Financial Management Web Reports
Contact details: Head of Management Accounts
Link to: Finance reports
Contents of this page:
- How can I locate the web reports?
- How do I gain access to the web reports?
- Which reports do I use?
- Budget reports
- Transaction Reports
- Research Grants and Contracts
- Special Funds Reports
- Coding reports
- Purchase Order Reports
The financial management web reports have been designed to provide you with all the information you need to monitor income and expenditure against your budgets. There are reports that provide summary information on School or Department spend, reports showing spend for External Research Grants and Special Funds, more detailed reports that show spend against individual Activity codes and reports showing the individual transactions.
These reports can be accessed via the intranet and provide you with live information (as soon as a transaction is entered onto the finance system it will appear on the relevant report). In the interest of security and confidentiality these reports can only be accessed within the Birkbeck College buildings, they are not available from your home.
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How can I locate the web reports?
The web reports can be found by clicking Financial Report. You will be asked for your UserId and password. If you are unable to log in it means either:
a) You have not yet been set up with access – see How do I gain access to the web reports?
or
b) The Birkbeck intranet does not recognise your UserId – contact ITS.
How do I gain access to the web reports?
In order to view the reports your access needs to be approved and then set up. The School Manager or Head of Professional Service (or delegated authority) approves access within your School/Professional Service Department and is your first point of contact for discussing your reporting requirements. The Head of Management Accounts then sets up the access.
Access can be given to all the codes within a School or it can be restricted to Department, cost centre or activity code. For example a person can be set up to view all the spend for one department within a School, just the external research grants for all the School or one or more individual external research grants.
Access to the web reports can only be given after you have been allocated your UserId (ub*****).
Which reports do I use?
You have the option of viewing the reports on screen in either HTML or PDF format. You also have the option of downloading the reports. There are three options for downloading – CSV, CSV2 and spreadsheet. The CSV option downloads the data into excel unformatted. CSV2 provides you with a text file in columns. Both CSV and CSV2 are specifically unformatted and do not have column heading. The Spreadsheet option downloads a formatted version into excel – use this version to include column headings.
If you have access to the reports at School level you can use the options (the drop down menus on the individual reports) to select a report for the whole School or choose a specific Department, cost centre or activity. For some reports you can select specific analysis codes or a set range of analysis codes.
Types of reports available to view:
- Budget reports
- Transaction report
- External Research Grant reports
- Special Funds report
- Coding reports
- Purchase Order reports
You may not have access to all these types of reports. It depends upon your agreed access requirements.
Budget reports
The budget reports shows the actual and committed expenditure against the agreed budget in the financial year of the period selected. The financial year runs from August to July. For example if you select the period FEB10 the report will show you the income and expenditure for the period August 2009 up to and including February 2010.
The annual budget shown is the budget for the whole of the financial year. The amount will not change if you select a period part way through the year (Feb10
for example).
The current list of budget reports for individual monitoring are as follows:
Department Report
This report shows income and expenditure against budget for each activity code within the Department. It shows it at analysis code level, so there is an individual row for each analysis code with spend or budget against it.
Department report of income and expenditure by analysis code
Department Summary Income and expenditure by activity
For each Department it summarises by Activity code into four headings – Income, Internal Transfers, Non pay expenditure and Pay expenditure.
School reports
There are additional summary reports at School level.
Explanation of the columns in the above reports
These budget reports have the same format of columns:
To MAY09 |
Shows the income or expenditure at the same point in time in the previous year. For example, if you selected the period May10 this column will show you the actual for the period Aug08 to May09. |
Full Year |
Shows you the total annual income or expenditure for the previous year. For example if you select Jan10 this column will still show you the actual for the year Aug08 to Jul09. |
Monthly Expenditure |
Shows the income and expenditure for the selected period. |
Monthly Committed Expenditure |
Shows the purchase orders raised via bluqube, but not yet paid in the selected period. |
Monthly Total |
Adds the Monthly expenditure to the Monthly Committed expenditure to give a total spend for the selected month. |
Annual Budget |
Shows the annual budget for that line of income or expenditure. |
Expenditure to date |
This is the total of the selected period’s expenditure and all the previous periods expenditure in that financial year. For example if you select the Apr10 period then the expenditure to date is the total of expenditure from Aug09 up to and including Apr10. |
All Committed Expenditure |
The total value of all outstanding commitments (when orders are produced through bluqube) up to and including the period selected. |
Total to date |
The sum of the “Expenditure to date column” and the “All Committed Expenditure” column. |
Variance |
The annual budget less the total to date. A minus value is favourable. For expenditure budgets it means you have spent less than the budget. For income budgets it means the actual income is greater than the budgeted income. |
Transaction Report
This report provides a list of transactions for the selected criteria. You can select to see all the transactions in a School, in a Department, cost centre, activity code or analysis code. You can choose a range of periods.If you want to see the transactions for the financial year 2009-10 you would choose the start period Aug09 and the end period Jul10.If you just wanted to see the transactions for a specific month, the start and end period would both be that month e.g. Apr10.If you wanted to see all the transactions for a single analysis code within a Department for the period Aug09 to May10, you would select the Department, select the analysis code and leave cost centre and activity set to the default “___ALL___”. Then select the start and end periods.The report is sorted in the order of Department, cost centre, activity code, analysis code and then date order. It has 6 columns.
