As you know, a summary of the Research Project Statement (RPS) has been sent to researchers through email on a monthly basis.  The process of providing this financial detail over email was established a few years ago and since that time threats to research security have increased as threat actors have become more sophisticated.  Risks include the exploitation of accounts, data access and extraction and having an outside entity masquerade as one of our researchers.  In addition, our financial tool which supports the RPS has moved from onsite storage to the cloud, which has required a change to delivery of the RPS summary to provide greater security.

University Technology Services (UTS), Institutional Research and Analysis (IRA) and the central and Faculty of Health Sciences Research Finance offices have worked together to provide more protection for researchers while also supporting access to their RPS summaries.  The University will continue to provide researchers with a monthly email.  Rather than the email including financial detail, it will instead provide a link to the Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) system where login with your McMaster email and MacID password through Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) – already shown to greatly reduce risks to research security – will provide additional protection for your information. Note that while care should be taken with links in emails arriving unexpectedly from unknown sources, information security experts in UTS have advised that this process of sending an expected link from a known source, coupled with login through the MFA process, is secure.

Researchers can access Oracle BI at any time however the monthly email will serve as a reminder that review of account details is now required.  While the RPS summary previously sent through email was a snapshot in time, the information displayed following clicking the ‘link’ to the RPS Summary in Oracle BI will be real-time since Oracle BI is updated daily.

In addition to the RPS summaries, Oracle BI provides additional detail including Labour Distribution reports and transaction details on each of a researcher’s accounts. Researchers are encouraged to take advantage of this information while logged into Oracle BI.

This approach to provide access to the RPS summary within Oracle BI rather than through the body of an email is preventative in nature and provides an additional layer of security above and beyond the current practice.  This new process will begin with the monthly email distributed in July.  Please reach out to your Research Accountant if you have any questions on navigating the Oracle BI system.

Functional Review of McMaster Financial Support Activities – November 2022 Update

P-Card

The P-Card reconciliation process has been streamlined to aid in reconciliation.

• As P-Card transactions are now processed through Mosaic’s Travel and Expense module, better information is available both through MOSAIC and in BI Transaction reports
• As all data is online, time spent obtaining signatures is reduced. Approvals are automatically routed by leveraging the established workflow of Mosaic
• Attachments can now be added and keystroking for reconciliation is reduced.
• All reconcilers, approvers, and users responsible for financial reporting are now able to view Travel and Expense report details at any time either directly or through drill down capability in reports and queries.
• A user guide is available to adopt this easier approach.

These changes have been well received by the community, as shown in the following testimonials from researchers and administrators:

“The new P-Card reconciliation process is much more streamlined and more straightforward to reconcile. Adding My Wallet, where each P-Card transaction is posted, simplifies the reconciliation process. Since all the data is online, there’s no more need to collect signatures for approvals as they are now automatically done in the background. Overall, the new P-Card reconciliation is more straightforward, practical and a time saver.”

“The new process for reconciling PCards does save quite a bit of time.  It is definitely easier to track expenses, or find backup when required.”

“P-card reconciliation has been streamlined and saves time.  It just takes a few entries for staff to get the hang of it.”

My Wallet

Researchers have mentioned that it would be great if it were possible to take a picture of a receipt and store those receipts electronically.  This function is currently available in Mosaic, through “My Wallet”, part of the part of the Travel and Expense module. My Wallet allows tracking of expenses by loading electronic copies and/or pictures of receipts.  If you have not taken advantage of this tool, please refer to this ‘My Wallet’ video to help streamline your Travel and Expense claims (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBbK-J-hVuo)

Updates to BI Principal Investigator & Research Project Statement Dashboards

Updates made to the Dashboards include the following:

• The All Project Balances now have a high-level financial summary of projects (similar to the Research Project Statement), with the ability to view multiple projects/depts/PIs at one time
• The Research Accounting Summary and All Project Balances have new fields for enhanced insight on project/funding balances based on the award amount. Additional guidance in the BI reports helps interpret these new fields.

