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Kellyn, Stephen, Bella & NovaKellyn Bennett Morris is well-prepared to deliver great customer service in her new role as a User Success Agent in the Finance Solution Center. Morris’s two previous roles have had an intense focus on building relationships with people, often in times of stress.Her first job out of high school was at Batesville Market, helping a close friend’s mother start her business during the pandemic. During that critical startup time, and as local folks increasingly leaned

Workday's request business process is now the one-stop-shop method to request Payroll Accounting Adjustments for UPG, the Medical Center, yourself, or an employee who has been terminated or transferred out of your area.  Previously, this would have been done via a variety of methods depending on your need, but now, due to the new Workday functionality, it can be handled one consistent way.  (Note that Payroll Accounting Adjustment Specialists in schools and units can still process

It's hard to believe that we're only a month out from the Fourth Annual Travel & Expense Expo.  If you haven't already, make plans to attend on August 3 at Newcomb Hall.  Vendor exhibits will be available from 10 am - 2 pm, with lots of giveaways and drawings for prizes available.  We'll also have light refreshments as well as passport services and Real ID applications.  Watch the blog and other UVAFinance communications for a seminar schedule as the date g

 Earlier this month, Myron Ballard was elected by his UVAFinance colleagues to represent them in the UVA Staff Senate. In fact, this is the second time Myron has been elected (once before when he worked with the School of Engineering) and he is excited to continue serving his community. This is no small feat, and starting in August, Ballard will take on an important role in cultivating UVAFinance alongside the greater UVA community. He reflected that the best thing about the Staff Senate wa

As Fiscal Year End approaches, don't forget to close your POs.  Workday Financials does not have an auto-close feature like Oracle did (we'll be working on that, though, in the future).  We understand it may not be possible to get everything closed before year-end, so here are some priorities and guidelines: POs associated with grants will be automatically closed unless you tell us to roll them over, so review your open grant-related POs with end dates before June 1, 2023, an

Once Workday Financials went live, that wasn't all for collaboration between UVAFinance and our finance partners across Grounds.  We've continued to collaborate in the spirit of continuous improvement to make processes better and share best practices.  Case in point is everyone's favorite, account certification.  Although Workday Financials is a cloud-based system that we share with lots of other entities (meaning we can't customize it like we were used to doing with Oracle),

This July, the Finance Solution Center will take over payroll inquiries from the HR Solution Center.  As you might imagine, payroll falls into a grey area between finance and HR.  Generally speaking, if it's a money question (things like the numbers on your pay slip, your W2, your W4, etc.), it's a finance question, and if it's a benefits matter (things like insurance and PTO), it's an HR question.  The good news is, you don't have to worry about going to the right Solut

As Fiscal Year-End draws nigh, the Clean-Up Squad is burning through a mountain of transactions to make sure things go as smoothly as possible!  Note especially the close Purchase Orders -- these are just individually closed POs.  We've mass closed about 75,000.  If you need the Clean-Up Squad's help closing POs ahead of Fiscal Year-End, email us at askfinance@virginia.edu  Here's what things are looking like as of June 14:Task BehaviorCountAdjust Accounting5,480Ass

The HoogenboomsEarly this May, Dan Hoogenboom re-joined the University as a project manager in UVAFinance, bringing experience gained from stints in both engineering consulting and community/economic development planning. Sandwiched in between those positions was his previous time at UVA, in the College of Arts and Sciences, where he was a fiscal administrator.Hoogenboom’s work experience managing projects, people, finances, and above all, the needs of various stakeholder groups, makes him a gr

After we close the books on this fiscal year, there will be a brief period when adjustments can be made in order to address budget deficits.  Departments can perform these transactions between July 1 and July 14.  Here are a few guidelines to follow:Transfers should be the primary activity being performed.Do not change the fund source.All transactions will be routed to central finance for approval.Accruals should not be initiated within departments.Activity during this two-week ti

UVAFinance is celebrating the season of graduation with our team members who have graduated or had close family members graduating this year.  Head over to our Flickr album to see this year's shiny new Class of 2023 photos.  Congratulations, we're so proud of you!_____________________________________________________Related Content:  Inspiring Positive Change: UVAFinance's Ann Criser-Shedd

An update from Amanda Lockhart DavisOn April 24, UVAFinance brought invoice processing in-house to deal with the invoice backlog and to better serve you, our internal finance partners, and of course, our vendors.  With the addition of a fantastic team of temps working with our already-wonderful AP team, we've been steadily hacking away at that backlog while also taking care of the new invoices coming in, and today, I'm pleased to share these amazing numbers with you. In Jaggaer, we hav

