SIMBA Session Transcript – November 2, 2018[Debbie] Welcome everyone. We are here for our SIMBA session today and I am joined by Corry Bullock. Wave Corry! I don't really have the camera adjusted correctly here. Let me...

[Corry] Turn it away from me.

[Debbie] No I'm not turning it away from you.

Simba is here as well. We are going to cover a couple things and we're just going to start as we usually do because the first thing I always like to let everybody know is why are we doing this.

GoalsThe goals of SIMBA are to replace and retire IBIS financial including pay an effort; replace eBuy; we're going to be updating Concur; and we're going to be replacing some other financial systems used by ARL, A&BS, and OPP. That is our goal with SIMBA. It's not going to take care of every problem we've ever had with the financial system. But we are definitely going to replace IBIS and we're definitely going to enhance. It's going to be better, but don't expect it to work miracles, otherwise we'll be under pressure.

[Corry] Yes.

Project Update[Debbie] A quick project update. We are still in the Explore Phase. And the Explore Phase will go through March 2019. What we do during the Explore Phase is talk about how we intend to run SAP to support our business. The result is the Business Blueprint. We also call it the PDD, process design document. That's detailed documentation of all the information we gathered during the Explore Phase through the requirements workshops. It's basically where we're learning and deciding. Corry, I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about what that process has been like from the grants perspective.

[Corry] It's just really intense. We literally run from meeting to meeting. We have three to four-hour sessions where we're going over the processes. Just trying to decide what's the best way to do things.

[Debbie] It's kind of like they layout here's the way it works. And we say either that will work or won't work.

[Corry] Then we end up with what they call parking lot items, where they're just issues that arise during the meetings. Then we have to, after the meetings, we have to try and find time to go get answers to those parking lot items.

[Debbie] The Explore sessions have been pretty intense, but it's also been a lot of fun to look at how we're doing things and challenge the way we're doing some things. Right now, we are exploring, and that's within the project team. We're pulling in some people needed for special areas. Then the next part of the Explore session will be playback sessions where we will take what we've designed and play it back to the advisory committee groups that we've set up and get their feedback and their input to make sure we've kind of got it right. One thing I want to mention is that by the end of March, and really kind of by the end of January, really, we're shooting for to have the process designs done, we will be done designing the system. Then really the next year we're going to be configuring and testing and testing and testing and testing. Then we should have the system pretty well up and running by December of 2019.

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Then we'll move into more testing, more user testing and training. We'll be ready to go by July 2020. I just want to mention that because I just want to make sure everybody understands that once we kind of have this design, we're going to start moving forward. We're not going to make major changes to it after we have it set.

Sometimes I think people think well we can just keep tweaking and tweaking and tweaking. We can make minor tweaks maybe to a data element or something in terms of what an element in that but how the elements fit together, not really. Where are we?

Project Management UpdateProject management update. We are green, we're on time and on budget. Yay. A good thing when you're only five months into the project.

The enterprise data design has been delivered in approved. That's our overall data design. The master data design delivery is on the horizon. We're all working on our separate master data designs. We started working on a methodology for organizational structure conversion. How are we going to convert and look at the organizational structure? We've completed the communications creative brief and that's been submitted for review. The development system build is in progress and on track. Development guidelines and best practices document is in process. Testing and validation documents are in process. We continue to have weekly hands on training sessions with the technical and the reporting groups. Lots going on to the project overall.

Functional Team UpdateThen delving in on the Functional Team side. As we said, we have just been doing Explore Sessions, getting ready for those process design documents. The chart of accounts master data design has been approved. Last month, our SIMBA session focused on that. We have started talking about the accounts receivable processes.

Actually, this week we also had our first accounts payable. SBP, which is SAP budget planning, the budget planning module. We've talked about personnel expenditure planning, salary tables, position budgets, benefits budget, capital budget, and the five-year plan board scenarios. There has been a lot of focus on budget planning. Grants management, which is Corry's area. Corry is our grants management lead and we've been doing a lot of work in that area, HCM master data and that's human capital management. Within SAP we have to have an employee minimum master so we're looking at what data we'll pull in from WorkDay into our system so that our system can operate. Normally SAP, the financial and HCM systems work very closely but since we're not implementing SAP HCM we have to build a little mini master to make it work. We've been doing procurement sessions on shopping carts and approvals and requisitions. Lots of detail in there. We've had focus sessions with Applied Research Lab, and the College of Medicine, and the Office of Physical Plant. Lots of various topics so we just kind of focus in. Some of that's a lot of the parking lot items so we come up with. It's like well you know, is this going to work for OPP? We put in a parking lot and we have a session and talk to them specifically about it. The labor distribution and effort confirmation vendor selections is in the final stages. We have a statement of work. We're trying to work through that. We should be on track that by January we'll have that project up and running.

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We're continuing work with Huron on the Concur ERS update. We discussed how to manage a request for a PCard within Concur and what a PCard goods and services report will look like. That's moving forward as well.

Data Analytics and Reporting Team UpdateData Analytics and Reporting. They've been coming to all of our Explore sessions because the Reporting Team needs to understand the processes and the data. The Functional Team will actually identify what are the reports that are needed. The Reporting Team will then build them, but they like to come to just understand how things work. If we say this is the report we need, they have little more background to understand what that means. They've gone to the HCM Master Data, Budget Prep, Debt Management, Accounts Payable, Fixed Assets, lots of different sessions that we've been holding. SAP has a big collection of reporting tools that will be available to the project and they're working through what will be the best ones to use for the reporting as we come out of the SIMBA Functional Explore Sessions. They are holding their advisory committee meetings, there's two advisory committees, I believe, maybe three, I can't remember for reporting. Those groups are meeting. They're getting some questions about eDDS, the electronic document distribution system. They'll be discussing that topic with reporting advisory committees. I do want to clarify in case there was a rumor because I actually probably misstated this. eDDS will not be going away. It will just be that right now IBIS produces all of its reporting, most of the reporting goes directly into eDDS. The difference will be we are not expecting that we'll take reports out of SIMBA and load them all into eDDS. We're not looking to take everything we do out of SIMBA and put it in eDDS. eDDS will still be there as a technology. eDDS is not something SIMBA owns or SIMBA controls. were just saying a lot of the reports that you would now go to eDDS for, you will just come directly into SAP to get. I hope that clarifies a little bit.