Research Project Review

As on-going activity, the Research Finance offices have been dedicating time to project clean-up, closing projects that are no longer active.  As some agencies allow spending after the end date of the project while others provide automatic extensions, review on a project-by-project basis is required.  Outreach with individual researchers is required at times and is ongoing. Cleaning up and closing these projects will make it easier for researchers and their administrators to review their research portfolio.

MOSAIC Usability

The approval processes in MacBuy are being streamlined to better serve our user community. Changes implemented include:

• Strategic Procurement Specialists now check a procurement request’s compliance at the beginning of the approval process, so that area leaders are assured that policy compliance has been checked. This allows them more time to focus on approval and need for the purchase.
• Previously, requests for MOSAIC approvals between $100K and $2M were routed to a number of approvers who were in an “approver pool”, and identification of the appropriate approver could be unclear. A new process has been put in place where the approval request will be routed directly to the appropriate approver
• The process for approval of transactions over $2M requiring approval by the Board of Governors or its sub-committees has been streamlined. Requests will now be entered by Strategic Procurement, who will ensure that an approval motion of the Board is in hand. Knowing that this approval has already taken place will facilitate easier review by subsequent approvers and eliminate the additional steps of having AVP, VP or President approval.

MOSAIC Security

The Finance security improvement project is underway and has three major objectives:

• The project will facilitate movement towards a centralized support/expert user model, reducing the number of infrequent users.  As infrequent users of MOSAIC are more prone to errors, this change will reduce time spent in review and corrections. Determination of users whose use is infrequent will be undertaken on an annual basis.
• The project links security to a person’s position, simplifying onboarding and ensuring that MOSAIC activity is appropriate to the individual’s current role.  Previously, security levels for MOSAIC were linked to an individual and could be problematic as individuals change position. This change has been completed and a new security access application eform will be released in October.
• Finance security access will be supported through a clear policy and documentation of procedures around who should have finance security access, scheduled to be released before the end of 2022.

Functional Review of McMaster Financial Support Activities – May 2020 Update

Risk Management

The adoption in 2019 of a risk-based approach to compliance checking on Travel and Expense (T&E) claims has resulted in more efficient flow of claims through Mosaic. With the reduced volume of compliance checking on low-risk T&E transactions, the Research Finance offices are now able to focus more energy and time on valuable strategies for financial management and reporting. We expect everyone to benefit from this improved level of service.
A similar risk-based approach to reviewing non-PO Vouchers was recently tested and yielded positive results. As of April 1 2020, new voucher submissions will follow an updated workflow. For most projects, non-PO voucher submissions with a value below the established dollar threshold will not be routed to the Research Finance offices; they will instead be subject to post-review sampling for compliance.
Paper backup for P-Card reconciliations is now being routed directly to Accounts Payable. This will increase the speed with which reconciliations can be finalized and posted to GL accounts.

Research Project Statement

Since the end of September 2019, all Principal Investigators and Delegates were given access to the Principal Investigator and Research Project Statement dashboards and related reports (eg. Labour Distribution details). The ease of the Principal Investigator Dashboard and Research Project Statement has allowed researchers and other users to quickly view their portfolio for project balances and to identify expenditures incurred and funding received. We are hearing from the research community that this, along with the month end summary email to each researcher, has proven to be ‘very helpful and easy’. The new dashboards have allowed them to easily scan this information and understand their financial picture.
For those that have had an opportunity to review these dashboards in more detail, the ability to review Labour Details information has been said to be very helpful when reviewing members of the research team charged to different projects.

External Sub-grant Commitments

In order to provide researchers and the users of the Research Project Statement with better information, efforts are continuing to answer the question: How much money do I have left to spend? The release of the Principal Investigator and Research Project Statement dashboards have helped to provide better information but there is more work to be done to fully answer this question. One project recently pursued is the ability to include a committed value in Mosaic when a researcher has committed funding from a McMaster researcher to another researcher at an external institution (eg. transferring portion of research award to a recipient at the University of XXX).
In the past, these commitments were tracked outside of Mosaic and were not readily available to all users of the Research Project Statement information. Going forward, there is an ability to set up the commitment of funding to the external institution and it will show in the Research Project Statement.
This will provide better information regarding a true balance of funding left to spend. There is still more work to be done and efforts will continue to enhance the information available in Mosaic.

