NUPlans Budget Preparation FAQs Questions in this document were gathered from NUPlans training participants in the Feinberg School of Medicine (FSM) in spring, 2012. Answers to all questions are provided by staff in the FSM Office of Finance and the Project Café business analyst. Questions are organized by category listed below in the table of contents. Table of Contents Chart String Maintenance... 2 Grant Input View... 2 Compensation Views... 2 Fund Input Views... 3 Contributor Basics... 4 Filtering Rows and Hide/Show Columns... 5 NUPlans Now and in the Future... 6 1 of 6
Chart String Maintenance How do you add new base chart strings to the budget in Contributor? Base chart strings are added to your budget following the established process with ChartField Maintenance staff and the Budget Office. After they add your new chart string to NUFinancials, it will appear within 1-2 days in NUPlans. After your new chart string appears in NUPlans, you can add accounts to the chart string, if needed, in NUPlans web. Does NUPlans Web allow you to add accounts to grant chart strings? No. NUPlans Web only allows you to add accounts to non-grant chart strings. Can you estimate expenses for grant proposals in NUPlans? Yes. NUPlans Web allows you to create a dummy chart string for grant proposals, which you believe will be awarded, in order to estimate expenses for the grant in the next fiscal year. Can a dummy chart string (for a grant proposal) be used in Comp Input to budget salary? Yes. After you add the dummy in Chart String Maintenance, it will appear the next day in your budget and be available to you in both the grant and compensation views. Grant Input View How do you exclude expenses from F&A on Grant Input? Enter the amount to be excluded in the Direct Expenses Excluded column. For example, when Capital Equipment is excluded, enter the amount first in the Capital Equipment column and then enter the same amount in Direct Expenses Excluded column. How are subcontracts entered on Grant Input? When only the first 25K is subject to F&A, you can enter the entire amount in the Subcontracts column and then enter the balance over 25K in the Direct Expenses Excluded column. For example, if Subcontracts total 100K, enter 100K in Subcontracts column and then enter 75K in the Direct Expenses Excluded column. Can you enter the total expense estimate as an aggregate? Yes. If you choose to enter an aggregate, enter the amount in the Other Direct Exp column. Encourage your teams to be consistent either excluding expenses not subject to F&A before they give the aggregate to you or providing the excluded expenses as an amount that you can enter in Direct Expenses Excluded. Compensation Views Do we budget compensation on chart strings that we don t own? No. If one of your employees is budgeted on a chart string that belongs to another department, or if you budget an employee of another department on one of your chart strings, you must communicate with that department to make sure they are budgeted correctly. 2 of 6
Will employees with a portion of salary in your department and an appointment in another appear in Comp Input? Yes, you may see an employee from another department appear in Comp Input, if you own a chart string used to fund a portion of his/her salary. How do you estimate salary expenses for grant proposals? After a dummy chart string for the grant proposal is added to the budget, the Grant Proposal Number can be used in the Project Chart Field to budget salary expenses in Comp Input. How do you budget fellows? Budget fellows in aggregate in the Fund view that contains the chart string used to pay the fellows. Do budget fellows in Comp Input. How do you budget guest speakers? Enter your budget for guest speakers in aggregate in the compensation views, if they are employees, or in the applicable Fund view, if they are not. How do you budget rotating/revolving student employees? See fellows answer. How do you handle promotions outside merit increases? For the budget process you just adjust their salary to reflect their new rate. Budgeting in this way doesn t guarantee approval. What if salary isn t 100% encumbered for the year? How do we budget the salary expense? It should be budgeted on the 110 or another string. Can you remove funding for multiple people for the same chart string at the same time? No. Removing funding is only available for one employee/funding source at a time. Should we budget 192 in Comp Input? Yes. Although, amounts do not flow to the Fund view because we don t budget 192s, it helps to have a more complete picture of an employee s compensation. You can compare the total from the Comp Summary view to what you have budgeted on account 88295 across your chart strings. Does the Use of Fund Balance column in Comp Input calculate benefits? Yes. When you enter an amount in the Use of Fund Balance column, NUPlans will multiply the amount by the benefit rate. You may want to take the benefit rate into consideration, in order to determine the amount you should enter. Example 1 - A faculty member s compensation will be covered partially by reserves in the amount of 12700. Enter 10000 in the Use of Fund Balance Column. NUPlans will multiply the 10K by the benefits rate - 27% - and display 12700 in the corresponding column of the Carry Forward view. Example 2 A faculty member s salary will overdraw the funding source by 6946. To calculate the amount you should enter, divide 6946 by 1.27. {6946 / 1.27 = 5469.29}. Because NUPlans rounds numerals, enter 5469 and recalculate. Fund Input Views What is the account used this year for Appropriations? If you are receiving an appropriation, use 88546, if you are paying an appropriation use 88246. 3 of 6