Technical Team UpdateTechnical Team. They have built our development environment. They've been working on the final steps to prepare for the authority to operate. That comes from the Office of Information Security. They've met with the Microsoft SAP expert to review the plan and looking at recommendations from them. Planning a lot of meetings around the conversion and integration advisory groups, because there's just a lot going on in that area. Planning for how we can do the conversions and all the integrations that we have to do in the system. Lots of integrations.

They're also meeting weekly to learn. We do, fortunately, had someone come on board who was an experienced SAP developer, Cedric Detry. LSI is also doing sessions on development methodology and change management. Right now, the development folks are really building their skills because they kind of have to wait for us, the Functional Team, to figure out what we want. Then they really get into it and start doing the building, and the development, and the programming that needs to be done. Matt Scott, our Technical Lead, he just returned from a three-day conference at SAP headquarters on Solution Manager, which I actually call "soul man" and he learned about the features and capabilities of the project as well as future plans. We're also trying to keep our fingers in with what's happening within the SAP world.

Security Team UpdateSecurity Team. They're developing a System Security Plan. It will outline the overall security related processes and procedures. They're developing a request process to be used by us, the project team, to request new access or to start the access deprovision process for those who no longer need access. I still

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need access Chris, don't take that away from me yet. They're continuing to meet with various functional groups to gather data around the current business processes. Expanding the SAP security knowledge for coursework and consultant engagement. Developing security strategies that encompass best practices and policy standards to make sure we meet compliance requirements. There's an awful lot of compliance that we need to meet. That's something that's very important as we work through all this.

Organizational Change Management Team UpdateThen the change management team continues to update the website with helpful and timely project information. There'll be a lot more coming out from the communications team, including an inaugural issue of a monthly SIMBA e-newsletter. The members of the SIMBA project team, all of us are attending, I shouldn't say all of us, but representatives of every group are attending an accessibility workshop in November, so we make sure that we understand accessibility and how that will impact us on the project. OCM has also started meeting with financial officers to begin preliminary discussions around end users so we make sure we identify who all the end users are, and who are the people who are going to need trained and make sure we identify those folks and make sure we've got everybody in the loop. They also presented at the fall Financial Officer Retreat, and a recent Administrator Professional Series Level Two session. We're trying to get out there and do a lot.

Project TimelineHere's our project scope. We are right here in November. This is where we're at, we're pretty much in the middle of the Explore Phase. Then in the end of February, early March, that's when we go into the Realize Phase and that's beginning to realize the vision of what we developed in the Explore Phase. Then you'll see there's testing and testing begins in September and we do 1, 2, 3, 4 rounds of testing. Then user acceptance testing and then we begin getting ready for deploy and throughout this will be doing training.

Support PhaseJust a good reminder, what do we need to worry about in the support phase? SCAR: system confusion, anxiety and rage. A reminder to all of you, it is not all going to be peaches and cream when we go live. We're going to a new chart of accounts. The one thing we've talked about is in a way it'll be almost be like you go to work for new University. Some things will be very familiar and other things are going to be totally different. The tool is totally different. Hopefully we'll have given you enough training and orientation that it won't be completely foreign, but the reality is when you first start you're going to have to remember your cost centers and your internal orders and...

[Corry] You'll to make up a lot of cheat sheets!

[Debbie] Yeah! That's going to be important because it's just going to be a big change. We just want to remind everyone it's going to be difficult when we first start but once you get into the system and start using it, you get more familiar with the chart of accounts. It'll be good. It'll be great. Actually, we're seeing a lot of things, so it'll be really cool.

Spotlight – Grants managementToday we're going to do a spotlight on grants management so that is why Corry is here. In grants management that's where we're going to manage sponsored awards, grants, and contracts. Really, it's the post award research administration. Pre-award we're not really looking to do in this system. We're

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having a lot of discussions with Jim Taylor and his folks, with John Hanold, but SAP doesn't really do pre-award. In fact, none of the systems we looked at did pre-award.

[Corry] There will be SIMS integration.

[Debbie] Yep. We're definitely looking at that. We're deciding how much SIMS we'll load in and then how much will need to be added and how that process will work. We're still kind of working through but we're definitely working very closely with the folks who do pre-award.

[Corry] Initially, whatever comes over from SIMS you'll be able to live with and you'll be happy with it.

[Debbie] I'm going to do a review because the last time we talked about the four different general ledger's. We have FI, financial accounting, which is the fund accounting. That's an area most of you won't work with. That's going to be primarily for external reporting. That's central controllers office will primarily work with that. CO is controlling or cost control. That is where we will manage reallocation of costs. Probably managed more centrally. There might be some applications within your units, but primarily a central. Funds management is where most of you will live. That is where we will do the budgetary control. The funds management is the piece that looks at the profit and loss and it's our budget, actual, balance. So budget, actuals, encumbrances, balances. That's this module. It's all the budgetary control. That's the main thing we use to manage our general funds.

The other module we'll have is grants management. This is where we do grant accounting, control and billing. Grants management is really what we want to focus on today. This is what Corry and her group are focused on every day, right?

[Corry] Every day, all day long. And yeah, at night, I'm up during the night.

[Debbie] Yeah, it's funny, you'll be at home and all the sudden you'll be like, Oh, wait, wait a minute, Will that work? And then you come in the next day, and you give them a great idea. And the LSI folks go, that's interesting. But ya, no.

[Corry] And let me just tell you that my little miniature dachshund knows everything and anything about grants management. I talk to him all the time about it.

[Debbie] There is a question. A reminder, please make sure that you go into Q&A to ask the questions, but I noticed there was one here on chat. The question is, why are we going with this product when it's so confusing? So far, the terminology as confusing as shown in the last SIMBA video meeting we had. I'm sure that the terminology is the least of what will be confusing. Why aren't we able to have a product that suits our needs instead of asking thousands of people to conform to it?

