Good Financial Practices for Every Role

You may have lost an hour of sleep in March, but you can gain improved financial management and stewardship practices. And while tax season comes once a year, good financial management can be done year-round. Read on to learn how to better manage your sponsored awards, clinical revenue, departmental funds, and expense reimbursements to help make the most of UCSF’s resources.

• Leading Practices for Financial Management of Sponsored Awards
• Prioritizing Financial Monitoring
• Clinical Revenue Management
• Fraud Corner: Travel & Entertainment Expense Reimbursement

Leading Practices for Financial Management of Sponsored Awards

UCSF works hard to bring in sponsored awards to support our research mission, but the work doesn't stop once the funds are received, as there are a multitude of requirements for managing them. Below are some of the key activities to keep in mind for managing sponsored awards.

1. Perform General ledger (GL) Verification using the GL Verification Online Tool. GL verification is a key control of UCSF and is required by Campus Administrative Policy 300-46. Sponsored project ledgers must be reviewed monthly to ensure financial transactions are accurately reported and comply with relevant policies, regulations, and sponsor requirements.
2. Document award verification using the Award Verification Tool. Award Verification supports Principal Investigators (PIs) to ensure compliance with Uniform Guidance for federal awards.  Award verification should be performed after GL verification activities are completed. To comply with University and Federal requirements, award verification activities must be verified by the award PI quarterly.
3. Review cost-sharing on Sponsored Awards. Review award/proposal for cost-sharing commitments, including subaward cost-sharing. Mandatory and voluntary committed cost share must be tracked and reported per University requirements and Federal regulations. For sponsored projects with cost-sharing requirements, departments must submit the Cost Sharing Budget Template to Contracts & Grants Accounting (CGA) to record and track cost-sharing activity.
4. Ensure appropriate cost transfers. Cost transfers journals (source code 545) are used to transfer expenses onto or off a sponsored award. Ensure the journal transfer is allowable, allocable, consistent, and reasonable. For all cost transfers, ensure proper supporting documentation is attached to the journal to support amounts within the journal, including but not limited to the following: Transaction Detail Report, allocation methodology for expenses being allocated to more than one project, correspondence with details of the transaction and purpose, and sharing of expenses management approval.
5. Review financial and performance reporting requirements on sponsored awards. Review award notices for deliverable reporting requirements and due dates. The award Principal Investigator (PI) must ensure that performance reports are completed and submitted timely to the sponsor. Ensure financial reports includes reporting of income and cost-sharing commitments. Departments should work with Contracts & Grants Accounting (CGA) to ensure financial reports are accurate and submitted timely.
6. Ensure proper closeout of sponsored awards. Closeout of sponsored project awards (Project/Activity Period) should be completed within 120 days after the performance period, a requirement per Campus Administrative Policy 300-19. Review expenditures incurred after the period of performance for appropriateness and ensure any overdrafts are cleared timely, within 120 days of the end of the period of performance. If required, no-cost extension requests should be submitted in advance prior to closeout.

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Prioritizing Financial Monitoring

Are you spending time pulling financial reports and wading through a lot of data to identify exceptions? Do you know what are the top financial and compliance risks you need to focus on?

With limited time resources, there is a tool available designed to help you monitor financial and compliance risks more efficiently and effectively: the Financial Management Dashboard (FMD). 

The FMD helps you with continuous monitoring of Sponsored funds, Gifts and Endowments, Recharge projects and other financial expenses.  In July 2022, six new metrics were added to the FM dashboard:  Sponsored AR balances, Award Verification, Payroll Default Chartstrings, Payroll in Suspense and Claimed Receivable.

Payroll in Suspense and Claimed Receivable.

If you have not used the FMD yet, check it out by logging into MyAccess.

To understand what each of the metrics is measuring and how you can use it to help you monitor and manage financial risk – see the Getting Started Guide.

For general information on the FMD, please visit the UCSF Audit & Advisory Services website.

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Clinical Revenue Management

While Audit & Advisory Services often identifies revenue capture opportunities when doing reviews, for ongoing revenue capture enhancement we recommend working with the experts on the Revenue Management team. Read on for a message from Revenue Management to find out more about the team and how they can help.

Revenue Management's mission across UCSF is to accurately, efficiently, and compliantly translate services rendered to our patients into chargeable, billable services that result in legitimate reimbursement. This is accomplished through a unified approach across the enterprise whereby technology, auditing, and education is leveraged for continuous improvement and best practice management across the revenue cycle. We welcome the opportunity to partner with all departments on process improvements related to charge capture and automation, workflow optimization, and work queue resolution. We also have several reporting metrics to assist with revenue reconciliation, charge timeliness, and revenue leakage prevention.  Please visit our website at https://revenueintegrity.ucsf.edu/ for a comprehensive understanding of what we do and how we can best serve you and your department.

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Fraud Corner: Travel & Entertainment Expense Reimbursement

It may take months to detect Travel and Entertainment (T&E) fraud, potentially resulting in thousands of dollars of losses to the university and damage to the university’s reputation. To prevent this type of fraud and protect the university’s assets (as well as safeguard its reputation), it’s important to be aware of common fraud schemes. These include:

• Personal expenses represented as business expenses
• Modified receipts
• Reimbursements for canceled trips and events
• Returning items for a refund and not reimbursing the university
• Overstating mileage claims
• Claiming non-acceptable items like electronics and jewelry
• Multiple reimbursements for same expense either by multiple employees colluding with one another or through different proofs of payment

One or more of the red flags below may be an indicator of increased fraud risks:

• Lost receipts
• Rounded dollar amounts or consistent amounts
• The cities on the airline tickets, hotels and other receipts do not match each other or the employee’s itinerary
• Claiming expenses just below the minimum for which receipts are required
• Review of Expense Reports show overlapping dates (making it appear the employee was in two cities at the same time)
• Incompatible expense reimbursements were requested – both mileage and gas reimbursement

What can I do to protect the university’s assets and reputation:

• Critically review expense reports and supporting documentation – determine if the documentation supports the expense.
• Ensure the reimbursement request complies with all travel policies
• Establish appropriate separation of duties
• Ensure the department has appropriate General Ledger review
• Review department expenses for trends, reasonableness, etc.
• Review and understand university and campus policies; provide access to appropriate employees
• Ensure employees are current on required training
• Reach out to UCSF Audit & Advisory Services for advice
• Report suspected Fraud on the Whistleblower hotline (reporting anonymously is an option) or send an email to [email protected]

Specific Controls:

• Know why employees are traveling – and where – what is the business purpose for the trip – what are the destinations and trip dates
• Compare itinerary to what is itemized – Cross-check all dates of items submitted with the dates of the employee's business travel to make sure they correspond
• If expense reports are rejected and subsequently resubmitted, compare original and corrected expense reports and supporting documentation to identify discrepancies
• MyExpense (the UCSF campus automated system for employee reimbursement) has built in Workflow Controls:
  • Exceptions marked in the MyExpense workflow require correction prior to processing the expense report
  • Certain Fields – including Trip Date, Business Purpose, Department ID, & Expense Type – are required
  • Receipts: Registration Fees, Airfare, Lodging and Car Rental (regardless of amount), and expense of $75 or more are required

• If two or more employees are traveling together:
  • Cross-check their expense reports against each other to see if each traveler is claiming reimbursements for a shared rental car, taxi, or mileage.
  • Compare reimbursement claims & supporting receipts – What is the same, what is different?

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