Tri-Agency F300 Reporting

The implementation of the Principal Investigator Dashboard and the Research Project Statement Dashboard has been a great success.  The ease of:

• dashboard use and navigation
• presentation of financial information, and
• ability to investigate transactions and labour details,

has opened the doors for more improvements and additional abilities within the BI dashboards.  One of those is the ability to easily produce F300’s as individual reports or in bulk.  This will be used as part of the annual March 31^st reporting requirements of the Tri-Agencies. This ability will save time to produce the annual F300’s and provides the opportunity to use this as the reporting tool for a number of other research sponsors.

MacBuy

Accounts Payable continues to roll out MacBuy, McMaster’s eProcurement online purchase ordering system. Since MacBuy launched in May 2019, the number of suppliers available in the Showcase catalogue (just click and order) has continued to grow. These include commonly used research suppliers like Fisher Scientific, as well as office supply vendors such as Grand & Toy. In addition to these Showcase suppliers, MacBuy can also be used for vendors that are not currently in the catalogue. In most cases, approvals are done by clicking “approve” in an email prior to purchases being completed, which simplifies the process of charging purchases correctly to projects and programs on a timely basis.

Links to training videos can be found here:

https://financial-affairs.mcmaster.ca/services/procurement/buying-for-mcmaster/macbuy/#tab-content-user-videos-how-tos

For user access and training opportunities, contact macbuyhelp@mcmaster.ca.

MacBill

The MacBill function for external billing continues to grow and is now being used for Research invoices. Accounts Receivable continues to monitor usage and encourage greater use of MacBill throughout McMaster. MacBill project leaders held a Town Hall on Feb 28, 2020 and gathered feedback and recommendations from users. An update will be provided soon to address those items.  Training is ongoing, and Accounts Receivable continues to explore a variety of training methods in order to best serve MacBill users.

Mosaic Usability

Travel and Expense (T&E) has some new functionality! Now, when an individual appears multiple times within the same T&E workflow, subsequent steps will be automatically approved after their first approval is completed. Additionally, these same approvers will now only receive a single email notification. This new functionality will help when an individual is the Program Manager and the Department Manager, or the Principle Investigator and the Purpose Approver.
The time required to complete Travel & Expense Approvals has been reduced by removing the Budget Check as a manual approval step. This saves time for approvers on every T&E record. A change provided by our software vendor has enabled us to once again allow users to Delete unwanted Expense Reports, when needed.

Functional Review of McMaster Financial Support Activities – July 2019 Update

Implementation of recommendations arising from the functional review of the financial support activities provided by the Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster Research Finance and Financial Affairs has been continuing.  This update provides further detail regarding progress of changes, which have been developed in consultation with cross-faculty researcher and administrator focus groups and other stakeholders.

Risk Management

On February 1, 2019 McMaster implemented a change to research compliance checking. Rather than reviewing each individual expense we have moved to a sample-based approach to testing policy/eligibility compliance of Travel and Expense submissions. The controls in place are set at a level that balances an acceptable level of risk with a reduction in administrative burden.  Work on the development of a sampling approach for other types of transactions will continue through the upcoming months.  Data on the impact of the sampling approach will be reviewed annually, with the processes being revised as needed.

Research Project Statement

May 2019 the soft launch of the Principal Investigator Dashboard and Research Project Statement Dashboard in the Business Intelligence (BI) tool took place.  These dashboards will offer a single access point for principal investigators and support staff to access essential financial information and labour distribution for their research projects.

The soft launch provided access to selected members of the McMaster research community.  Additional administrators and research support staff will be trained and given access over the summer months. This will ensure that they are familiar with the system and able to provide support by the time the full roll-out to all researchers is complete on September 30.

Users will be notified by email when it is their turn to access the dashboards. The email will include training materials, ‘how-to’ documentation, and links to video tutorials.   There will also be drop-in training sessions offered to help users navigate the new reports.

Researchers who will not have direct access immediately can still experience some of the benefits of the new RPS through access by the support person that they typically rely on for financial information from MOSAIC.

