BruinBuy Plus
LIST OF BRUINBUY PLUS FIXES & ENHANCEMENTS
The BruinBuy Plus team is working diligently to implement system improvements based on your feedback! Check out the most-recent list of BruinBuy Plus fixes and enhancements.
ACTION NEEDED: “PENDING” PO STATUS IN BRUINBUY PLUS
Missing vendor email addresses are causing some requisitions and purchase orders (POs) to get caught in a “Pending” status within BruinBuy Plus.
This issue is primarily associated with two scenarios:
- Requisitions are stuck in the supplier does not Accept PO workflow step because the vendor opted out of accepting POs during their onboarding process. As a result, an email address did not flow into BruinBuy Plus.
- POs are stuck in the Invalid Distribution workflow step due to a missing email address in the vendor’s BruinBuy Plus profile because either:
- Email address was not provided.
- In support of the PO migration effort, the vendor’s profile may have been manually entered into BruinBuy Plus with no email.
The Ascend 2.0 program team is working to resolve this issue; however, you can help expedite this process.
If you see your requisition or PO stuck in one of the above workflow steps and you have an active email address for the vendor, send the email address to vendors@finance.ucla.edu. Vendor Management will update the vendor profile and release the order for processing.
REMINDER: PURCHASE ORDER SALES TAX
As a reminder, taxes are not encumbered on BruinBuy Plus purchase orders. All POs sent to vendors contain the following statement: "Shipping, handling, and tax charges are calculated and charged by each supplier."
Taxes on invoices will be reviewed and assessed by UCLA Accounts Payable.
Bruin Finance
The launch of Bruin Finance will bring new and exciting changes to UCLA, including improvements to Workflow. Workflow refers to a process of reviewing and approving that Is built into a system to route automatically. With the transition to Bruin Finance, Workflow will be used in two ways.
GRANT SYSTEM ACCESS TO END USERS
Bruin Finance and systems using DACSS today (such as BruinBuy Plus) will follow the below process to grant system access:
- The manager identifies the need for a staff member to acquire system access and contacts department system administrator (DSA).
- The DSA submits access request via ServiceNow Access Request (SAR) form. Additional verifications or actions, such as training, may be completed before moving to the next step.
- The CAO/CFO reviews and approves user access requests for their systems in ServiceNow.
- Approved user access request is sent to a central security group, who provisions access in Oracle Financials Cloud.
Most systems not utilizing DACSS today will continue to follow their existing access provisioning processes.
FINANCIAL TRANSACTION APPROVAL
As part of the Bruin Finance implementation, most UCLA systems transmitting financial data will require approval of financial transactions prior to the transaction posting. For example:
- The user first enters a transaction.
- The transaction routes to appropriate approver(s).
- The transaction is posted to the ledger.
Although these will be big changes for UCLA, it will lead to tighter internal controls and is a leading practice amongst higher education institutions. To learn more about the Workflow changes coming to Bruin Finance, please watch the January Ascend 2.0 Town Hall recording.
Research
The transition to managing financial transactions in the Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Subledger will bring many changes to the Research community. This month, we are providing you a crosswalk of how a fund in today’s financial system will be displayed as an award in Bruin Finance.
As you may know, a fund represents a sponsored award (e.g., a contract, grant, or cooperative agreement) in today’s financial system. Expense accounts and cost centers are used to separate costs/funding within the sponsored award. When Bruin Finance launches, the equivalent of a fund will be an award. Projects will be used to separate costs/funding within the sponsored award. Additionally, instead of using expense account and cost center, we will budget at the project level to manage the financial performance of an award.
With this change, some of the information that you are familiar with in today’s system will be different in Bruin Finance. Explore the funds versus award crosswalk image showing how fund information will be displayed using the new award structure in Bruin Finance. The graphic provides a guide of how fund number, sponsor, sponsor award number, PI name, and other fields displays in today's UCLA Financial System compared to their future state equivalents in Bruin Finance.