additional notes can be made. The character limit is 250 for each
note.
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Tab two is ‘Journal Attributes’ which includes the original journal information.
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Tab three is ‘Last Update’ which will change as updates are made to this page; we will see screenshots of
this later in the documentation after we have submitted journal entries (JE) and Payroll Expense
Transfer (PET).
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Tab four is ‘Error Message’ and includes the original PPS accounting date, line number, employee ID and
error message. You may find this tab particularly useful since it provides the reason why BFS rejected
the transaction. As this error message indicates, all ten rows are due to PC Mapping errors.
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You can show all columns at one time by clicking on the
icon. The display will look like this:
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Process Options:
There are six options provided at this time.
1.
2.
3.
4.
JE= BFS Journal Entry
PET= Payroll Expense Transfer
Submit= Submit for approval
Submit-Overide= Force Submit for JE only when there is a chartfield only error encountered (this
does not apply to PC Mapping errors).
5. Un-Submit= Remove Submit status
6. Un-Flag JE/PET= Remove corrective action assigned
Once the user selects the corrective action and then clicks on the ‘Process’ button, the appropriate
columns will be updated with new values.
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It should also be noted that the same logic that is used on the ‘Validate COA/SpeedType’ page (Main
Menu – CAL Components – Validate COA/Speedtype) is built into this component. Once the user clicks
on the ‘Submit’ button, this program is invoked to ensure that the chartstring is correct.
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Users may do a mass change by selecting the ‘Select All’ button. The same can be applied if a user
needs to do a mass clean-up by selecting the ‘de-Select All’ button.
Now that we have reviewed the page, we will demonstrate how to process the suspended transactions.
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There are two actions which can be taken to clear the suspense transactions. The first is through a
Journal Entry (JE). You would choose this action when the correct chartstring was entered into PPS but
either the chartfield combination was not listed in the BFS PC Mapping table or one of the chartfields
was inactivated with an effective date before the accounting date on the transaction. The other action is
a Payroll Expense Transfer (PET). Use this method when an incorrect chartstring is entered into the PPS
system. This reverses the original incorrect entry, and replaces it with a corrected chartstring.
Example #1 – PC Mapping errors – chartstrings have been mapped in the PC Mapping table and a journal
entry is required.
For the sake of this example, let's assume that the chartstrings on all ten rows are correct and need
journal entries to get them out of suspense.
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The easiest way to determine if the transactions are PC Mapping errors and require a JE to get them out
of suspense is to click on the ‘Error Message’ tab and read the message that is displayed.
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Click on ‘Select All’, select ‘JE’ from the ‘Action’ drop-down box and click on ‘Process’. A message box
summarizes the intended action. It states that you are about to flag 10 rows as JE. Click ‘OK’.
The PET/JE column now displays ‘JE’ for each row. Once you have selected all the transactions that
require a journal entry, click the ‘Save’ button.
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Alternatively, you can mark each row individually, then go to the PET/JE drop down list and select PET or
JE. This is helpful when you have both PET and JEs to process both combinations at the same time.
Next, go the ‘Process’ button; select ‘Submit’ from the drop-down to the left and click ‘Process’.
A message box summarizes the intended action. It states that you are about to submit 10 JE
transactions. Click ‘OK’ to process your request.
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A new message summarizes the results of the action. Of the 10 JE transactions submitted, BFS accepted
all 10 of them and did not reject any. Click the ‘OK’ button to close this message box.
To find out which transactions were accepted, look at the ‘Submit for Approval’ column. If “Submit"
appears in the row of the transaction, it was accepted. In this example, all ten transactions were
accepted and will fall off this suspense list 24 hours after an approver accepts these entries. You can
also look at the ‘Error’ column which indicates ‘N’ for no errors and the ‘Corrected Line COA Edit
Message’ now reads “Successful chartstring validation.” Remember, only transactions that pass COA
validation will be marked as submitted.
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Example #2 – PC Mapping errors – not mapped by CGA in the PC Mapping table
Let’s take a look at a few transactions that do not pass the COA validation and what the grid looks like
upon clicking on the ‘Submit’ button. As the screenshots below indicate, these four transactions have
the same PC Mapping errors and require a JE to get them out of suspense.
