Friday Focus: Budget season is here!

June 16, 2023

— By Julie Queen, vice chancellor for administrative services

Welcome to budget season! When the academic year ends and most students head home for the summer, the ramp-up for fiscal year close-out (and restart) begins. Although you may not see it because this work is often behind the scenes, there is a flurry of activity for fiscal professionals this time of year.

If you pass by your fiscal or procurement office and the person there (or online) looks frazzled, thank them for their efforts and help keep them motivated! The deadlines are fast approaching and the pace to keep up means many folks are scheduling their summer vacations around these closing and opening fiscal activities to ensure it all gets done on time. I want to acknowledge this hard work and thank our fiscal staff, leaders, and business office teams for this quiet dedication and thoroughness – your work is critical to our healthy financial operations and helps management at all levels stay “in the know” as part of decision-making for the coming year. Thank you!

The Office of Finance and Accounting is hard at work pushing out guidance and receiving information back from schools, colleges, and institutes to close up FY23 on June 30 and start up FY24 on July 1. Deadlines are earlier than usual this year, so please check your year-end calendars.

The Office of Management and Budget is organizing FY25 budget items that have been vetted by the Planning and Budget Committee. These new requests will be prioritized by the core cabinet and the chancellor and will go to the UA System Office in August. From there, selected UAF requests will be added to the UA FY25 budget request that will go to the Board of Regents this fall before a final UA budget package is submitted to the Governor’s Office in December. It is hard to believe we are managing three fiscal years at once (FY23-FY24-FY25) before we know our final FY24 budget!

Speaking of FY24, there are a few updates I’m happy to share as we approach the “New Year.” First, the increased state legislative operating and capital budgets have been transmitted to the Governor’s Office for final review. By statute, the Governor has until July 6 to respond to the legislative budget proposal, although we believe we’ll hear news prior to the end of June. Once it comes out, you can expect a campus communication with more updates.

Second, OFA in collaboration with UAA, UAS and the UA Foundation, has implemented a game-changing solution for management of Foundation funds (private and corporate gifts) moving into next year. At long last, we will be retiring the idea that donor funds are traditionally “grants” and we will begin making use of them as specialized expense accounts, or Foundation Fund Expense Accounts. This means UAF fund managers will have the ability to oversee annual spendable Foundation account balances in Banner – as they are requested, funds will transfer directly to the benefiting university using permanent expense accounts. This will allow universities to more quickly view and administer these simplified accounts, better putting donor dollars to work.

To learn more about FFEAs, please visit our FAQ or view a recorded and fully indexed training session on the new process. This is a big deal – I’m so proud of our Financial Services team, namely OFA Director Jason Theis, for his technical expertise and persistence (more than a year) on this project. He understood the challenge, created a solution with stakeholder input, and is implementing it. It is a great feeling to be entering the new fiscal year with a sense of optimism and some major process improvements – please join me in welcoming FY24!