Let me put it this way. The terminology can be confusing, it's different in each module, I'll give you that. Actually, it's not really unusual. Cost center is also the terminology used in Workday for what we're going to call a cost center in SAP. If you look at the three different big players in this area, Oracle, and Workday, and SAP, they all have different terminology. They all have different ways of looking at it. That's just the reality. The reality is there is not a product out there that we could have gone with other than one of those three, and SAP was the best for meeting our needs.

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We have to remember IBIS was completely customized for Penn State. The reality is we can no longer go with a fully customized product. We don't have the resources, and we don't have the ability to keep up with the speed of change that's happening in the technology area. We were ahead of the game for 15 years with IBIS and then we got woefully behind over the last 15 years. It's just because of the speed of technology. We can't keep up with it. We have to partner with a large vendor who's constantly looking at the new technology, how is this working, and how are you moving forward.

[Corry] Other universities use SAP and they really like it.

[Debbie] Yeah, I agree. There are some things that are confusing, but keep in mind when we first started talking about departmental accounting and cost centers and sub-objects that was really confusing as well. Yes, it can be confusing, but we will get there.

The worry is that we're going to have a repeat of what has happened with LionPATH and Workday. The reality is that we are doing the best we can to look at lessons learned and make sure that we understand where the pain points were in those systems. We're going to try to avoid that pain as much as we can.

Grants management, that's where we're at. I'm making weird noises because I'm trying to move technology around and I'm not that good at it.

The master data, and the person who just asked a question, this is probably what you're talking about. It all has different names, but you'll get very used to this. We've been working with it now for about three months, and we're beginning to really get it now, it's just kind of the way we talk now. This is what we talked about it the last one, the master data by SAP component. We've got reporting entity and funding source, financial class, which is our object code, function, organizational unit,

program projects and grant funding. What we're going to focus on today is the grants piece of this. In grants management the reporting entity is the company code. That reporting entity, none of you are ever going to have to worry about that again. It's 1855. It's one field. It's not something you'll see on a regular basis. The fund is something that we will derive from most of what we're doing. You'll need to know it's a different type of fund, but you won't necessarily have to remember every single number of those funds. The sponsor class. This is what's a little different in grants management. This is the object codes or the GL account. It's called a sponsor class in grants management because it's a many to one relationship. We could have many general ledger accounts that become part of a sponsored class. Do you have a good example?

[Corry] Many ledger accounts become part of a sponsored class...um...

[Debbie] Um...

[Corry] Well we blew it but ya'll be fine!

[Debbie] Domestic travel, for example. Domestic travel we have in-state, inter-campus, and Conus. Those three would group together for domestic travel for a sponsored program. We may have different types of IT equipment, but it all pulls together into equipment. We have a lot of different supply object codes, but we pull them all together and call it supplies. That's what we mean by sponsored class. We're not going to have a list of 500 object codes. We may have 20 major sponsored classes. Key personnel.

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We're not going to have faculty, staff exempt, staff non-exempt, tech service. We will classify that together as maybe key personnel. Does that makes sense? You can clarify.

[Corry] We'll have to have a discussion later.

[Debbie] Alright.

[Corry] No, you're absolutely right.

[Debbie] It's really just taking those and grouping them together. That's what a sponsored class is. It's a group of GL accounts because in grants management we tend to group them together the way that the sponsor wants to see them. That's what we use the sponsored class for. The functional area. Most of you are not going to need to worry about the functional area. It'll be derived out of what cost center you use. That basically tells us what the mission is. Is this instruction or research? Then we get into the two key areas where this is what you're really going to need to understand in grants management. Fund center, which is same as the cost center. That is the organizational unit. Then the sponsored program is what we will primarily be using in grants management. That is the program, the project revenue, and cost collector. That is where we will manage everything within a grant. The grant funding source. We'll talk about this in a little bit.

That's the overall. Here's the grant, and within that grant, then we can have multiple sponsored programs under it.

It's the grant that pulls it all back together. As somebody mentioned, it can be a little confusing. We have the internal order, WBS element which is also called a funded program, which is also called a sponsored program.

Question: can you give some examples of support that will be available at go live? We're still developing that but the main thing that will be available at go live is all of us. We're planning to have a triage group. I don't know if that's the right word but a quick response team to be able to help people who are having issues and problems. We don't end and all go back to our home unit on July 2. We will be here through December so we have a six month plan of support and that includes our outside consultants. Pretty much through December we are here, active and helping to make sure that things are moving the way they should. That's an example of the support that will be available. I see from my own point that we'll continue to have the SIMBA Sessions to talk about things that might be of issues or where there's confusion. We'll continue to provide training. They'll just be a lot of things that will be doing at go live. Our change management group will be helping us develop those strategies for how we will do that and we will have more details as we get closer to that. We're still 20 months from go live.

[Corry] If if anybody out there after go live is really having a problem, I'm happy to come out and sit with them. You know me, I'll come I'll come to you.

[Debbie] Kathleen Gingrich: Can you go through how we ID a grant project, like a budget and fund? We are going to talk about that. Understand that and we're going to get to that in a little bit. We'll get there. Just hang tight.

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Sometimes my mouse just causes me issues. There we go. What I wanted to do here is just do the quick IBIS terminology. So fund is fund. Object code is sponsored class. Function code is functional area. Administrative area, it's there. It's the business area, but it's related to the fund. The fund center relates back to the business area. Budget is the fund center. The cost center is a sponsored program and the account budget fund is that grant. We'll talk that through. I know we have that question.

When we go into reporting and one thing I want to know on grants management is how much detail there is here. Grants management allows you to do a lot more than the others. Financial tends to focus on the balance sheet and FASB statements and component units. It's balance sheet and income statement, but it's focused on the entity as a whole. CO tends to focus more on the profit and loss but its cost allocations that's managed there. FM is really profit and loss. It's just the income statement. What is our budget? How much we spent? How much do we have left? In GM, we are able to do both grant budgets, encumbrances and actuals, but also balance sheets. We can show a sponsor exactly what we have done with a grant. All the different elements we talked about come in and are incorporated into grants management. As our consultant Christie likes to say, it is really the most complete of the modules in terms of the data that's in there.

