The Spring 2019 FINDINI 4.0.15 release will be available to users on Monday April 29, 2019. Please continue to review updated release messages and outage information that will be posted in the March & April e-News articles, on the Oracle Financial splash pages, and on our site: http://oracle.fss.finance.harvard.edu/releases.

OUTAGES:

The University's financial systems will be unavailable from Friday, April 26 at 6:00 p.m. until Monday, April 29 at 7:00 a.m. to complete the installation of this release. The Oracle EBS Financial systems that will be offline during this time include:

We continue to experience issues related to uploading files from Citi to the PCard Settlement system. Citi changed their file format on January 26 and the last valid file we have received in our system was on January 28.

This issue has been escalated within Citi and we expect to have it resolved soon.

You will notice the sweep for February 21 is not present in the settlement system. This is because transactions for the week of Jan 28 would have been in that sweep. Since there are no transactions, no sweep is present.

We will let you know as soon as this issue has been resolved.

Minor changes have been made to the Procurement Policy (policy effective date: 07/01/2018.01M). These changes do not affect current policy or practices, but are simply to support Harvard’s position on procurement thresholds.

The full policy may be found at: https://policies.fad.harvard.edu/procurement.

Get a preview of the revised Independent Contractor Policy effective April 1, 2019. The updated version has stream-lined the questionnaire and provides guidance and clarification on when and how to classify an individual as an employee or independent contractor.

Expanded training materials have also been created to help hiring departments, Human Resources and Finance Offices determine specific roles and responsibilities.

An overview of the revised policy will be held by the Financial Policy Office and Office of Labor and Employee Relations on Thursday, February 28 from 11:00-12:00 in the Lamont Library Forum Room with additional trainings held throughout March.

A contact list for questions regarding tax-reporting documents (e.g., W-2, 1099-MISC, 1042-S, 1098-E, 1098-T, 1095-C) may be found here.

See here for additional details regarding copies of W-2 forms.

The FY20 capital spending plan submissions will be due using CPATH by end of day on Friday, February 15, 2019. Also, responses to the Capital Spending Plan Narrative Update questions should be submitted; these have been included with the FY20 Budget Guidelines and Narratives distributed by Office of Financial Strategy and Planning (OFSP). CAPS will obtain your responses from OFSP when you submit the narrative to them.

FCI calculations will not be part of the FY20 capital spending plan submission.  Retrospective building FCI’s will be done in the fall as part of the prior year review and multi-year capital planning efforts.  It is recommended that the automated FCA tool be updated regularly, but especially at the completion of each fiscal year.

Members of the Harvard IRB offices are holding informational sessions in January to share updates on important policy and process changes associated with: Final Revisions to the Common Rule. For the calendar of sessions and to register, please visit your IRB office website:

• Harvard University Area IRB
• Harvard Longwood Area IRB

Confused about contracts, when they are necessary, and what is needed in a contract? Want to know more about contract terms, policies and when and how to use Harvard University contract templates?

Strategic Procurement and the Policy Office will be holding a general contract review session that will go over contract basics, what to know and look for in a contract, what resources are available, and when and who to reach out to for additional guidance.

The session will be held on Thursday, January 24 from 11:00-12:00 in the Lamont Library Forum Room.