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Budget & Finance Glossary

Glossary to help you understand the most commonly used finance terms and concepts.

Term  Description
Financial Activity Hub Learn about the Financial Activity Hub (FinAH), a next generation analytical platform that helps drive data driven decision making as it relates to all financial activity. Financial Activity Hub
Business Intelligence

The integration of business policy and process with data to make data-driven decisions. There will be three BI avenues for campus:

  • Oracle Financials Cloud BI tools to access Oracle financial data
  • Cognos from Financial Activity Hub (FAH) to access legacy financial data, Oracle financial data, and other Activity Hub data
  • FinLink and Querylink to access legacy financial data
Collab and Jira Confluence is an online space for communication and documentation. Jira is a Project Management Software managed by ITS-PRO and built to plan, track, release software/system, and report. Utilized by project team members for time tracking. Request Access to Confluence or Jira
Chart of Accounts (CoA) COA User Guide
Oracle Financials Cloud (OFC) OFC will be UC San Diego’s modern, intuitive solution to effectively plan, budget, manage and steward the university's assets and resources. It will be replacing IFIS. (Campus Notice - Oracle)
Financial Information System (FIS) UC San Diego’s Financial Information System is comprised of Oracle Financials Cloud and Concur Travel & Expense - used to transact, track, and report financial data for Campus, Foundation, and Health.
Minimally Viable Product (MVP) Technology that meets the basic, fundamental needs of the user, before it is comprehensively built out
POET-AF POET are additional fields in the CoA that will be used for project designation. Sponsored projects will require the additional ‘AF’ elements. POET-AF is comprised of the following elements: Project Number, Expenditure Organization, Expenditure Types, Task Number, Award Number, and Funding Sources.
Project A project is a collection of financial activities and is similar to the fund sources/indexes used in the legacy system.
Concur

A fully integrated travel booking and expense management system - Concur Travel & Expense: Glossary

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Oracle Financials Cloud offering that includes grant management, project costing, and project billing and contracts modules.
WalkMe The WalkMe Browser Extension adds various tips, walkthroughs, and resources to your Oracle and Concur applications. We also use WalkMe to add additional validation to your transactions, announcements, and reminders. Download the extension to your browser to unlock these features.
Services & Support Find answers, request services, or get help from our team at the UC San Diego Services & Support portal. Also referred to as ServiceNow, SNOW, or S&S.
SPARCM Sponsored Projects Account Receivable and Cash Management: tool for invoicing and financial reporting
Approve  An action taken in OFC to approve a transaction that has been routed to an employee for review.
Approval Workflow (WF) Electronic approval process for transactions in the Oracle and Concur system. Transactions in OFC are automatically assigned to Financial Unit Approvers.
Delegate An employee to whom another employee grants the ability to (1) enter expenses and/or (2) approve transactions on his/her behalf.
Commitment Refers to the encumbrance type for approved requisitions.
Preparer or Requisitioner The employee that prepares a transaction in OFC to include Expense Reports and Purchase Requisitions.
Budget Terms Budget Glossary
Data Glossary

Terms used for financial reports and analytics. You will notice that some field names appear multiple times, we are currently working on consolidating and updating the field names and descriptions in the glossary. Data Glossary

Expense Types

Expense Types are found in each Concur document. When adding expenses to an Expense Report, the Expense Type will generally be the first thing the user selects. An example of where the Concur Expense Type is located can be found below. Expense Types vs. Expenditure Types

Expenditure Types

Expenditure Type is a POETAF value which interacts with the Project Portfolio Management (PPM) module in Oracle. An Expenditure Type is only necessary if the expense is being charged to a project. When an Expense is associated with a Project, the expense will post to the ledger according to the project Expenditure Type rather than the default COA (Chart of Accounts) Account value. Expense Types vs. Expenditure Types

Oracle Procurement 

Review a glossary of terms used in Oracle Procurement 

Financial Unit Approver

A Financial Unit Approver responsibilities include:

  • Reviewing COA and financial information in Requisitions (and editing if needed)
  • Approving purchases
  • Reviewing and certifying Invoices

In the User Roles Report, search for the financial unit in the Role field to pull a list of Financial Unit Approvers. This is described in detail in the How to Look Up User Roles in Oracle KBA.

Find answers, request services, or get help from our team at the UC San Diego Services & Support portal or call the Finance Help Line at (858) 246-4237.