DPA
MEETING NOTES
July 2004
TOPICS
AUGUST 2004 MEETING
FALL MEETING SCHEDULE
PROPERTY ADMINISTRATOR REPLACEMENT PROCESS
EQUIPMENT LOAN FORMS
TAGGING DELAYS
DISPOSAL PROCESS
YEAREND AUDIT
FADB DESCRIPTIONS
CONVERT FIXED ASSET REPORT TO EXCEL
AUGUST 2004 MEETING – The August 2004 meeting will be Thursday, the 26th, 9:30-11:00 A.M. at ML-Damon Room.
FALL MEETING SCHEDULE – DPA meetings will occur in August, September, and October. We will not meet in November and December because of the holidays. Meetings will resume again January 27 th, 2005.
PROPERTY ADMINISTRATOR REPLACEMENT PROCESS– Melissa Miller, Director of UCAR Budget and Finance, explained the timeline and process for hiring a new UCAR Property Administrator. The job will be posted late August/early September and interviews will begin late September/early October. The goal is to have the new Property Administrator begin about November 1st so that Janet has plenty of time to train before her departure mid-January. Melissa emphasized the importance of DPA participation in this process and asked that any DPAs who would like to be on the interview committee e-mail her at Melissa@ucar.edu. She will compile the responses and include as many as possible. She will get back to everyone about the final interview committee.
We will also send e-mails to dpaalias@ucar.edu during the interview and selection process to keep everyone apprised of how it is going. Hopefully, we can let you know at the October 2004 meeting who the new Property Administrator is.
EQUIPMENT LOAN FORMS – When downloading the Equipment Loan Form from the web, do not alter it in any way. If you need changes, let Janet know and she will verify with the legal department that the requested changes are acceptable. Then, an addendum, specifying the changes, will be created and added to the agreement. The reason for using an addendum rather than altering sections of the agreement itself is that it shows, at a glance, that changes have been made and precisely what they are. Without this, each loan agreement must be compared, line by line, to an original to see if there are changes. A note was added to the instructions not to alter the loan form. Remember, a loan agreement is a legal document that includes liability obligations so should not be altered by anyone other than the Property Office.
TAGGING DELAYS – There have been some tagging mishaps so we are trying to keep closer tabs on that process to be sure we comply with OMB A-110 requirements, and associated UCAR procedures, to tag when an item is received. Therefore, we will be adhering carefully to the two-week timeframe for tagging. This is actually much longer than should be allowed but we have stretched out this time in deference to division issues. So, if you receive a tag and have any reason to think you will not be able to tag the item within the allowed two weeks, please contact Chris or me immediately. We will retrieve the tag and pursue the tagging ourselves.
DISPOSAL PROCESS – We have created a Disposal Flowchart as a reminder of the appropriate disposal steps and their sequencing. This is a tool for DPAs who can benefit from such reminders so if you do not need it, do not feel obligated to use it. It was reviewed in the DPA Meeting and all were asked to provide e-mail feedback. (There was some feedback in the meeting and the chart was modified accordingly.) Is it clear? Is there sufficient information? It will be posted on the Property Web site soon and we will e-mail to let you know where it is. Please take a look and contact Janet with suggestions.
YEAREND AUDIT – KPMG (external)auditors will be on-site starting August 16 th. The Property Office will spend the first two weeks of August preparing reports for that first audit phase. Therefore, please be sure your FADB records are current, particularly FASITE information. Janet will enter the recent disposals before audit reports are prepared and send the disposal e-mail. At that point, please check to be sure any assets for which you expected disposal entries show DI in the Status field. If not, contact her immediately and she will work out why that has not occurred. Also, when the Property Office calls with inquiries, we may request quick turnaround if the response could impact the interim audit reports. It is important that they be as up-to-date as possible. KPMG will use these reports to make audit selections so this is very important.
FADB DESCRIPTIONS – If you include manufacturer and model in the description field on the FAIDNT screen, place them after the physical description. For example, Dell latitude would be Laptop dell latitude, OTT Pluvio rain gauge would be Rain Gauge OTT Pluvio. This will ensure that reports that truncate this column still have the physical description and the redundant information that appears in other columns would be what is truncated.
CONVERT FIXED ASSET REPORT TO EXCEL – Chris demonstrated how to run a BiTech report (fxreus) and use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to convert the file to an Excel spreadsheet. This allows the user greater flexibility in sorting and manipulating the data. The process took approximately three minutes to complete. Please contact Chris for the steps in this process. It is an easy process to run through with you over the phone, if you are interested. This can be a very useful tool for manipulating your active asset information but you are not required to use it. If you do not need this tool, just ignore it.
Contact
the Property Office at anytime with questions or for assistance.
We're here to help you manage your division's property.
Janet Campbell, ext 8858, janetc@ucar.edu;
Chris Knoetgen, ext 8573, knoetgen@ucar.edu
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