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Process and Timeline

Processing Your Monthly Department Financial Review

An effective process will help you identify errors and inconsistencies, determine availability of funds and identify internal control deficiencies. UTSA’s reconciliation process begins with financial information posting to the SAHARA reconciliation, an automated reconciliation tool contained within UTShare/PeopleSoft, and ends with approver/owners electronically approving the reconciliation:

Process and Timeframe

The monthly reconciliation process must minimally include the following steps:
View the reconciliation training and checklist on the Accounting Services Training website for more details.

  • Review your revenue, expense and budget transactions in SAHARA. Submit correction requests for expenses or revenues that need to be moved to another cost center or project.
    • See Corrections web page for instructions on how to submit a correction.
  • Review amount available to spend to ensure an adequate budget balance remains for any pending transactions.
    • Negative balances that are correct must be fixed immediately through a correction or a budget transfer from another allowable set of funds.
  • PeopleSoft records commitments the department has made for purchases or travel as encumbrances. The reconciler must review these encumbrances monthly for accuracy.
  • You must maintain a listing of any purchase requisitions more than $15,000 until they generate a completed purchase order.
  • You must monthly reconcile actual salary expense to the annual budget by position for non-hourly employees.
    • Refer to the Salary Reconciliation Template on the Accounting Services Training website for more information.
    • You must be able to demonstrate how this detailed review is performed as requested during a QAR.
  • You are not required to keep a separate ledger or listing of all transactions; however, you should be aware of departmental activity so that you will notice if something significant is missing.

Institutional Compliance and Risk Services evaluates the timeliness of reconciliations and approvals in their Quality Assurance Reviews (QARs). Department reconcilers should complete reconciliations by the end of the month following the month being reconciled. Department managers should complete and approve reconciliations no later than six weeks after the end of the month.

Outstanding SAHARA Reconciliations

The Outstanding SAHARA Reconciliations Report, which shows cost centers and projects in an unapproved (UN-APR) or unreconciled (UN-REC) state on the 16th of each month, is sent monthly to Business Service Centers (BSCs) on the 18th. This is sent to ensure departments and/or BSCs are aware of reports that have not been reconciled or approved.