By Cathy Leal, Partner Business Executive, State Controller’s Office
The latest release of State Controller’s Office (SCO) functionality into the FI$Cal system marks a true milestone. The key piece enables SCO’s legacy system and FI$Cal system ledgers to run in tandem on a daily basis, which is the first step for a statewide ledger to be produced using the FI$Cal system.
With the new functionality, SCO can reconcile the two systems on the same day or within a week, resolving any issues up front instead of making departments reconcile those items months later. SCO will be reconciling daily because transactions and fund balances must remain in sync. This will reduce reconciliations for departments at month-end close and year-end close (MEC/YEC), cutting the amount of time they spend resolving their MEC/YEC. This represents a huge, time-saving benefit to departments.
New Plan of Financial Adjustment (PFA) interface functionality will send a department’s cost allocation electronically to the SCO’s legacy system. This will save departments significant time by eliminating paper transactions and SCO review of those transactions. Not only will your paper transactions be eliminated, reconciliation items between legacy and the FI$Cal system will be resolved within a day or two in most cases, reducing the workload for departments.
Another new piece of functionality involves cash validation/cash validation appropriation control (CV/CVAC). This makes sure your transaction has enough fund cash and budget authority. That means departments can now see insufficient fund/appropriation errors up front and can rectify those issues early. Instead of being forced to wait on a transaction to post in the SCO legacy system and then being notified that the transaction was voided, you can process a cash transfer or deposit instead of voiding the transaction.
The SCO and State Treasurer’s Office control functions are crucial to maintaining an accurate Book of Record (BOR) for the state, and we are taking that first step into making the FI$Cal system the BOR. The Integrated Solution consists of multiple interfaces to allow FI$Cal to send transactions to SCO’s Accounting and Reporting Management System (ARMS) legacy system, which contains the State BOR, and also to receive transactions that originate within the legacy system.
With implementation of Milestone 5, Priority 1 and 2 functionality by July 2021, the FI$Cal system will have the necessary data and functionality to complete the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) and will produce a statewide ledger.