Okay, hello. That's not good. Hang on. It's thinking.

[Corry] So what do you want to sing?

[Debbie] We are waiting for the program to respond. My PowerPoint just kind of locked up here, so just give us a moment. I don't know why it did that. Maybe I'll just go over here and do a quick...

[Corry] Ask questions!

[Debbie] It's under pressure. Yes, thank you, Travis. Haha! I'm just going to...

[Corry] Don't do it.

[Debbie] Don't do it. I'm not going to do it. I don't know. I'm gonna come over here. Hang on. Oh, it's just totally locked up. Sorry about that guys. Hang on a second. I gotta go restart my PowerPoint.

Hang on a second. I haven't had this happen before but we will get there. Let me reopen my PowerPoint. Not a brand new PowerPoint. Let's go down to where we were. There we are. Back to slideshow and I need to share. That seems to be there. Go to my new share. I lost my screen where I can see everything. There it is! Back there. Sorry about that.

[Corry] You handled that really well.

[Debbie] Well, not really. But okay. The question I think... was that Kathleen who asked a question about how this will look? One of the things that we will have in grants management is we will continue to use this cost center/fund center. This is the 10 digit one. As we talked about the last time, this will begin with the first three digits of your business area, which is like your administrative area. Then we'll have a two digit for departments, and then five sequentially numbered. For example, Arts and Architecture could be 387 25 00035. That would be Arts and Architecture, Visual Arts Department, Research. That's the cost center.

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In grants management, the cost center is associated, but where we really will manage the grant is in the internal order or the WBS, the work breakdown structure.

[Corry] The WBS will primarily be used by ARL.

[Debbie] That is primarily going to be ARL, absolutely. We don't go into a lot of detail about the WBS to avoid confusion. Everyone will be using internal orders except ARL We mentioned the WBS, that's capital projects, ARL. If some of you get into really complex contracts, you might need to use a work breakdown structure. If you get to that point, we will walk you through how to do that, because the ARL folks really know how to do it well.

An internal order. Basically, as we look at GM, it's the sponsored programs in both cases. It really is a way to just collect the cost for a program or a job. it allows us to pull all those costs together. As we look at GM, it's that sponsored program that we're really looking at, that's the key.

In the internal order, there's 12 characters. Our draft design is where we'll have an internal order type, and then we will have a sequentially numbered number after that. One of the things we will have is an internal order type. One will be grants, so we will have an internal order type for grants. Everything that begins with a 50 will be a grant, and we still have 10 digits to manage all the different cost centers that we'll need related to grants.

The grants will start with 50. We're also going to have internal order types for cost sharing. We'll be able to identify cost sharing related to a grant. The different cost collectors we have. We have the cost center, we have the internal order, and we have the WBS. For grants, sponsored awards, internal order will be the cost collector. For ARL, it'll be the WBS element. Every cost center, internal order and WBS element while have a single fund associated with it.

As we look at this, Kathleen, as you were talking, so really the internal order if you look at that internal order number, that internal order number in a way will give us the detail that we had with our account and fund number because that internal order number just from that will derive what funded relates to so we'll know. We also know what cost center belongs to. That internal order number really replace in a way that account and fund number. It's a little different. It's a little different way of thinking about it, but basically, the internal order will replace basically the account number you use now.

Funding source is fund across the board. That's the source of funds. For sponsored awards, it'll probably be I think we're looking at just one fund number. It's kind of flipping it from the way we do now, where every grant, every sponsored award has its own fund number, we're kind of flipping it and saying that they're all from the same source and what will distinguish them now is a grant number rather than a fund number.

The fund is 10 characters. I just want to remind everyone about this, it begins with a determination that will be done by financial accounting. Is it a net asset with or without donor restrictions, and then what type of fund within each of these classes and then sequentially numbered. Fund is not something you're going to be working with on a regular basis. You'll just have to identify the internal order associated to a particular fund, but you won't have to be entering that fund number over all the time, you'll derive it.

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[Corry] You have to remember to, once you all are at the point where you're learning the system, this is all going to be spelled out for you.

[Debbie] This is really just trying to get you some sense of how things might change, but this is not training. This is more awareness and orientation and trying to help you get a little bit in your head a little bit how some of these things will work. It is not meant to be the training. We will be doing very extensive training from people who actually know how to do training.

The master data by SAP component. Function, again, that functional area. This is just a reminder that functional area represents the function or mission hierarchy as an instruction, research, institutional support. We are going to do two sections to this. One is the NACUBO functional classifications which we need for external reporting. The other is the cost analysis, uniform guidance codes. That's going to be an important part of as well. Then the financial classification is our GL Account, cost element, commitment item and in GM, our sponsored class. That sponsored class is many GL accounts can be in one sponsor class. It's a classification of grant budgets, expenses, indirect cost, and billing. It's the way we classify the accounting transaction.

In revenue, we will have it a leading 4, so that begins with 4, it's a revenue account. The next two digits tell us what type of income it is, and then the detail tells us more specifics. For example, for federal grant, the revenue coming in would be 4 for revenue, 30 for governmental source, and then we give it a five digit number to indicate it's a federal grant.

In the expense general ledger, five tells us it's an expense and then we have personnel, non personnel, capitalized expense, overhead, interfund transfers. This is the second digit. The next two digits are subcategory, depending on the category. For personnel, it salaries, wages, and fringes. Fringe will be moved up with personnel. Then the next five digits are the detail. 5, its expense. 1 is personnel. 10 is salaries. 0410 tells us it's salary for an academic administrator standing.

