Possible Chart of Account Changes Coming to UCF Financials

April 7, 2017

As part of the planning for Project Wahoo, Finance and Accounting facilitated an open forum for project stakeholders to discuss the current Chart of Accounts structure, and the possible ways the structure could change with the project’s implementation. Becky Vilsack, Director of Information Technology Financial Systems, facilitated the meeting on March 27, 2017 to review how Chart of Accounts and ChartFields currently work, and the potential changes.

Currently, department and projects are mutually exclusive, meaning that if a project has been entered on a transaction, a department number cannot be entered and vice versa. With the implementation of the PeopleSoft Grants module, this will change as every project will be required to be tied to a department. As of now, UCF only uses 10 out of 22 possible ChartFields, and there is an ongoing discussion about how many more ChartFields could be implemented and what those ChartFields could be.

During the initial phase of Project Wahoo, early analysis has shown that using embedded logic inside of departmental and project numbers is not a best practice. Accordingly, it has been proposed that instead of embedding logic into department numbers, a sequential number should be assigned to each department while the logic for that number would be stored elsewhere.

These proposed changes are designed to:

• Incorporate flexibility for future growth
• Support UCF’s current organizations structure
• Minimize data entry
• Minimize errors
• Make business processes more efficient
• Enhance reporting for end-users across campus

For more information on the potential changes in the Chart of Accounts structure and the possible implications of these changes, please refer to the Chart of Accounts Change Open Forum presentation available on the Financials Support Services website.