When the new financial system goes live in July 2008, the PeopleSoft reporting instance will deliver equivalent financial reporting and information currently provided by the Data Warehouse, UM Reports, and Financial Reports on the Web. Historical data will continue to be accessible via the Data Warehouse, but post-July 2008 financial data will be available only through the new financial system. (Human resources and student system data will continue to be stored in the Data Warehouse.)

The new financial system will have two environments for reporting on financial activities: a production environment and a reporting environment. Operational, transactional reporting requiring real-time data will occur in the production environment. The reporting environment will be streamlined and is designed for queries and reporting and will be refreshed nightly.

Access to the production environment will be based upon an employee's role. All users with access to the production environment will also have access to the reporting environment. Those with no production role may obtain access to the reporting environment by completing an access request form.

The new system is loaded with features that will enable users to view, create, and run reports in many different ways. For example, once a report is created, users can run reports to be e-mailed on a regular basis to their customers.

An important point to keep in mind is that there is not an apples-to-apples comparison between the financial reporting capabilities provided by current systems and the financial reporting capabilities under PeopleSoft. These are vastly different types of systems. PeopleSoft is a Web-based system with multiple capabilities for generating and creating reports—the number of reports available is nearly endless. The EFS project anticipates, however, that departments will routinely use a predetermined set of canned reports.

In the current financial system, transaction information for sponsored and nonsponsored accounts resides in the General Ledger. With the new financial system, sponsored data also will be located in the PeopleSoft Projects module. For sponsored accounts, inception-to-date transactions will be converted from the CUFS General Ledger to the Projects module for any activity associated with an active award/contract (contracts that have an end date after June 30, 2008 or have not been fully closed out). Summary balances for all sponsored accounts will be converted in to the new financial system General Ledger as of FY08. For nonsponsored accounts, summary balances only will be converted into the new financial system General Ledger as of FY08. Post go-live, detailed historical transactional information will be viewable in the financial Data Warehouse.

Several types of reporting tools will be available to users in the new financial system, based on a user's reporting responsibilities and system access. Following is a brief summary of the reporting tools.

The PeopleSoft Query tool will allow end users to extract the precise information they desire using visual representations of the PeopleSoft database. With Query Viewer, users can view existing queries and export information into tables or Excel documents. They can also run existing reports, including parameterized reports. In addition to viewing existing queries, super end users will be able to create their own queries using PeopleSoft Query.

PeopleSoft nVision allows end users to retrieve information from the PeopleSoft database using ledgers, trees, and queries and to place it into an Excel spreadsheet. PS nVision works within spreadsheets to create templates for data retrieval. Once a report layout is created, it can be used to format data automatically.

XML Publisher is a template-based publishing solution that integrates familiar desktop publishing word processing tools with existing data reporting. It will be used by super end users and analysts. At runtime, designed template files are merged with report data to create a variety of outputs to meet diverse business needs, including:

• Customer-ready PDFs, such as financial statements
• HTML output for optimum online viewing
• Excel output to create spreadsheets
• Completed third-party PDF documents, such as a form
• Flat text files to use with EDI or EFT transmission

For more information on reporting and reporting-related topics, click on one of the links below:

• View the Reporting Demo (Flash Player must be installed on your computer to view this presentation). Please note this is a large file and if you advance forward in the presentation and the complete demo has not yet finished downloading, you will experience a disconnect between the audio and the video (that is, they will not be in sync). It is therefore recommended that you do not skip ahead in the presentation as you are viewing it.
  
  
• Reporting Access Request Form
  
  
• Reporting Crosswalk 1 (pdf)
  
  
• Reporting Crosswalk 2 (pdf)
  
  
• EFS Information Delivery Structure Diagram (pdf)
  
  
• Enterprise Analyst Position Description (Draft) (pdf)
  
  
• nVision Excel Plug-in
  
  
• Reporting Overview (pdf)
  
  
• Reporting FAQs (Web page)
  
  
• Top-Ten Financial Reports on the Web (pdf)