Category: Uncategorised

Claiming expenses and using your UoD purchase card whilst working from home

Working from home is new for many of us and whilst you adjust to your new routine, you may find that your home set-up is completely different to your work one. We’ve received a number of questions about buying IT equipment for home use, and have answered these here.

If you have any other question(s) regarding expenses, your UoD purchase card, or any other aspect of finance, please contact Help4U quoting that your query should be directed to “1U – Finance & Procurement”. A member of the Finance team will respond to your question.

We appreciate that individual circumstances differ and ask that you are mindful of the University’s policy, processes and regulations where applicable.

Transforming our Finance function 

As a University we generate a lot of orders. Our Accounts Payable team currently receive between 150-200 invoices a day and these are matched to purchase orders manually.

To speed up this process we’ve introduced automated invoice matching which replaces this manual process with new technology that automatically matches supplier invoices to orders raised through OneUniversity.

We estimate by automating this process we’ll remove up to 40% of this activity from the process, freeing up the Accounts Payable team to focus on more meaningful work.

For more information about how this impacts those who buy goods and services through OneUniversity please visit our web page.

Check out Check-in

This week we introduced Check-in, a new way of capturing student attendance data, harnessing low-energy Bluetooth technology that allows students to check in to classes using their mobile device. First-year students from the Schools of Humanities and Life Sciences, as well as any students who participate in first-year modules offered by these Schools are taking part in this first phase, with a view to rolling the service out across all schools and years of study in academic session 2020-21.

How does it work? Students simply download the SEAtS Mobile app and check in to classes on their mobile device via Bluetooth beacons installed in teaching space.

In time this will replace paper registers, making attendance capture easier for students, less burdensome for academic and professional services staff, and allow us to quickly offer support to students are not engaging with their classes. The service also allows students to be more active in their attendance monitoring because the app gives them real time data on their attendance across all centrally timetabled teaching activities.

Visit our webpage for more information.

Quick facts:

  • This is a phased roll out, and only impacts first year students studying modules delivered by the schools of Humanities and Life Sciences.
  • Students can download the SEAtS mobile app from the app store from Monday 20 January.
  • For the next two weeks students in this first phase will be able to try out the online check-in process during timetabled teaching events.  In this first two weeks class registers will also be taken by academics, but this will stop as of 3 February 2020 for those students involved in the pilot.
  • For help and support email the Service Desk in the first instance (help4u@dundee.ac.uk)
  • From Monday 3 February 2020 students will be asked to use the SEAtS app to ‘check-in’ to all of their timetabled teaching activities.
  • If a student is unable to check-in for any reason (lost phone, can’t get app to work etc) after 3 February, they should tell the tutor during the class, or go to their School Office within 7 days to ask that their attendance is recorded.  The School can also register attendance on behalf of a student.
  • Emails for those whose attendance falls under 80% over a seven-day period will start to receive emails w/c 10 February, in line with the University’s Policy on Attendance Monitoring.

Join our team

The job

We’re looking for a Business Process Change Manager with proven experience in Student and Curriculum management to join the Student workstream of our Transformation Programme. This is an opportunity to be part of a multinational team tasked with transforming our University through new technologies, new processes and new ways of working.

Us

The Programme is wide reaching and will have an impact across our Schools and Professional Services, covering Finance, HR and Payroll, Research, and the Student journey (note that this role is in relation to the Student workstream).

You

If you have a passion for driving change and love a challenge, we’d love to hear from you.

Interested? For further details of role, criteria and salary, please read the job description and/or contact Alison Slater btpmo@dundee.ac.uk.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Related links:

Watch John Rowan, our VP for Research and Knowledge Exchange discuss the opportunities for the OneUniversity Research solution.

Watch our Director of Finance Carol Prokopyszn talk about OneUniversity.

‘Early life support’ top queries

Two weeks since go live and more than 250 Help4u queries have been successfully resolved.

The ‘top ticket item’ was Procurement and Purchasing Management queries relating to requisitioning, punching out to PECOS gateway and purchase cards.