Then the last digit is the allowable/unallowable, the x coding that we do. This is also going to be important for those of you who are posting to federal grants, because obviously, if we have an object code that says this is unallowable, it's unallowable to federal as well. You won't be able to post anything using an unallowable code. We will not be grouping those into sponsored classes because unallowable items are not permitted. The expense GL account, another example, 5 expense, for non personnel, we're going to have a whole series of subcategories - supplies, meetings and meals, the detail and then again, the allowable/unallowable which replaces the x coding.

To remind you all, when you enter into SIMBA, you will enter a GL account, which will in grants management be a sponsored class. Then you'll enter either a cost center, an internal order, or WBS. For those of you managing grants, you will always enter an internal order. From that internal order, we will be able to look at the fund, we'll know the fund and will know the grants. That will be derived from the internal order number that you enter.

Somebody raised their hand. If you could go ahead and type in the Q&A pod, that would be helpful. I'm actually not sure how to respond to raised hands, so if you can go ahead and just type your question into the Q&A pod. Just open the Q&A and you should be able to type your question in there.

The goal of doing this master derivation is to reduce data entry and classification errors and actually, I think just to keep people sanity, so you don't have to enter an really super long string of numbers.

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Master data design, we have a company code, the business area, the cost centers, and fund centers under that business area. Then as we mentioned, sponsored programs are always managed at the internal order and the WBS element. They are also always linked to a cost center / fund center. In a way, this internal order that we're going to do points to two different things. It's kind of this matrix that we haven't really had before. Let me give you an example here. As we look...don't do this to me.

There it goes. I thought it was locking up again. We have under a certain sponsor, DHS in this case, we have gotten three grants. Grant 1, grant 2, grant 3. Grant 1 has 2 sponsored programs, these are your internal orders: sponsor program one, sponsor program two. Then sponsored program one has sponsored classes assigned to it. Sponsored program two could have the same sponsor classes or actually different ones if you want. Grant two may have three sponsored programs, grant three may have just one. Oh, here's a question.

Do you anticipate that certain purchases will have extra approvals in the electronic purchasing process? I'm thinking of it as a double check on preventing unallowable costs to those require prior approvals. I don't think we'll have the extra approvals, but I think we will definitely, I mean, the financial officers and hopefully the people in the departments will also be looking for those unallowable costs and making sure that things are being properly assigned based on it being on a grant. We're not really looking at adding another post award approval in there at this point. It's not something we really talked about, but I don't think we really saw a need to do that.

You can put different people in the roles, so you should be putting people in the roles of approval who understand what it is there needs to be done in that area. As we mentioned, there's a sponsor and they've got three grants. They can grant a recipient numerous awards in the form of grants, contracts, or agreement. The grant reflects the award regardless of the award type. That grant number is assigned to every unique grant, contractor, or agreement that comes in will have a unique grant number. Then we can break that award down into numerous sections to manage it internally: for our internal, for billing, for sponsor reporting. The sponsored program reflects each separately budgeted bucket of funds.

Let me just look at this chat real quick. Grant master data relationships. We talked about the grant. The grant is six digits sequentially numbered. It'll begin with 100000. The reason we do that is they like to avoid leading zeros because they can be confusing so in this case, we have Grant 123456. Under that grant we have three different sponsored programs and you'll notice here they begin 50 because they're' sponsored awards. This is an internal order, sponsored program. Begins with 50 to indicate it is a federal, it is a sponsored award. This one begins with 50, this one begins with 52. You might say why is that beginning with 52. Debbie? Well, because its cost sharing. It's a different type, but they all three relate to this grant. We have three different sponsored programs that are accounting for three different aspects of that grant. This one is for PI Jones. He's in electrical engineering, and these are his DHS grant funds for 123456. This is what PI Jones is managing. Then we have PI Smith, and he's in IST. He gets his own sponsored program, still part of this grant, so we can put it all back together, but this is what he manages. Then we also can account for the cost sharing involved by setting up a separate sponsored program to account for the cost sharing. This is called sharing coming from electrical engineering out of their general funds. Remember, an internal order is the same as a sponsored program in grants management. You might hear people say, your sponsored program - your internal order, same thing.

[Corry] What's nice about this layout is you'll be able to roll it all up for reporting purposes.

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[Debbie] You can always roll it right back up to the grant to look at the total what's going on with this grant. The other nice thing is by the use of these internal orders, we can see here's PI Jones. If he has five different grants, we and we're using internal orders, we can associate this internal order to PI Jones so he can see this part of his grant, he can see another, he can see the piece of his other grant, a piece of his other grant. We'll use internal orders for things like startup funds, for RIF funding. A PI or a faculty member will be able to look at all their sources of income. We basically will just put a tag on this sponsored program, so we know this one wants to PI Jones, this one belongs to PI Smith. When they go in, and we'll have the ability for them to go in and look at 'show me all of my different sources of funding', they will then be able to see that PI Smith will see this sponsored program, PI Jones will see this sponsored program. Kind of makes sens? I hope. Makes sense to us, but we've been working with it.

The other thing that we talked about is that the sponsored programs also relate to a cost center. This might be a little confusing at first. The beauty of the system is that we can say these relate to the grant, but we also know that they relate to different cost centers. These sponsored programs, we can pull them together and say, oh, now we can see all the costs for this grant, we can see the direct costs, we can see the cost sharing.

We also know that this is PI Jones, and we associate it to a cost center, so electrical engineering can see this piece of the grant because it's theirs to account for. It's going, and I made up the numbers here, but 625 is the business area, 43 we'll say that's engineering, 43 is electrical engineering, and then 5555 is the cost center they decided to use. Because we relate it also to a cost center, I'm able to see that in the cost center, see that portion of the grant in that cost center as well. That's really important for the cost sharing, because I am accounting forward on the general fund side that I've committed these funds for this grant. I could also see it in the grant. Right now it's very difficult for us. If we put cost sharing in a general fund, it's really difficult. We code it with the cost center, we give it the fund number to try to pull together. But to pull it all together and look at it, that can be really difficult. In SAP and SIMBA it's going to be much easier because the sponsored programs are linked to the grant and they're also linked back to the cost centers, or the business areas that are managing them, Kind of makes sense? It's really going to work well. You have any comment you want to make on that?