As a reminder, key features of the dashboard will include:

• A monthly email to each Principal Investigator with summary information on all of their research projects, and a link to the BI portal
• Access to a Principal Investigator Dashboard with summary information on all of the investigator’s projects, and a link to view the Research Project Statement for each project
• Access to an enhanced version of the existing Research Project Statement including labour distribution details and journal entries on salary accounts
• Reports in BI will allow users to apply multiple filters and customize report layouts. Reports can be viewed online or downloaded to Excel, CSV, PDF, PowerPoint, and more
• BI reports have the ability to drill down to transaction details, including billing data and commitments. Long descriptions of employee expenses are now available
• Enhanced labour distribution reporting that will include employee end dates to allow for better labour planning
• The ability to track sponsor funding that has been invoiced but not yet received using the Accounts Receivable Billing module in MOSAIC

Renewal of the Tri-Agency Financial Administration Guide – McMaster involvement in Pilot Project

The Tri-Agencies (the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) launched a new initiative to reduce administrative burden and harmonize requirements across the three agencies.   This new approach focuses on principles and, in most cases, allows institutions to rely on their own institutional policies without having to also meet additional requirements based on Tri-Agency rules.

McMaster is one of the selected institutions invited to participate in the pilot of this new initiative. In November 2018, McMaster completed a gap analysis of its policies and procedures and has introduced minor amendments to its policies to ensure alignment to Tri-Agency directions.  In January 2019, the Research Finance offices held several information sessions for the research community. McMaster implemented the new principles-based approach in February 1, 2019.  One of the expected benefits of this change is a reduction in administrative burden to the research community, particularly the request for less justification of expenses.  However, if the direct relationship of the expense to your project is not clear, it is the responsibility of our Research Finance offices to request additional justification.

In the next phase of the pilot the Tri-Agencies will develop a new monitoring review process.  We expect that elements of the Monitoring Review will be tested with the Pilot institutions in the fall of 2019.

MacBuy

McMaster has begun transitioning to a coordinated online purchasing system. MacBuy is integrated with Mosaic and allows buyers to use an online shopping cart to order items directly from selected suppliers. The Financial Affairs team has trained more than 140 people and MacBuy launched in a pilot phase a few weeks ago.  Already the online purchasing system is making a difference for the early adopters. For 93% of the orders, a purchase order was created on the same day the order was placed. Users to date work in Biochemistry, the Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute, Chemistry, Kinesiology, Receiving and Financial Affairs.  As well, administrative staff in the Faculties of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Business are also part of this group. Over the summer, staff from Facilities Services, Human Resources and the Library will receive training on the MacBuy system, in addition to administrators in the Faculties of Science, Engineering and Health Sciences.  Learn more on the Financial Affairs website. The next town hall meeting is scheduled for August 1, 2019.at 10:00 in Council Chambers, GH-111.

Mosaic Billing and AR module (MacBill)

In June 2018, McMaster began the implementation of the billing and accounts receivable modules of Mosaic for several departments. This new functionality within Mosaic will ensure that external customers are billed on a timely basis, and that payments can be easily tracked and identified for customers. Implementation has brought many benefits to the University, including:

• Customers are billed on a timely basis
• Billing Units are generating an official McMaster invoice customized by department
• Billing Units can easily send reminder notices to customers until the invoice is paid
• As payments can be easily tracked and identified for customers, the number of unclaimed payments has decreased
• Complete listings of unpaid invoices are available by department
• Revenue is recognized at the time of invoicing

Work is complete on this project and all phase one and two users for non research departments are live. Phase three users will access the system in the fall of 2019. The FHS Research Finance office is in the process of migrating all research billings to the new system.  The Central Research Finance Office will do so in the Fall of 2019.

Research Residuals Policy

A review of the Research Residuals Policy was recently undertaken, resulting in revision. Research Finance offices in the Vice-President Research’s office and the Faculty of Health Sciences participated in the review. The draft revised policy was shared with the Associate Deans Research, the Assistant Vice-President (Administration) and Chief Financial Officer and personnel from the University Secretariat.  The revised policy will be posted in the coming weeks.

