Close Out Issues Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 12:47:53 -0400 To: "AO - All Administrative Officers", "AE - Administrative Employees" From: Kelly Bradley Subject: Close Out Issues Hi everyone, Below please find a very important message from OFM. I am very pleased to recieve the information and see that OFM is improving their assistance to us during this busy time. I will be the contact for OFM/BASB for WRD. They will contact me and let me know the status of the PCAS run and when the reports will be available. I will then send an email to all AO's and Admin employees. I will send a message out Saturday night after I receive a status from them so you too will know what is going on. Also, please be aware that even if we do not have reports as long as FFS is available after they run the closing jobs you can use the FPRJ and PSDP tables in FFS and close your books. I will also try to keep you informed of FFS availability. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, Kelly From: Jack Blickley Subject: Close Out Issues This message contains some FY 1999 close out guidance. Please note our request for a point of contact for this weekend's activity. I will also send the guidance on travel to a wider audience this afternoon. FFS Closes at 3:00pm EDT on Friday, 10/01/99 The closing time for FFS data entry to accounting period 12 will be 3:00 (EST) Friday, October 1st. There is a significant amount of processing to be accomplished before we can close accounting period 12 (payroll actuals for PP 20, payroll accruals for 40% of PP 20, PCAS distribution, etc.). We will need to stick with the 3:00 shut down time for FFS on Friday so that we can get all of the processing done that is scheduled. Reports Processing This Weekend Personnel within the Office of Financial Management (OFM) and the Business Applications Support Branch (BASB) will be working over the weekend to generate, verify, and distribute monthly reports for accounting period 12. The closeout schedule calls for reports to be distributed by Monday, October 4th. Some division personnel have asked to be contacted if reports are available earlier than the scheduled date in the closeout memo. To accommodate this request, we would like each division to forward one name and (business) phone number to John Walbert for a point-of-contact (POC) regarding reports for this weekend. What we're planning to do is to send a broadcast message to division POCs on Saturday (around 6:00pm) regarding the status of report processing. Division POCs can access their phonemail Saturday evening and make any necessary work plans based on the information in this message. BASB will also make periodic updates to the reports status recording (x7253) during the weekend. Arrangements have been made to have printer support at the mainframe computer center over the weekend. Also, WRD personnel are advised to leave their servers up this weekend to allow the FTP jobs for reports to execute to completion. Travel Issues This is a reminder regarding rules and regulations as we approach the end of fiscal year (FY)1999 and the beginning of 2000. No new travel authorizations, commitments or obligations may be incurred, until a Continuing Resolution or regular appropriations bill is enacted. This restriction does not apply to offices having available no-year or multiple-year funding. A few specific reminders are as follows: 1) Airline tickets for travel in FY 2000 will not be issued by Travel Management Centers until an appropriation bill or a Continuing Resolution is passed unless the charge is to a multi-year fund or a no-year fund. 2) Employees scheduled to travel on or after October 1 are reminded that there must be an appropriation or a continuing resolution before departing on an official trip (unless traveling on multi-year or no-year funds). Those employees in travel status at the beginning of FY 2000 are expected to return home if funding has not been approved (unless traveling on multi year or no-year funds). 3) For reservations which have been made with a TMC for travel early in the new year, employees should request the TMC to convert the tickets to electronic ticketing (E-tickets) which will be available at the airport. This will eliminate the problem of obtaining tickets once the funding bill is approved. 4) Travel which begins in one fiscal year but is completed in the next is handled as follows: Transportation is charged to the fiscal year in which the trip begins. Other travel expenses are chargeable to the fiscal year in which the expenditures are incurred. Questions regarding this information can be directed to the Travel Management Branch Hotline on 703-648-7614 PRUS Adjustments The FY 1999 close-out memo has some conflicting cutoff dates for PRUS adjustments. The proper cutoff for FY 1999 PRUS adjustments is 3:00pm EDT on Thursday, 9/30/99. GSA Rent The FY 1999 close out memo calls for the September GSA rent bill to be accrued. This is based on the normal schedule for the rent bill which is processed in the month following the month being charged. We have received the September rent bill and it can paid in September's business. A survey of Division desires is that it will be paid for BRD, DO and OPS. GD and WRD have requested that it be accrued in accordance with the original instructions. NMD is still surveying its centers. To aid cost centers in establishing/adjusting the rent accrual, the actual amount of the September rent bill by cost center is available at http://www.usgs.gov:8888/ops/finance/yearend.html. Vendor Code Required In an earlier message, we alerted the FOG about the need to use vendor code on all transactions beginning October 4th. OFM will be working this weekend to prepare the necessary FFS tables for this input requirement. Although we have been able to work ahead on this table set-up task for FY 2000, we cannot do the same for FY 1999 while processing is on-going. Beginning October 4th, any FFS transactions entered without a vendor code will reject; users should call the FFS hotline (x7600) if a document that contains vendor code rejects for a table set-up issue. The FFS error messages below indicate that either the vendor code is missing (in which case, it should be added by the user) or that there is a table set-up issue (in which case, the users should call the hotline). -SV09E-CHECK ACCTG TT OR NEED VENDOR -CPM23-NOT IN ACEV OR NEED VENDOR -CPM02-TC NOT IN ACED OR NEED VENDOR