PEOPLESOFT A/R BILLING TEAM MEETING 06/20/02

 

Attending were:  Angela Beecham, Cecilia Kerlin, Ellen Lepine, Vanessa Peoples,

Suzanne Sembiante (recorder of minutes), Rachel Strickland, Raja                   Surampudy and Amy Taylor.

(Jim Green, Katy Hutton and Bill Spear were absent.)

 

 

Per Angie’s discussion with Raja, the Webcast information should arrive by Monday,

June 24th, 2002.

 

Angie also asked Ellen to inform the group as to where we stood with 8.4 .  Ellen said it was installed last week and that UD resolved a lot of tech environment issues, but there were still issues to be resolved, such as the “Demo Database” which contains dummy data and “Security” which is to be ‘read only’ access.  FI, TEST and DEV to be done mid to late July.  So, it will be 4-6 weeks, before it is up and running.  She also said Jane Wise attended their session to aid in the discussions pertaining to the database.  She also stated that “Peoplebooks” are up and running.  Though, the ‘Panels/Screens’ still cannot be seen in 8.4.  She stated, too, that the ‘Tables’ have been discussed with Roby and Carol.  And, she said a consultant will be present with entire group in order to set-up ‘Global Tables’.  A/R Billing Team will have input.  Core products (Acct’s. Payable, General Acctg., and Purchasing) to be completed in August 2002.  Grants, Accounts Receivable and

Billing to be completed in September 2002.  Ellen also noted that RFP still isn’t put

together for the consultants.

 

People had difficulty preparing for today’s meeting because of Topsy’s down time.

 

 

Training and review discussions today revolved around Core PeopleSoft Receivables Tables (in Peoplebooks) as follows:

 

1.            Defining Options – the ‘Deleting Workfiles’ option, per Raja, can be left on only for a limited time since they consume a large amount of space, causing system to operate slowly.

a.            Maximum Number of Rows in each module must be defined according to

      ‘user’ need.  Each module contains a certain number of rows.

 

b.         Per Raja, 8.4 is on the Web and we are sharing the power which will

probably slow things up…this is one of the ‘performance issues’ being

addressed.

 

 

 

 

 

2.      Defining Receivables Options – Angie & Raja hope to obtain knowledge from         the two upcoming training sessions (7/1/02 and 8/5/02) on which they can base future decisions, such as whether A/R and Billing can be split into two groups.

 

 

3.        Defining User Preferences –  Raja said this can be done at the ‘user’ level.

           The question, “Is the ‘group unit’ equal to the ‘business unit’?” came up when

           the ‘return address’ topic was being discussed.  It’s thought that this topic is

           related to batch processing and that both group and business units are one and

the same.   Discussed, too, were the possible writing-off of bills under $5.00 in the future and how refunds will be issued using PeopleSoft (through Accounts Payable?) as well as the need to set limits on refunds in PeopleSoft.

     

 4.       Understanding Banks & Counterparts – Consensus is that this topic is a

           Treasurer’s Office function and more technical due to bank connections.

 

 5.       Understanding Receivables Processing Options – Per Ellen, the ‘big issue’

           here is “Entries” (she also stated Angie’s training session will probably cover

           a lot on this section).  And, under “Setting-up System Functions” is a very

large technical chart, which Rachel indicated she went through and perused the                                                    automatic system entries (one of which, is the write-off option per Angie).

      

 6.       Defining Entry Types & Reasons – Everyone questioned what “Deduction

           Management” was!  Angie said Miscellaneous Billing is being cleaned-up in

           preparation to move on and create new identifiers, using numbers or letters,

           in PeopleSoft.  It was also noted that invoices will be set-up according to

           aging categories in PeopleSoft and the ‘Reasons’ must be defined by users.

           The section on “Setting-up Accounting Entries” discusses how our entries

           will relate to General Accounting.  And, with regard to section on “Setting-up

           Group Types”, Raja says these are query and reporting types and we must

           set-up as many as we need.  With regard to the section entitled “Setting-up

           Un-post Reason Codes”, Raja says it sounds as though we may not see audit

           trails when reversing payments.  This needs to be addressed at a later date.

   

 7.       Setting-Up Payment Terms – The ‘Month Increment’ term  was discussed

           and whether this is related to timing?  Also, does the ‘counter’ start with the

           ‘Invoice Due Date’?

 

Per Rachel, University of Kansas brought-up PeopleSoft on May 6th and they use it for:

Grants, Billing and Miscellaneous Billing. 

 

Homework for next meeting is to go through “Business Processes” and at the next meeting, 8.4 will be reviewed as long as it is up and running.

 

Our next meeting is on July 1st, 2002, 10:45 a.m. to 6 p.m. in 003 Hullihen Hall, and is a Webcast session entitled “Intro to Financials”.

Due to the July 4th holiday, our next regular meeting will be July 18th, 2002.