The Chart of Accounts Redesign project team has worked with representatives across the institution to document business needs regarding financial reporting. Using a smaller core set of centrally-managed reports will accommodate business reporting needs and align the institution to a standard system of record about our enterprise data. This alignment of data will enable Mason to use business intelligence to increase efficiency across the institution and focus on strategic decision-making.
While the ability remains for staff to create custom reports, central support for these reports will not be available. If departmental reporting fails, was not submitted during the evaluation period, and supports a critical business need, a submission process will exist to bring those to a committee for review.
Please consider the following as this transition to the Patriot Reporting Project is implemented:
- Within the MicroStrategy Administrative Project
- The Administrative project reports only activity from Chart 1. It is limited to FY22 and prior.
- Existing reports within this project will remain available to support historical reporting.
- Chart 1 Fund and Org security will remain in place.
- Within the new MicroStrategy Patriot Reporting Project
- Reports have been consolidated and updated to align with the new chart of accounts.
- To support the transition from the Administrative project reports to the new Patriot Reporting Project reports, the COA Report Cross Reference Report is available in the Patriot Reporting project. It provides an inventory of administrative project reports, indicates if the report was identified as needed in the new project, and provides the status, name, and location of the new report.
- You can also use the Report Reference Report to see the list of Patriot Reporting project reports and a brief description of each report.
Here are some key items:
- Data
- Patriot Reporting contains data from Fiscal Year 2023 forward
- This project also contains some historical data (FY22 and earlier) that has been converted in the data mart from Chart 1 to Chart P using the crosswalk
- There is a new security model in effect and all Funds and Orgs across the institution are available to users
- This will make it necessary for users to apply filters if they want to only view specific orgs/funds
- Financial Reporting
- The format has been standardized across all core reports to facilitate consistent understanding of reports
- Reports reflect both revenues and expenses in the same report (when both exist) which enables comprehensive reporting including net balances
- Summary reports reflect total Revenue and total Expense (Account L1) for individual cost centers (Orgs/Funds)
- Revenue amounts are shown as credit balances (i.e., in parentheses)
- This is the natural accounting balance and does not indicate ‘negative revenue’
- Expense amounts are shown as debit balances (i.e., without parentheses)
- Variances from budget or prior period are consistent in that unfavorable variances (lower revenue/higher expenses) are reflected in parentheses and favorable variances (higher revenue/lower expenses) are reflected without parentheses
- Department Reports
- Available for department-specific reporting needs
- Commonly used reports have been moved to the main shared reports folders.
- Access to department folders is granted to specific department-identified users
- No longer available to “Everyone”
- Maintenance and support of reports in the department folders is the responsibility of the department owners, also known as report librarians
If you have any questions about these changes or need further information about the COA project as a MicroStrategy user, please connect with the project team using the “Connect with Us!” link above.