UBCO Finance News

UBC Okanagan Research – Year-end Timelines and Procedures

Like many institutions, UBC operates on a financial calendar that runs from April 1 to March 31.

Each year, UBC’s financial teams collaborate on a schedule of timelines and procedures to help guide the university community through the end of the fiscal calendar. As this will be the first-time year-end activities performed in Workday, there are some key changes that the UBC community needs to be aware of, especially regarding approvals by Grant Managers (also called Worktag Managers), as well as by Supervisory Organization (Sup Org) Managers.

The timelines published, in many cases, will be the cutoff dates for managers to approve transactions in the system. All other activities, such as vendor setup, PO creation and approval, must happen well in advance.

The following actions should be taken by you or your Faculty Finance assistant(s) in advance of these deadlines in order to meet the year-end deadlines:

• MONITOR the status of your procurement activities regularly and ensure activities are completed as soon as possible
• RECONCILE UBC Visa transactions as soon as possible after the transaction has been incurred
• RECEIVE goods and services in Workday in order for related PO-based invoices to be posted and then paid
• MONITOR your Workday inbox for notifications, including requests for additional supporting documentation, errors and approvals
• REVIEW and APPROVE outstanding transactions to ensure they are completed before the year-end deadlines
• NOTIFY Research Finance Officer assigned to your grant if you have any expenses for equipment received but the invoice has not yet been received from the supplier.

Timelines: https://finance.ubc.ca/year-end/important-dates-month-end-and-year-end

Refer to the link for detailed year-end activities deadlines. Important dates that may be relevant to researchers include:

March 15, 2021 – Research Finance will notify Principal Investigator and their Faculties on new overspent grants (not included in the semi-annual review) soon after February month end ledgers close (approx. March 15).

Mar. 19, 2021 – Cutoff for supplier invoice approvals. Supplier invoices must be fully approved in order to be included in March.

Mar. 19, 2021 – Cutoff for expense report approvals. Expense reports must be fully approved in order to be included in March.

Mar. 23, 2021 – Time Entry and Submission. Pay period deadline for employees and timekeepers to enter and submit time in Workday.

Mar. 26, 2021 – Last day to setup new research grant in RISe before the year-end cut-off. Grants setup in RISe after this date will be entered as April 1, 2021 grant.

Mar. 29, 2021 – Cutoff for Internal Service Delivery (ISD) approvals. All ISDs submitted via manual entries or EIBs must be approved in Workday in order to be posted in March. Unapproved ISDs will post to the next period.

Mar. 30, 2021 – Cutoff for accounting journal approvals. All accounting journals submitted via manual entries or EIBs must be approved in Workday. Unapproved accounting journals and in progress accounting adjustments will be cancelled.

March 31, 2021 – Research Finance will transfer any remaining permanent overspent amounts as of March 31 to the appropriate Faculty/department and journalize the entry by April 6 (there will be no further notifications sent at this time).

Grant Balance Available in Workday:

It is important to note that for purposes of determining the balance available in your grant, salary and benefit financial obligations and commitments only include those until March 31, 2021. Once Workday year-end processes have been completed, financial obligations and commitments for next year will be updated.