Policies and Procedures

1. Budget Transfers

For help using the Budget Transfer Smartdoc, please see the How to Create a Budget Transfer document.

Most budget transfers should be processed using the online Smartdoc within the WFS system, however, there are circumstances in which you will not be able to use that form. Those circumstances are:

• One or more of the Smartkeys in the transfer are in a department that you do not have security access to, either within your officer area, or across officer areas
• You are transferring budget between funds
• The transfer involves position budgets
• The transfer is increasing a revenue budget

If you are unable to use the Budget Transfer Smartdoc due to one of these reasons then you need to submit the Offline Budget Transfer Request Form. 

Entry: This form requires the same information from you that the Smartdoc does, and the same rules apply (no transfer can exceed balance available, transfers must be balanced, Transfer Original cannot exceed Original Budget, etc).  All fields marked with an asterisk are required, but Fiscal Year will be auto-populated for you.

Date Entered should be the date that you are filling out the request please use MM/DD/YYYY format.

Budget Entry Type is a dropdown consisting of Transfer Adjustment and Transfer Original.

The comment should be a detailed description of the reason for the transfer and is limited to 254 characters in length.

The body of the transfer request should be filled out in the same way as the Budget Transfer Smartdoc, but unlike the Smartdoc, you will need to enter all of the information manually. Smartkey, Smartkey Description and either a Debit or Credit Amount are required for each line of the transaction. If the Smartkey budgets at the account level (either detail or subgroup), then Account and Account Description are also required. If you are transferring to or from an AG2 Account then Position and Position Title are required. (If you are using an AG2 Account please make sure to include the associated fringe rows if necessary.)

The form will track your Total Debits and Total Credits as you enter them so that you can verify that you have entered a balanced transaction.

After you have entered all of the information, please check the boxes at the bottom of the form to indicate the reason that you were unable to enter this transaction on the Smartdoc. This will help any required approvers in understanding the request.

Submission: Departmental Users (Academic Affairs): Forms should be submitted to financialplanning@wesleyan.edu.  

Departmental Users (Non-Academic Affairs): Forms should be submitted to your Fiscal Manager. 

Fiscal Managers: If possible, Fiscal Managers should enter forms submitted by Departmental Users into WFS using the Smartdoc. If you are unable to do so, or need to initiate a request yourself then you should forward the form to financialplanning@wesleyan.edu .

If you have any questions please contact financialplanning@wesleyan.edu

2. Centralizing Staff Vacancy Salary and Benefits Savings Policy

Effective July 1, 2008, all departmental salary/benefits from staff vacancies will be centralized. This new approach provides two benefits:

• Establishes a mechanism to identify campus-wide ongoing budget savings.
• Creates equity across departments regarding how vacancy savings are used including additional pay amounts.

Upon notice of termination, the Financial Planning Office will reduce budgets on a one-time basis by removing salary and associated benefit dollars from departmental budgets based on final employment dates and vacation payouts. These transfers will be done monthly. Departments cannot spend any of these savings without Vice President for Finance and Administration, Human Resources, and Financial Planning approvals. 

It is expected that most vacancies will not require backfill. However, in limited circumstances, if the department determines that it needs backfill resulting from the vacancy, it can request approval to either hire a temp or provide additional pay/hours to existing staff. In these cases, please contact Human Resources to determine the appropriate form to fill out. Please note central funding for backfill requests will not be retroactive.

3. Commitment Accounting Changes

A web form for Commitment Accounting Changes is available through your Employee Portfolio. This form should be used if you need to request a change to the account or object code for a position. You will receive email confirmation of the successful submission of the form and notification when the change has been processed. For a detailed explanation of how the form works please see the Commitment Accounting Form Training Guide. If you have any questions about using this form please contact financialplanning@wesleyan.edu. 

4. Earnings Redistribution Request

The Earnings Redistribution Request Form is available through your Employee Portfolio.  Instructions for this web form can be found here.

If you have any questions about using this form please contact financialplanning@wesleyan.edu.

5. Budget Planning

The Budget Planning SmartDoc will be use to allocate the budget for Fiscal Year 2023. Original and Adjustment Budget Transfers can be processed during the budget planning period, which runs from June 1st to June 30th, 2022. Budget warnings may indicate that there are insufficient funds for the PO, voucher or journal. Good budget planning will minimize the number of budget warnings and allow for easier approval. Users should transfer budget to fund the expense prior to submitting the PO, voucher, or journal. For Budget Planning help and information, please view the 2023 Budget Planning Training document.