How up-to-date is the information on the reports?
If you want to view the most up to date report select the current period e.g Mar10. This will show all the transactions and balances as soon as they are entered onto the finance system. So if an invoice is entered on the finance system today you will be able to see it on today's report.
Research Grants and Contracts
This report includes all the active Research Grant activity codes for your School/Department. It compares the cumulative expenditure with the allocated expenditure budget for each grant and reports any variance between the two.
Explanation of the columns in the report:
- Total Grant - the expenditure budget for the grant broken down by analysis code.
- Expend for Month - shows the expenditure in the month you have selected.
- Expend Cumulative - the total of all spend on the grant from start date up to and including the month you have selected.
- % Grant Spent – compares Expend Cumulative with Total Grant in percentage terms.
- Unspent Grant – Total grant less cumulative expenditure
Research Summary Report
The report includes all the active Research Grant activity codes for your School/Department. It compares the actual income received and expenditure incurred with the budgeted income and expenditure of the project.
Explanation of the columns in the report:
- Actual – actual cumulative income and expenditure for the period range selected
- Commitment – Purchase orders raised, but not yet paid.
- Plan – the budgeted income and expenditure for the period range selected
- Var – Actual less the Plan. Negative amount means a favourable variance.
Research Detail Transactions
This report provides a list of transactions for live research grant projects. You can view all the research transactions for your department or choose a specific project.
Research Grants – Salary Codes Totalled
This report analyses staff expenditure charged to the research projects. For each member of staff it provides a monthly salary cost.
Research Detail – Closed accounts
This report provides a list of transactions for closed research grant projects. You can view all the research transactions for your department or choose a specific project.
Research Summary – Closed Accounts
The report includes all the closed Research Grant activity codes for your School/Department. It compares the actual income received and expenditure incurred with the budgeted income and expenditure for each of the closed projects. You can select a specific research project or view all the closed projects for your department.
Special Funds report
There will be limited access to reports on special funds. If you responsibilities include monitoring special funds, then please contact your School Manager. The special funds report lists all the Special Funds within your department (or School if you have access at this level). For each Special Fund the report shows:
- The opening balance at the start of the current financial year.
- A total by analysis code of income or expenditure in the current year to date.
- The total of opening balance plus current year income and expenditure (closing balance).
You can select a specific Special Fund or all the Special Funds within your department. To view the detailed transactions for any of the Special Funds select the Transactions report.
Coding reports
These reports provide information on the account codes available to use.
List of current coding reports:
- Live Codes
- Activity Codes
- Analysis Codes
Live Codes
A live code is an account code combination (cost centre, activity, analysis) that has already been set up and is available to use. If you have an invoice for payment or income to be credited and you are not sure which analysis code to use, you could use this report to find a suitable analysis code that has already been set up and is ready to use. You can select a specific activity code or view all the live codes for a cost centre, department or School (depending upon your access).
The Live codes list will not include closed account codes. To close an account code the person should complete the “Request for new/change to an activity code” form and send to June Molloy.
Activity Codes
This report lists all the activity codes that have been set up against a cost centre, Department or school.
Analysis Codes
This report gives a complete listing of all the analysis codes. If you have a payment to make or income to credit and none of the codes already set up (see live codes report) correctly describe the type of income or expenditure, you can use this report to find a suitable analysis code. The next step is to make a request to the finance department to set it up as a live code.
Purchase Order Reports
These reports provide information on purchase orders raised via the electronic purchase order system, bluqube.
List of current Purchase Order reports:
- Outstanding purchase orders
- All purchase orders
- Invoices awaiting authorisation
- Adhoc notes attached to a purchase order
- List of most frequently used suppliers
Outstanding purchase orders
This lists all the purchase orders that have been raised but not yet matched to an invoice. Where a purchase order has been part matched, the report shows the balance outstanding on that purchase order. You can run the report for your School, Department or specific cost centre.
All purchase orders
You can use this report to list the purchase orders according to their status. For example if you want a list of not fully authorised purchase orders, you would select this option under select status.
Invoices awaiting authorisation
This report lists all the purchase order related invoices according to their status. For example if you want a list of invoices awaiting authorisation, under invoice status you would select “N”.
Adhoc notes attached to a purchase order
This is a supplementary report to the Outstanding purchase order report. Where notes have been written about a purchase order, this lists the notes for each purchase order.
List of the most frequently used suppliers
This lists all the suppliers used in the last two years. It is listed in order of frequency, with the most used suppliers at the top of the list. It lists suppliers that have been paid against codes that are live at the time you run the report. A list of recently used suppliers is also available in bluqube.
How do I close an account code which is no longer in use?
To close an account code the person should complete the “Request for new/change to an activity code” form and send to June Molloy.