[Corry] We'll be able to really identify where the cost share came from this way.

[Debbie] That's going to be really nice, because we could actually have three different cost sharing accounts. One from electrical engineering, one from IST. We can also show the central so if the Vice President for Research provides cost sharing. we'll set up a separate IO for that cost sharing.

[Corry] We're not going to have to keep the shadow systems anymore.

[Debbie] That will be so much nicer. Corry, I'm going to turn it over to you now for some of this because you know this a little more in detail that I do. One of the things we're looking at is the SPIN Number. Do you want to talk about where we're going with SPIN Number?

[Corry] I don't know if any of you have noticed this, but there is a SPIN Number field on the AURA. It's never been used. There was a big focus group created a while back and they decided to implement this SPIN Number. Created the field, but it never got used. Now's a fresh start, it's a new chance to use the SPIN number. We've been meeting with some people from OSP and a few people from the Advisory Committee on how best to implement this SPIN Number. What it means is that right now you have 10,

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15, 20 OSP numbers associated with one award. Now with the creation of this spin number, that will be your link. That will be your common denominator that links all these awards together. That is especially important coming from zero where we have tons and tons and tons of OSP numbers from one award. It's going to make life a lot easier.

[Debbie] That SPIN Number will associate back into the pre-award side as well?

[Corry] Yes, and will be for the life of the award. We are meeting next week to discuss it even more, because there are some loose ends on that.

[Debbie] We know we want to use it.

[Corry] What else is fun about this, and I don't know if fun is the right word, but we are working with a group of Learning Factory students from the College of Engineering. It's part of their capstone course to analyze the implementation. They're gathering a lot of the information for us, they're doing a cost analysis, the cost of putting this into place. It's been great working with them. It will only have numbers associated, no letters.

[Debbie] It's interesting because we do a lot of alphanumeric, but the more we've been talking to our consultants, the use of the alpha sometimes can make it very difficult for sorting purposes like if you're doing data analysis later. Award statuses, and I didn't tell you I broke this into three so we could see it better. So tell us about this award status.

[Corry] Let me take a look at this.

[Debbie] Those are the awards. Then I did the closing. Then I did the closed and cancelled. It's the same thing you had.

[Corry] I see. I'll go with it.

[Debbie] Just go with it!

[Corry] What's nice is that when you're looking at the master data on the award, you're going to have a button at the top that's going to be red or green, and you are going to know exactly what status it is in during the life cycle. Here we have the different life cycles and the explanations. This is a draft. We are having a meeting with Research Accounting next week to talk about invoicing and close out, so these may change a little bit - the print close and the close part may change a little bit. You have your award, then you have your statuses. You can have your advanced status.

[Debbie] Which is where the department guarantees, in case the award doesn't come in.

[Corry] Then then it'll switch to pre-award. That's when pre-award spending is granted. The period performance has not yet begun, but you want to start posting things to it. There will not be any billing allowed. Then it goes into the green light, the active. It's fully executed, and it's within the period of performance and all financial activity is allowed. Then you're going to have your pre-close, the award will end in less than 90 days or equal to 90 days, all financial activity will be allowed. There are limits on posting certain expenditures. Can we make that a little bigger?

[Debbie] This one? I just need to go to it. There you go.

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[Corry] There we go. That's amazing. Then we go to closing and that may turn yellow or red. I'm not quite sure. It's going to be pending in extension, the period of performance has ended, but the Department/PI guarantees the funding while the no cost extension is coming into play. Or we're getting a new increment of funding. Posting will be allowed, no billing. Then you're going to have your ended. That's when the button goes to read. The administrative area is performing the closing tasks. No encumbrances allowed. Then you have ATC. Center Research Accounting. Then you have your...it's closed. It's Research Accounting. They were preparing for the final billing and close. Then...

[Debbie] it's closed.

[Corry] Yeah. Closed. All closing activities have been completed, no financial activity allowed. Then you have this other status cancelled, The award was established in error.

[Debbie] Hopefully won't have too many of those. Well, we might when we initially get started.

[Corry] This is a draft. Don't hold us to it, but I wanted to throw this out to you so that you know that you're going to easily easily be able to see the status of the grant at the master data level.

[Debbie] I'm going to scooch back here because I got a question from Tiffany. She wants to know, in the grant example will the FO and IST be able to see and report on the sponsored programs account in engineering or only those in your administrative area? Only those in your administrative area. You'll have access through the fact that's associated to your cost center. Unless you have authority to look at the total grant.

[Corry] It's really whoever is administering it ultimately has all the access. If education is administering this, you'll be able to see everything...

[Debbie] because you'll be managing the grant. Through the grant, you'll have access to it all. If it's an electrical engineering grant, there were the primary, but there's a co PI in IST then IST would only see this piece. That makes sense, Tiffany? Hopefully that explains that a little while. Yes. Okay. Good.

[Corry] More importantly, Tiffany, are you okay with that?

[Debbie] Does that make sense to you? She'll think about it. That's fine. That's great. Yeah, think about it. Let us know if that causes any heartburn, because we need to know and think it through and talk it through a bit. Grants management - talk about progress,

[Corry] We have a lot in progress. This is what's going on. This is how we're spending our days and nights. We're working through the sub award process.

At first glance, we thought it was pretty straightforward. But in reality, we currently have three ways that the University is handling sub-award close out. We are trying to figure out how do we write the process. Do we write the process for all three or do we try to come to some sort of agreement that we will have one process. We're working through the cost share process. That's pretty much worked out, but I haven't seen any real design yet so that's why I decided to keep it listed under in progress. We are working on the possibility of collecting the building and room information in the master data. It's important for cost analysis to know where the research is being done. We know that it's done in

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sometimes in many different locations, but we're working through that how to best capture that information.

[Debbie] One reason we need that as well as because if you're doing research in a bond funded building, we need to know that. We need to know if it's federal or state or industrial awards. It goes back to all that very complex compliance reporting that we have to do.

[Corry] We want to make Kimberly and Jen's life a lot easier.

