Report Development
Do you wish you could be more involved in the report development process? Wonder what happened to that enhancement request you submitted? Curious what we're working on now? Find answers to these questions here.
Get Involved in Report Development
Do you wish you could have more of a voice in the report development process? Do you feel frustrated that current reports don't meet your needs? The BI & Financial Reporting team has an ongoing need for report testers as well as subject matter experts to contribute to report development efforts. We need individuals in a variety of roles with a variety of financial expertise.
If you would be interested in participating in either of these activities, please complete this form. Staff, please gain approval from your supervisor for your participation prior to completing the survey. If we reach out to you, you will have the opportunity to decline participation at any time.
Time commitments (per report development engagement):
- Report testers are called on to test new reports for accuracy before they are released into production. Time commitment is 1-2 hours per week for 2-3 weeks.
- Focus group subject matter experts are called on to provide input into the report development process during the design stage. Time commitment is typically 1 hour per week for 4-12 weeks, with some additional homework time between workgroup meetings.
Report Enhancement Requests
If you have an idea for a new report or an enhancement to an existing report that would make doing your job easier, submit your idea in a Budget & Finance Enhancement Request. Don't worry that someone else may have already submitted the same idea. When we see the same idea submitted by different users, it helps us to highlight the need for campus and we will consolidate requests after submission.
After you submit your idea, it goes through a series of vetting, approval, and prioritization steps before it moves into report development. In the first step, the idea is reviewed by the Budget and Finance User Group (BFG). You can reach out to your Vice Chancellor area BFG representative to discuss your idea in detail and find out what other ideas the BFG has discussed. The entire report enhancement process can take several months to complete. The process flow is outlined below.
Current and Future Report Development
The table below describes work that is ongoing for release in the near future.
| Report | Reporting Tool | What is being done | Anticipated release |
| Faculty and Researcher Dashboard | Cognos | Entire dashboard is being rebuilt in Cognos to deliver better speed and add payroll projections. The summary page will include balances net of payroll projections, and the drillthrough pages will include projection details. | March 2022 |
| Transaction Details | Cognos | Separate tabs for PPM Expenditure Details and GL Transaction Details to replace and consolidate similar reports on Project Balances with Expenditure Details dashboard, Project Panorama, and Project Cost Details report with better performance. Search by all available person roles, organization/financial unit, expenditure type/category and account code/category, time period of your choice, vendor, invoice number, PO number, isolate or filter out cost transfers, and more. Possible addition of a high-risk filter to empower risk-based transaction sampling and ledger review. | March 2022 |
| Expanded Project Summary | Cognos | Like the drillthrough pages of the Faculty and Researcher Dashboard, but run as standalone and searchable by award, project, and project-task. A single report with PPM details on one tab and GL details on another tab. Will include payroll projection details. | March-April 2022 |
| Project Portfolio dashboard | Cognos | Like the summary page of the Faculty and Researcher dashboard. Search by financial unit/organization, all available person roles (i.e. project/task manager, fund manager, etc.), isolate certain project types and classifications for departmental fiscal reporting. Additional tabs for commitments, high-level variance analysis (GL-PPM, UC Path-Oracle, Kuali-Oracle, etc.), and payroll and non-payroll expenditures by month by project. Drillthroughs to Expanded Project Summary and detailed variance analysis reports for further detailed analysis. The Project Balances with Expenditure Details dashboard and Project Panorama, which have suffered chronic performance issues, will be deprecated after release of this dashboard. | April 2022 |
| Contract Receivables Billing and Payments | Oracle BI Publisher | Dashboard for fund manager and fiscal manager use that brings together existing reports for managing receivables (Trial Balance Report, AR Aging by customer, Sponsored AR Aging) and delivers a new report for contract billing and payments. The new report will show the entire contract life cycle: events, invoices, payments on those invoices with details about the payments, and chartstring information about where the revenue posted. | February 2022 |
| GL-PPM Reconciliation | Cognos | Enhancements to the drillthrough page to make it easier to identify the source of differences between GL and PPM with documented instructions about what to do with various types of differences. | May 2022 |
Future goals for implementation in fiscal year 2023:
- Filling gaps for departmental fiscal manager reporting
- Filling gaps for recharge facility manager reporting
- Training grant reporting
- Graduate student funding reporting
- Clinical trials reporting
- Departmental, divisional, and VC fiscal leadership reporting