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Click on ‘Select All’, select ‘JE’ from the ‘Action’ drop-down box and click on ‘Process’. A message box
summarizes the intended action. It states that you are about to flag 4 rows as JE. Click ‘OK’.
The PET/JE column now displays ‘JE’ for each row. Once you have selected all the transactions that
require a Journal Entry, click the ‘Save’ button.
Next, go the ‘Process’ button; select ‘Submit’ from the drop-down to the left and click ‘Process’.
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A message box summarizes the intended action. It states that you are about to submit 4 JE transactions.
Click ‘OK’ to process your request.
A new message summarizes the results of the action. Of the 4 JE transactions submitted, BFS did not
accept any; all 4 were rejected. Notice that the ‘Submit for Approval’ column is blank. Remember, only
transactions that pass COA validation will be marked as submitted. If you scroll to the right, notice that
BFS has flagged all four transactions with a red "Y" in the Error column. This entry also has the same
error message as before. To correct this transaction, you should verify that a budget has been submitted
to Contracts and Grants Accounting (CGA) with this chartstring, and if so, then you should follow up with
CGA to determine when the budget will be processed.
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Example #3 – Invalid/Inactive chartfield – need to do a ‘Submit-Override’ journal entry.
If the error is due to the inactivation of a chartfield, you can submit the transaction for a journal entry
but the process is slightly different. You should include a note indicating that the chartfield needs to be
reactivated and why. Then, in the ‘Process’ field, choose ‘Submit-Override’ instead of the normal
‘Submit’.
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Please note that if you scroll to the right, BFS has flagged both transactions with a red "Y" in the ‘Error’
column and both transactions also have the same error message as before. However, because we chose
the ‘Submit-Override’ action, “Submit” appears in the ‘Submit for Approval’ column. These two
transactions will go to the appropriate approver for review and upon the reactivation of the chartfield(s)
will fall off this suspense list 24 hours after an approver accepts these entries.
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Example #4 – Wrong chartfield entered – need to do a Payroll Expense Transfer
The other action we briefly mentioned is a Payroll Expense Transfer (PET). As you may recall, this error
occurs when someone enters the wrong chartfield into the PPS system. Use this method when an
incorrect chartstring is entered into the PPS system. This reverses the original incorrect entry, and
replaces it with a corrected chartstring.
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Click on ‘Select All’, select ‘PET’ from the ‘Action’ drop-down box and click on ‘Process’.
A message box summarizes the intended action. It states that you are about to flag 16 rows as PET. Click
‘OK’.
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Notice how this opens up the chartfields for all 16 lines to be edited. Let's assume our research
indicates that the correct fund should be 32594.
Go ahead and overwrite the incorrect fund with the corrected value. Once you have made the changes,
click on ‘Save’.
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Make sure the processing field is set to ‘Submit’ and click the ‘Process’ button. A message box
summarizes your intended action. Click the ‘OK’ button to proceed.
A new message box confirms the results of your action. In this example, the message box says the 16
PET transactions were successfully submitted but keep in mind that this does not actually correct the
error. Only after Campus Shared Services (CSS) processes the PET and the corrected chartstring comes
across at the next PPS feed does the error actually get corrected. Click the ‘OK’ button to close the
message box.
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Just as we did with transactions marked as JE, to find out which transactions were accepted, look at the
‘Submit for Approval’ column. If “Submit" appears in the row of the transaction, it was accepted. In this
example, all sixteen transactions were accepted. You can also look at the ‘Error’ column which indicates
‘N’ for no errors and the ‘Corrected Line COA Edit Message’ now reads “Successful chartstring
validation.”
Conclusion / Summarization
Let’s quickly summarize what we have reviewed.
Example # 1 - The first ten entries (Fund 31867) will fall off this suspense list 24 hours after they are
approved.
Example #2 - The second set of entries (Fund 95419) will remain on the list until CGA updates the PC
mapping table and you resubmit another journal entry.
Example #3 - The third set of entries (Fund 69799) will go to the appropriate approver for review and
upon the reactivation of the chartfield(s) will fall off this suspense list 24 hours after an approver accepts
these entries.
Example #4 - The fourth and final set of sixteen (original Fund 87942, which we changed to 32594) will
remain on the list in suspense until CSS makes the correction in the PPS system and an updated entry is
fed to BFS at the month end cycle.
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