When opportunity knocks, you can count on Ann Criser-Shedd to answer the door.For three years, beginning in 2009, Criser-Shedd worked at the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, serving as an executive assistant to the President and CEO. One of the first people she met in that role was UVA’s Leonard Sandridge. During one of their frequent conversations, Sandridge shared some encouraging advice with Criser-Shedd: “Get a degree; it will change your life.” It didn’t take her long to act

Are you a petty cash custodian?  When submitting petty cash and checking replenishment, receipts should be assigned to the appropriate spend categories as individual lines and not to the petty cash spend category.  The petty cash spend category is only used to create and increase petty funds, not for replenishments. We will be correcting replenishments that have been previously submitted to the Petty Cash spend category in error, and then locking the petty cash spend category for Cent

Take a free Virginia Recreation class IM-Rec is now Virginia Recreation! Join a free group fitness class this spring-summer. Classes include Cycling, Yoga, Body Pump and Pilates. Classes run through July 28, 2023. Click HERE to view the schedule. Classes Grow Through Stress: How to See Stressors as an Opportunity June 8, 3:30 PM  Presented by FEAP See all of FEAP's past events as well as their virtual library on their website.

As you may know, we changed the expense report approval routing on May 22 to require two unique approval steps. This involved adding alternate routing to Cost Center managers, Senior Department Finance Approvers’ supervisors, and others not previously required to approve expense reports.While we completed significant testing of multiple scenarios before moving forward with these changes, we have received feedback that the Cost Center manager step, specifically, was causing concern as ALL approve

It's been a little while since we've done a Sprint Podcast! Things, as ever, are busy in UVAFinance, but we have been hosting regular Sprint discussions. In this episode, Patty and LaVerne catch you up on our March discussions on Fear.  Next time, they'll recap our recent round robins, which have (rather delightfully) been all over the place, covering topics from women's sports to healthcare disparities to artificial intelligence.  LISTEN IN_________________________________

The Clean-Up Squad has been in UVAFinance for about a month now, and oh, the difference they've made!  Check it out below:464 business management cases to dateThousands of POs closed via mass closures (did you know procurement shoppers can close POs?  Check it out!)73 other Salesforce cases handled as part of the process8,397 total Workday Transactions processed (uh, wow!)Here's how those Workday transactions break down: Task BehaviorCountAdjust Accounting4,809Assign Costing Alloc

In UVAFinance, the Clean-Up team has been working on cleaning up financial transactions on our schools' and units' behalves, and we've also shared some best practices on doing cleanup yourself on your own financial transactions.  But in today's blog post, we just wanted to remind you:  don't forget your Workday Inbox.It's the "under the bed" of financial spring cleaning: something you may not think of immediately, but something that's probably pretty cluttered and that may be affecting

UVAFinance is pitching in to help schools and units in the necessary cleanup of financial transactions before the end of the fiscal year by creating the Clean-Up Squad. We've onboarded a talented team of temps who have taken up the task of spring-cleaning thousands of financial transactions for you! You can read more about this effort here. We thought you’d like to get to know the team who is tidying up your financial transactions. Plus, the Clean-Up Squad members are seeking permanent positions

There's a new crop of tips and tricks from our AP team this week!Tips for tax:  An invoice should follow the terms and conditions of PO, whether to include tax or not, assuming that the PO is responsible for the origin of the Invoice.  Remember that UVA is tax-exempt and can supply a tax-exempt certificate at a vendor's request.Tip on Invoice processing:  When entering invoices manually, enter the supplier invoice number first to let the system check if the invoice already exists

There's a new crop of tips and tricks from our AP team this week!Tips for tax:  An invoice should follow the terms and conditions of PO, whether to include tax or not, assuming that the PO is responsible for the origin of the Invoice.  Remember that UVA is tax-exempt and can supply a tax-exempt certificate at a vendor's request.Tip on Invoice processing:  When entering invoices manually, enter the supplier invoice number first to let the system check if the invoice already exists

There's a new crop of tips and tricks from our AP team this week!Tips for tax:  An invoice should follow the terms and conditions of PO, whether to include tax or not, assuming that the PO is responsible for the origin of the Invoice.  Remember that UVA is tax-exempt and can supply a tax-exempt certificate at a vendor's request.Tip on Invoice processing:  When entering invoices manually, enter the supplier invoice number first to let the system check if the invoice already exists

Stephanie, Murphy, and PeterStephanie McAteer really likes puzzles, whether they’re the actual, boxed variety with hundreds to thousands of pieces or the financial variety that involves analyzing financial statements and deep dives into numbers. Her love of fashioning a big picture out of a myriad of little pieces serves her well as a Senior Financial Analyst in UVAFinance, a role she’s held for eight months now (we’re a little late in introducing her).McAteer hails from Williamsburg and has a b