[Debbie] Yeah, and Larry Friedken too.

[Corry] Okay. Sure. Next, sponsored classes, working through that. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

[Debbie] So you're just doing the groupings of how the GL accounts are grouping to sponsored gases?

[Corry] Yeah.

[Debbie] Okay.

[Corry] Security roles. I just saw a rough draft of that the other day. Our consultant, Gray, sent that to us. I haven't really been able to look too closely at that yet. SIMS integration, that's a big big thing. That is probably the biggest pain point right now. We're having lots of meetings with OSP and Jim Taylor, Chris Lose. They have been absolutely wonderful and they are just fully supportive of what we're doing and a huge thank you goes out to them. We're meeting next week with Research Accounting to discuss the invoicing and close out process. Research Accounting has been great. Everybody's been so wonderful. Thank you so much. Then reporting, we're meeting next week with the reporting team here on SIMBA. My team is out there collecting a lot of the reports that exist from eDDS The College of Engineering, we're gathering from College of Engineering because they do have a great list of reports established. There's other areas I can't think of at the moment - I'm under pressure.

[Debbie] Since you mentioned your team, who is on your team?

[Corry] Wayne Royer from the College of Engineering, Justin Harris from Research Accounting, Robert Watson from ARL, and then Mary Breon is our business analyst - she's been assigned to my team, Mary Andrew, she was the Financial Officer for each HHD. She's representing all financial officers on this project, but she really has been a right hand person to me, and kudos go out to her.

[Debbie] Then you have an advisory committee?

[Corry] Yes, we have the advisory committee and we also have Terry Blesh from ARL. Now, Robert and Terry are 50% on the project, but they are putting a lot more hours in then 50%. II don't know how they do it. They're amazing.

[Debbie] Then you have an advisory committee. Who's your chair of that?

[Corry] Let's see. The chair is Kimberly Croft. Co-chair is Barbara Rigg. I've only had one advisory committee meeting where I've gathered everybody together, but I have been pulling different people out of the advisory committee into these smaller sessions. I have found that if you get too many people in a room at one time, you don't get anything accomplished. I am reaching out to different members of the advisory committee and we are meeting with them. There will be a playback session that will be presented to the Advisory Committee. When I really have something that I really need to get out to all of

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you at the same time, I have reached out through email, you've done some work for me in Box. I've given you access to the Grants Management in Box.

[Debbie] They're always willing to come out to meetings or come out and talk to folks. We've done a lot with ACOR as well and I keep a link in with ACOR.

[Corry] I know your time is so valuable, and I don't want to have a meeting just for the sake of having a meeting.

[Debbie] We have a bunch of questions. Does the system provide an email notification feature? For example, to receive an email when the status of your grant has changed in question. I believe there are notifications. I don't know if we've gotten into a lot of detail about them yet, but I believe they do. Yes, you can set them up to do that. Tiffany wants to know who grants the overall grant access? I don't know, Tiffany.

[Corry] We're not there yet.

[Debbie] I don't think we've gotten into all the detail on the security piece of it, but the overall grant access I think it would relate to who who is managing the grant. We'll have to think that through little bit. That's a very good question. If somebody from the grants team is watching right now, could you write that down? They are watching aren't they?

[Corry] Oh, yeah. They're watching.

[Debbie] That's something we'll need to check with LSI because we haven't really got into the grant level who provides the security and how do we set that up. Will you be connecting with the new Lionspace FIS? Yes, on the building and room information we just talked about, we will be connecting with the new Lionspace FIS. They are going to be our source of truth for information about building and room information. Any hopes of integration of the College of Medicine Clinical Trial Management System STAR?

[Corry] I don't think so.

[Debbie] cccc

[Corry] It's because of the HIPPA laws that we can't really touch that.

[Debbie] We have to figure out what we can and can't do in that area. We're working with Lindsey Long. Lindsey is our College of Medicine area specialist. We've been talking through that, but we want to do what we can, but we're not sure how much integration we can do where we can just load everything right in. Then another question. Is there a listing of the various committees and members in case we wanted to reach out to someone? Yeah, I know we were beginning to put together a list of all the advisory committees and who's on them, but I don't know where that is posted at this point.

[Corry] I know my advisory list with all the contact information is in my Grants Management Box Advisory Committee Grants Management folder in my Box.

[Debbie] But other users won't be able to get to that. Yes. Hey, Amanda.

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[Amanda] Hi.

[Debbie] How are you? What's up?

[Amanda] I'm working on that list now. It should be on the website hopefully today, so then everybody will see who's on the advisory committees.

[Debbie] Yay! Yay, Amanda.

[Amanda] Bye!

[Debbie] Bye! There was the answer. We are going to have a list of the committees and members and it should be up on the website later today or by Monday. Amanda Pastore just stopped in. She's basically our training coordinator, but she's also helping us with all these SIMBA Sessions. Our change management group is just great.

[Corry] Everybody's great. Everybody's great. Can't say enough good things.

[Debbie] Do you owe people money? Ha, ha. Your upcoming deadlines?

[Corry] Yes. This is what keeps me awake at night. Monday, November 19th we have to have all of our parking lot items resolved.

We're on target for that. We're on target for everything. Monday, December 3rd through Thursday, December 6th, we have these different drafts. Like three different drafts. We have...Vicki's throwing me money - yay!!!

[Debbie] Vicki is wonderful, isn't she?

[Corry] She is fabulous!

[Debbie] She'd be even better if she gave us more money.

[Corry] Yes, I'll take a 20! We've got these playback sessions. These are each drafts and they have to be back to the lead consultant for LSI, that's Christy Sprinkles, and Debbie and me. Then Wednesday, December 12th...

[Debbie] Huge day.

[Corry] Yes, huge day. We are having the grants management master data and process playback session. That will be played back to the Advisory Committee.

