Policy
FIACCT 02-06_00 General accounting- Interfaces-overview
Effective: March 16, 1998
Revised: September 7, 2006
Reviewed:
Purpose
This policy provides an overview of policies affecting departmental interfaces to FINET. Detail information about interfaces may be found in the System Transaction Interface Guide (STIG) that is available from the Division of Finance.
Policy
A. Departments may establish interfaces between their subsystems and FINET for the purpose of entering transactions, if approved by the Division of Finance. Interfaces will be limited to those for which entering data manually is not practical and for which the interface is technically feasible at a reasonable cost. All new and modified interfaces must have an approved Interface Request Form (IR Form) and have gone through the interface testing process. The IR form must be submitted to [email protected] for approval, at a minimum, 45 days prior to the beginning of interface development.
B. The form of the interface must be agreed upon by the department and the Division of Finance.
C. Departments are responsible for creating, editing, and correcting data following specifications established by the Division of Finance.
D. Interfaces must comply with specific Data Processing requirements established by the Division of Finance.
E. Transactions created by the interface must comply with the record format as prescribed by the Division of Finance for each transaction type. Transactions may be created in either a single entry or batch mode.
F. Document numbering on transaction interfaces must comply with the Document Numbering policy found in the FINET Overview section of this manual, or as prescribed by the Division of Finance.
G. If it becomes apparent that an interface in a production mode no longer complies with any of these specifications or standards established by the Division of Finance, transactions will no longer be accepted to post to FINET until the problem is corrected and the interface retested.
H. Prior to putting an interface into production, the department must provide the Division of Finance with a test interface. The developed interface file will be reviewed by the Division of Finance to ensure conformability requirements have been met with the structure of the interface file. The Division of Finance will require that the department validate the data provided in the interface file is accurate prior to proceeding with further testing. Once the structure of the interface file is approved, the department must send three (3) production interface files into FINET Quality Assurance. Once a production file is approved by the Division of Finance and the department validates the data in the files produced by the interface, the Division of Finance will notify the Department of Technology Services (DTS) to move the file into production. This process must occur with three (3) files prior to the department being granted access to move the files into production. No production transactions will be allowed from the interface until the Division of Finance is satisfied that it has acceptable accuracy and integrity.
I. The Division of Finance will review all approved interfaces on a yearly schedule. Any interface that has been found to be modified or is new and has been deployed into Production without going through the interface testing process will be pulled from Production and will not be allowed to process until the Interface Request Form has been completed and testing has been completed.
J. All interfaces require a transmittal memo to be provided to Division of Finance when an interface is sent. The transmittal memo shall include:
1. The file name;
2. Department code;
3. Document code;
4. Beginning document number;
5. Ending document number;
6. The number of documents that will post to FINET;
7. The dollar amount of the documents that will post to FINET;
8. The transaction date(s);
9. The department contact person who can answer related questions.
There are two types of transmittal memos that can be sent with the interface:
1. A .txt file which is sent to the SFTP with the interface file and specifies how FINET needs to load the documents; or
2. A FI2 (Transmittal Memo for Interface Into FINET) form.
K. Interface transactions submitted to the Division of Finance will be loaded into the Document Catalog and processed in FINET.
L. Prior to posting submitted transactions in the Document Catalog to the appropriate tables and ledgers, FINET passes each transaction through one additional edit process and verifies that budgetary controls will not be violated by posting the transaction. Transactions which fail the final edit or budgetary control check are not posted to tables or ledgers, but remain in the Document Catalog with error messages attached. These transactions must be corrected online by the submitting department before they can post.
M. For billing interfaces, the submitting department (servicer) is responsible to review the Document Catalog regularly and in a timely manner, to determine if all interface transactions posted correctly. Any transactions which do not post are the responsibility of the servicer to correct. It is also the responsibility of the servicer department to establish a formal process to quickly resolve billing transactions that do not post due to errors.
N. Servicer billing transactions do not require approval of the department purchasing the goods or services (requestor). Approval for the transactions is assumed when the request for goods or services is made.
O. The requestor for goods and services must provide the servicer department with a FINET billing coding block at the time the goods or services are rendered. The servicer is responsible to enter the requestor coding block for billing purposes. The servicer must allow the requestor the flexibility to provide a reasonable number of coding blocks for each purchase.
P. If the requestor on a departmental billing is not an entity on FINET and therefore does not have a related coding block, an appropriate debit side coding block must be provided by the servicer, such as an accounts receivable coding block.
Q. If a servicer department wishes to develop a new billing interface or modify an existing one, they are required to seek input from requestor departments and make reasonable attempts to address their needs. At least one month prior to moving a new or modified billing interface into production, the servicer department is required to provide training and information, as necessary, to requestor departments.