UTSA ACRONYMS, TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

OGC – Office of General Counsel

IDT - Interdepartmental Transfer

OAR – Office of Admissions Registrar

AFR – Annual Financial Report

BDL - Budget Document Long [session]

RM – Revised Module/ revised budget

LAR-Legislative Appropriations Request

LBB-Legislative Budget Board

Fiscal Note

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DEFINITIONS

Lapsed funds-Departmental funds remaining from previous budgets.  

Salary Savings-Created when a vacant position is filled at a lower salary causing excess funds to exist.  This does not include excess funds from a temporarily vacant position.

Accounts/Sub-Accounts

An Account number is made up of the Budget Group plus the Sub-Account (e.g., Acct. 14-0216-1009 is made up of Bud-Grp. 14-0216-10 plus the Sub-Acct. "09"). Budget Groups are a Funding Unit; a sub-account is an expenditure type in that Funding Unit.

Sub-Accounts (sometimes called "accounts") relate to one and only one budget group. However, there may be a theoretical infinite number of sub-accounts for a budget group. An account number is 10 digits. The sub-account, is usually referring to the suffix of that account number. For UTSA, the sub-account is that last 2 digits of the account number, and it is typically formatted as "XX-XXXX-XXXX", eg. 14-1664-2001, which is a Faculty Salaries account. The sub-account, is referred to as the -01 account. The 14-1664-2002 account is the Teaching Assistants account within the same budget group, and it's sub-account is -02.

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Authorization Entities

A user can have an extensive variety of authorizations. The desk-view combination determines a users authorization. The PF1 key allows a user to select the authorization he/she wishes to use by selecting the DESK he/she is "sitting on". 

In budget, we usually distinguish between a budget office (processing department) user and a departmental user.

Budget office user- someone who works in the budget offices, processing budgets. They typically have special authorization above what a departmental user has and can view all the BDLs at UTSA.

Departmental user- someone who works in the departments, processing budgets (among other things). They have more limited capability in the budget system. For document processing (BDL), they initiate the BDLs in their areas, and they cannot access BDLs of other departments.

Desks

An electronic desk is created and maintained by the DEFINE Administrative Services Office. Each desk is able to perform specific tasks. There may be up to 40 people assigned to one desk. Requests to update or create a new desk must be directed to DEFINE Administrative Services Office at  x 4556 or x 4343

Views

"What" a user is authorized for is described under views. It can be a unit, an account or accounts, or combinations of both. It allows one to make special combinations of data for authorization, giving greater flexibility (and complexity) to the authorization system. There are two kinds of views used in budget:

1. Master View
• controls electronic document routing.
• is created and maintained by the DEFINE Administrative Services Office. A Request for DEFINE Access Form must be completed by the department in order to add accounts to the master view. This form is available under DEFINE Administration at this web site.
• consists of accounts or units. An account may belong to ONE master view.
2. Administrative View
• controls what accounts people can view and/or update.
• is created and maintained by the DEFINE Administrative Services Office. An account can be added to the administrative view by the department completing a Request for DEFINE Access Form.  This form is available under DEFINE Administration at this web site.
• consists of account or units. An account may belong to MANY administrative views.

Budget Groups

Budget Groups, as mentioned before, correspond to an individual instance of a budget group sequence number (formerly referred to as a "department number"). They are a collection of accounts, often called "sub-accounts", containing the same budget group. For UTSA, the first 8 numbers of the account are the budget group.

For UTSA, the budget group is typically formatted as "XX-XXXX-XX", eg. 14-1664-20.

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Collapsed Wages

Currently, UTSA stores wages/salary items as collapsed entries, and uses this data in the printed budget rather than printing each wage/salary item. This change was implemented because of the large number of items in UTSA wages/salary accounts caused an excessive amount of pages in the printed budget (where the details of these types of accounts were not meaningful for purposes of the budget review process).

Departments

While departments may be described as an individual business process area (eg. the Budget Office department), the individual "department" (as far as data relationships are concerned) is more distinct than this. The budget group sequence number (formerly referred to as the department number) corresponds 1:1 to an individual budget group number. Since many different budget groups fall under a business process area, this produces many "departments" within a single business process department.

Documents

A document is an electronic form used for recording transactions. The budget electronic document (*DEFINE commands BDL/BDS) is a major process for the budget office. It is identified with a Doc-ID which is assigned to the document at the time it is created. The number is generated by the computer and cannot be manipulated or changed.

In budget, the Doc-ID, or document, has a 1:1 relationship with the budget group number (or budget group sequence number). One and only one document is created for a particular budget group.

The document ID number is a useful tool when researching the status of a document, and its naming convention is standard.

      

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Job Class Codes

People are assigned particular job class codes when appointed to University employment, identified as a four-digit job class code (eg. 0009 Professorship). People can be appointed to more than one account in the same job class or to more than one job class in the same or many accounts.

Line Items

Line items are individuals budgeted to a salaried account. Since a person may be budgeted in 1 or many accounts, an item ties that person (SSN) to an account.

Line items may be identified as corresponding to the official budget, the revised budget, or the budget document, and they are stored as completely different records on the same file. The item records are displayed in *DEFINE using the following commands.

     BIL     LIST LINE ITEMS FOR AN SSN- LONG SESSION

     BIS     LIST LINE ITEMS FOR AN SSN- SUMMER SESS

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Rates

Rates are the annual salary rate for a person, but it may differ from the stipend that is paid to that person. For example, a person may have a $50,000 rate, but if they are working 50% time, the annual stipend actually paid to that person is $25,000. Rate records are tied to a person, via the SSN.

Rate records may be identified as corresponding to the official budget (long/summer session), the revised budget (long/summer session), or the budget document (long/summer session), and they are stored as completely different records on the same file, BD-BUDGET-TABLES. Rates are also stored on the ITEM file, so keeping the rate records in sync is a continuing challenge. Rates are also displayed on the BIL and BIS commands in *DEFINE.

Units

The University's hierarchy is built on the unit structure. Units report to a higher level unit, which reports upward until it reaches a unit which ultimately reports to the president's unit.

Units are usually formatted as a 7-digit number. Sometimes, the unit is referred to as the first four numbers, with the remaining 3 characters referred to as the "sub-unit". The sub-unit may contain numeric or alpha values.

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