[Debbie] We don't have the capability, the capacity or the ability, given the timeline we have to rent to BJC and invite everybody in, everybody to give us feedback, so the advisory committee members are the ones who are going to be our our key. They're representing all of you to let us know if what we're doing is right. The reason we're using those advisory committees is obviously as as I've talked about before, we on the project can't just do this on our own. If we just rely on what we know, we won't get it right. The advisory committee is our way to reach out and get people who can come in and say, yeah, you guys forgot this, or you weren't thinking about this, but we're feeling pretty good about this.

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I have to say as well, our LSI consultants, they have worked at other universities implementing these systems. They've also just worked at other universities. They understand this stuff and they're not sending us down a road. The main thing they do for us, a lot of times, it's just say, hey.

We'll start talking about something and they just kind of look at us with a strange look. They go, what are you doing? Then we realize that we have just sometimes made things really convoluted because of some of the things IBIS couldn't do. We kind of went made these workarounds. Sometimes they just go, why don't you just do x? We go, yeah, I guess we could do that. We're trying to do a lot of that streamlining as well.

[Corry] This new system, we're going to be able to upload documents, get backup for documents into the system. There's going to be some free text fields, open text fields that we can type things in.

[Debbie] I think people are really going to like it.

[Corry] It's scary right now.

[Debbie] I did want to ask you. As you're looking at the system, what's the one thing that's most exciting to you in terms of what the Grants Management module will provide?

[Corry] I think it's the tying together of all the difference sponsored programs along with the cost share, and then being able to roll it all up for reporting. You don't have to reach out to the other areas anymore. If you're administering the award, you're responsible for the reporting and everything else. You're not going to have to reach out to the other areas to gather information. You're going to have everything right there.

[Debbie] That's gonna be great. Even though it will be great, just remember SCAR: system confusion, anxiety and rage. We know it's going to be very confusing when we first start. We're going to give you all the training we can, but please just give us time. Give yourself time. Don't be like, Oh, I don't know. Two days in to SIMBA don't be like, oh my God, I don't know what's going on. You won't. We really just want everybody to understand you just gotta hang tight and it'll get better. Somebody raised their hand. If you want to go ahead and type into the Q&A, we can go ahead and answer your question. We can't do anything with you're raising your hand, unfortunately. We just know you raised your hand, but we can't acknowledge you. Type your question in.

Everybody’s TalkingNow we're ready for Everybody's Talking.

[Corry] Everybody's talking. What will be talk about?

[Debbie] I don't know, but I think this is us!

[Corry] I think so.

[Debbie] It's Coffee Talk. Oh, my God this is us. For some reason, Corey is Madonna and I'm Mike Myers. I'm Mike Myers. How did I get to be Mike Myers?

[Corry] It's the darker hair.

[Debbie] We were kidding around at the beginning of this that we were like Coffee Talk.

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[Corry] We'll have Coffee Talk.

[Debbie] Some of you are probably going, what is Coffee Talk? Saturday Night Live.

[Corry] A skit from the classic years of Saturday Night Live.

[Debbie] We're going to do some Coffee Talk. One thing I do want to let you all know, before we get into all your questions, is people have asked, Can I be alerted when a new SIMBA Session is loaded into the Learning Resource Network? The answer is yes, absolutely. In the SIMBA Session page on the Learning Resource Network, you can click on notify me of new sessions. It's down here at the bottom. You go into SIMBA Sessions and down below to say notify me of new sessions. You click here. Then when you click on that, the screen changes to the interest tracking. The only option you need to click is 'notify me when sessions are scheduled at any location. Because we're doing this as a zoom session, there's no need to select a location. Once you put that little check mark in, it'll let you know every time we schedule a SIMBA Session. Click that and then submit, obviously. Keep in mind that if you request to be notified after December Sessions already been posted, you won't receive notifications until January. What questions do you have for us? Here we go! Kevin Mahood: When adding cost share related to federal awards, will there'll be a way to indicate whether or not it is a required match versus an optional match?

[Corry] Yes.

[Debbie] Yeah. This is a recent question that came up in our single audit - to be able to report on the full population of federal awards that include a requirement match. Yes, we will be able to do that. That's interesting, Kevin. We'll note that as well, because there might be something where we need to put on the grant itself that it has a required match. I think there might even be a field in the award master data that indicates that there's a required match. Yes, we will be able to do that, Kevin. Absolutely. Other questions? I think we might have to talk amongst ourselves. I can't believe we answered all their questions.

[Corry] We’re just too good.

[Debbie] Yeah, it's you, Corry.

[Corry] The burden I must bare.

[Debbie] Yeah. We're going to give it a little time because we know sometimes it may take a while to get a question typed in. I'll remind everybody that we do have our SIMBA website, simba.psu.edu. If you have any questions, you can always send them to simba@psu.edu, and they will get them to the right person to review and take a look at.

Oh, great job, John. I like that question. Any other questions at all? I'm really surprised I'm not getting some more questions. Anybody hearing any good rumors? Any feedback for us? Things you're feeling a little tense about or concerned about?

I really appreciated the earlier question about why did we pick a system that has so much confusing terminology. It's good to get that feedback from people. It is confusing. We know that, but it's something we need to think through.

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[Corry] After so many years with IBIS, I think with any system we would have selected, it would have been confusing.

[Debbie] Yeah, because we have worked so long with IBIS and we all know it like the back of our hands. But the new people coming in look at this and go, what are you guys using? I mean, we're still using green screens and they just go oh my gosh.

We'll go to the last slide. Our next session is going to be on Friday, December 7th, from 9 to 11, or as long as we need. We're ending early today. Our spotlight will be on procurement, so Tara Campbell will be joining me. Just looking and I don't see any other questions coming in.

[Corry] I should say, Debbie and I are for hire for all of your holiday events!

[Debbie] That's a little frightening, isn't it?

[Corry] Yeah.

[Debbie] Yeah, oh somebody put up a clip!

[Corry] Have a wonderful weekend, everybody.

[Debbie] I'm getting verklempt. I'm so verklempt so talks amongst yourselves.

[Corry] All right. Let's go get some coffee!

[Debbie] Get some coffee and talk - like butter!

[Corry] All right. Thank you for listening.

[Debbie] Okay. Bye everybody.

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