The second most popular query was Managing Payments which covers Accounts Payable queries and Travel & Expenses. There have also been a few queries regarding the process for Resolution Pools.

The third most popular was System Admin with queries relating to profiles, my tasks and changing approval pools.

Please be aware that no changes to approval pools will be processed until the start of September unless there is a problem which has genuine effects on business process.

Changes to user profiles and approval pools

Any changes to user profiles and approval pools have been suspended for a period of around one month. We will contact you again when this restriction has been lifted. This is to limit changes to the system to allow the Business Transformation team to deal with early life support enquiries from around the business.

Exception
There is an exception to this. If operations in your area could be adversely affected by the restriction, such as only having one or two people in your approval pool.

Process to make a change
If you do want to request a change to a user profile or approval pool, please do this through your School Manager, Dean, Director or Assistant Director. You can also speak to your School or Directorate accountant.

Launch of OneUniversity Finance

OneUniversity portal

The OneUniversity Finance system was successfully launched to the core Finance team on Thursday, 1 August, followed by requisitioners and approvers on Friday 2 August. Staff who carry out expense claims and funds checking were given access on Monday 2 August.

Accessing the system

Here’s where you can access the system:

Training environment and resources

  • If you have any queries regarding the system, please follow the ‘1, 2, 3 of support’.

Support

  • The Train environment will be left open so you can familiarise yourself with the system before using it in earnest. Please do not use the live system to practice.
  1. Visit the self-Service portal and search for your query in our Knowledge Base.
  2. Contact your local Transformation Advice and Support Team (TAST) member or Change Champion to receive assistance.
  3. Raise a ticket with help4U@dundee.ac.uk.

Dundee hosts tri-university workshop

BT programme manager Pat Furze

The Student team in Business Transformation is hosting a tri-university workshop from Tuesday to Thursday this week, and will welcome colleagues from the universities of Sussex and Lincoln.

Student programme manager Pat Furz is excited about the hook up. “It’s great that we’re working with other universities who are also going through a period of big change, especially around the implementation of the OneUniversity system.

“Collaboration is a great way of knowledge sharing and helping each other, and it will also give us great insight into the UK requirements for deploying the new release of the OneUniversity student system”.

OneUniversity go live and the financial year end

The August go live of OneUniversity Finance coincides with our financial year end and we’re aware that this is a busy period for all involved. All activity relating to the management of the year end process will be carried out in the existing finance systems.

Also, there are significant changes to some year-end deadlines this year due to the cutover to OneUniversity,  and additional processes in place to ensure all income and expenditure is correctly accounted for.  Further guidance is available on the Finance webpage.

When OneUniversity goes live on 1 August only a draft position will be available for 2018/19 as we will continue to work on the year-end in CODA.  Transactions posted after the CODA closedown on 26 July will be migrated to OneUniversity at a later date.  School Managers and Directors will be notified by Finance when this work is complete.

Six weeks to go – the countdown is on

With just six weeks until 1 August we are officially in our cutover period!

What is cutover?

This is the length of time we’ve estimated it will take to carry out all the activities needed to get the University up and running and ready for 1 August. We’ve created a day-by-day, detailed plan that covers all the technical and functional activities over the next six weeks, as well as all the communications, engagement and training that will take place.

During cutover we’ll share regular updates about the progress we’re making and outline key activities and dates people need to be aware of for things like the availability of some of our services, system closure dates and deadlines.

How will we share this information? 

Our website

Our website will be our key communications platform and will be updated regularly so check out our Finance pages for the latest news.

Our change champions

Our change champions are a local point of contact in the run up to go live. We’ll try not to overload people with too much information, so we’ll use our network of champions and our School and Directorate Managers to cascade information across the University, making sure it gets to the right people at the right time.

Our staff newsletter

We’ll publish a brief outline of key activity in each staff newsletter in the run up to 1 August.

For more information, email us at bt-finance@dundee.ac.uk.