What is the purpose of the FY12 Projection Column? This is where you will enter your forecast, which will help determine your carry forward balance. Last year we said Forecast. What is the term for that this year? FY12 Remaining Projection Last year we said Base Budget. What is the term for that this year? Last year we just called it current year budget and use of carry forward. This year, there is just a budget number and some of it may be supported by fund balance. Last year we said Planned Use of Carry Forward. What is the term for that this year? Use of Fund Balance How do we address paper journals for actuals? Make an adjustment to your forecast, which you enter in the FY12 Remaining Projections column. The budget input fields are un-enterable on an expense account that I want to budget next year. What is the issue? This should not happen unless it is a linked in value or you inactivated an account. You can reactivate the account using the Change Chart String Status form in NUPlans Web. Revenue does not equal Expense on my chart string. Why does Net say zero (0)? Net is zero because the difference is automatically calculated as either a buildup or use of reserves. If Net is always zero (0), where do I find the out-of-balance amount on my chart string? Out-of-balance (OOB) amounts are shown in your budget on accounts 88991 or 88992. Look for OOB amounts at the intersection of the FY13 Budget Input column and accounts 88991 or 88992. For account level budgeting, where do we enter the base budget this year and where do we enter planned use of carry forward? Your base budget should be entered in the FY13 Budget Input column. It includes any planned use of carry forward (Use of Fund Balance). The portion of that amount funded by reserves should be entered in the Use of Fund Balance column, with a note explaining what it is for. Contributor Basics The Contributor grid is large, how can I make it easier to work in Contributor? You may feel it makes data entry tasks easier to show/hide columns, filter rows, or to find and display only one (or few) employee(s) or project(s) at a time. The steps to do these things are listed in your training participant workbooks and the training guide, NUPlans Contributor Navigation & Basics. Can you zoom in and zoom out of the Contributor budget grid to increase/decrease font size? Yes. One way to zoom is with the plus and minus keys on your keyboard. First, click anywhere outside the grid (for example, click on the toolbar to deactivate the grid), then press the Control and Plus or Minus keys on your keyboard. Press <Ctrl>+<-> to zoom out. Press <Ctrl>+<+> to zoom in. Is there a fill-down capability, or must every cell be filled individually? Yes. The Feinberg Office of Finance recommends using copy/paste to fill-down values. Are there keyboard shortcuts for the Reset commands? No. Unfortunately, there are no keyboard shortcuts for the Reset commands at this time. 4 of 6
Filtering Rows and Hide/Show Columns Can you filter rows by employee name or employee ID on Comp Input? Yes. Use the wildcard filter in the Rows dimension named Existing Employees. NUPlans From the Subset Editor, click Advanced, click the Filter icon, and select Filter by wildcard. An example of the wildcard filter for someone named Bianca Guest-De Luca is *Guest* because you should always surround the text with asterisks. Search is not case sensitive. Can you see one row at a time (or see a few rows) without using the filter? Yes. As an alternative to the filter, try the Find in Subset icon in the Simple pane of the Subset Editor. Name and EMPLID work in the Comp Input view. Can you filter by Primary Investigator (PI) name in Grant Input? No. However, you can filter by project number in the Rows dimension. There are two ways to do it. In the Simple pane of the Subset Editor, click the Find in Subset icon and type the project number. In the Advanced pane of the Subset Editor, click the Filter icon and select Filter by wildcard. Type the project number surrounded by asterisks. Example: *60022047* Can you search rows by someone s name, employee ID, or project name? Yes. From the rows dimension, you can use the Find in Subset icon in the Simple pane of the Subset Editor. Name and EMPLID work in the Comp Input view. Project name works in the Fund 171 and 172 Input views. However, in the Fund Input views, you must use <Shift>+Click to select all contiguous accounts associated with the project. Can you apply a filter after showing/hiding columns? Yes. First show the columns you want to see using the Columns dimension, then apply the filter using the Rows dimension. Can you use the filter to display multiple projects on the Fund 172 Input view? No. The filter does not allow you to ask for more than one project at a time. Can you filter rows by a range? No. However, you can select multiple rows to display. For example, in Comp Input, using the rows dimension, you can <Shift>+Click or <Ctrl>+Click to select multiple employees and then click OK, to see only the employees you selected. 5 of 6
NUPlans Now and in the Future Can we prevent the application from repositioning the view after we save? No. However you can adjust your view by filtering or hiding columns and/or rows to work only on a portion of the data at a time, which can minimize or alleviate the repositioning that occurs. Will we have the capability of creating dashboards to summarize all financial data, for example, to see year-to-year trends? Currently NUPlans is only used for the annual budget preparation process, so only financial data related to that process is available. Will we see historical salary data, for example, personnel expenses year-to-year? See above for current functionality. Can we add functionality to distribute effort on projects by percentage? Can we integrate compensation estimation with effort reporting? See above for current functionality. In addition, salary budgeting in NUPlans is currently done by employee, not by project. Can we get continuous updates from FASIS in the same way we get them from NUFinancials? The updates from NUFinancials are only for chart strings and grants that are added in NUFinancials after the original historical data is imported into NUPlans. No actual data is updated, so there is no corresponding information to update from FASIS. Will this application be available beyond the budgeting season, for example, to prepare budget projections? See above for current functionality. What kind of access can you give to support people outside of our department? To request access to NUPlans contact your Feinberg budget analyst or Donna Kostel. Can we divide the budget preparation file between multiple users to work simultaneously? The file cannot be split in NUPlans so the budget for a budget grouping can only be worked on by one user at a time. Can we add a field for the employee name on the Add/Edit New Employees view? It is not possible to modify the New Employee XX labels in the Employee dimension. Can you turn off the automatic saves in the Account and Approval columns of the Add/Edit New Employees view? Auto-recalculation ensures that the views will load appropriately, and it cannot be turned off for some columns in a view. 6 of 6