Key change(s) to the policy are as follows:

• the previous policy addressed opening a residual account once the grant is 5 years past its expiry date; the revised policy addresses opening a residual account once the project is complete and the grant is past its end date;

In addition, clarification has been added in regard to:

• the definition of project completion, including sponsor agreement that the deliverables have been met,
• the fact that the policy does not apply to sponsors where the process for use of residuals has been defined, as is the case for many Tri-Agency programs,
• indirect costs (overhead), advising that if an indirect cost recovery is applicable on the residual balance, those indirect costs will be transferred to the appropriate entity, after which the residual balance will be transferred to the residual account,
• stating that residual balances must first be used to reduce or eliminate over-spending or other amounts owing by the researcher

Faculty of Health Sciences Financial Hubs

A new model is being explored to better support research and operating finance in the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS). The proposed model involves providing better support to individual PIs and departments by having some financial transaction entry done by staff who will specialize in that work. Detailed data-gathering regarding how financial transactions are entered by FHS users has taken place and we are now working with departments to review their data. Our first focus will be entering MacBill transactions and travel and expense claims. Billing specialists have been trained and are available to help FHS departments who have not been in the first two MacBill phases.  Department managers can contact Kathy Pfeiffer (pfeiffe@mcmaster.ca) to see how they can join the pilot.

These are only some of the initiatives underway that support the findings and recommendations of the review of financial support activities at McMaster. If you have questions or want to learn more, contact the Research Finance office at finrev@mcmaster.ca

2017 saw the completion of the functional review of the financial support activities provided by the Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster Research Finance and Financial Affairs. Since that time, the Faculty of Health Sciences, Financial Affairs, and the Research Finance offices have been working on implementing recommendations arising from that review.  These changes have been developed in consultation with cross-faculty researcher and administrator focus groups and other stakeholders.  This update provides further detail regarding progress of implementation.

We reported in November 2018 that work was underway to move the Research Project Statement to the Business Intelligence (BI) tool. Since that time the BI Implementation Team has developed a Principal Investigator Dashboard and Research Project Statement Dashboard. We are very excited to report that these new dashboards are ready to be released to the McMaster research community using a phased approach, starting at the end of this month.

These new dashboards will offer a single access point for Principal Investigators and support staff to access essential financial information and labour distribution for their research projects. Reports from our Researcher and Administrator Focus groups are very positive, and we are looking forward to introducing these dashboards to all Principal Investigators, delegates, and administrators.

Key features will include:

• A monthly email to each Principal Investigator with summary information on all of their research projects, and a link to the BI portal
• Access to a Principal Investigator Dashboard with summary information on all of the investigator’s projects, and a link to view the Research Project Statement for each project
• Access to an enhanced version of the existing Research Project Statement including labour distribution details and journal entries on salary accounts
• In terms of timing, information shown will be as of the previous business day
• Reports in BI will allow users to apply multiple filters and customize report layouts. Reports can be viewed online or downloaded to Excel, CSV, PDF, PowerPoint, and more
• BI reports have the ability to drill down to transaction details, including billing data and commitments. Long descriptions of employee expenses are now available
• Enhanced labour distribution reporting that will include employee end dates to allow for better labour planning
• The ability to track sponsor funding that has been invoiced but not yet received using the Accounts Receivable Billing module in Mosaic

Launch Plans

May 31, 2019 – A soft launch to selected members of the McMaster Research Community including Deans, Department Chairs, and Research Accountants as well as researchers and Department Administrators who have been involved in the testing phase of the new Research Project Statement

By End of July – A second phase which will include the remaining Department Administrators and other staff members

Fall of 2019 – Remaining Principal Investigators and delegates

Users will be notified by email by Institutional Research and Analysis when it is their turn to access the dashboards.  The email will include training materials, ‘how-to’ documentation, and links to video tutorials that will be available to guide users. There will also be drop-in training sessions offered to help users navigate the new reports.  Researchers who were not part of the testing to date and who will therefore not have direct access immediately following the May 31 soft launch can still experience some of the benefits of the new RPS through access by their departmental administrator.

The Research Project Statement Dashboard and Principal Investigator Dashboard are only two of the initiatives underway that support the findings and recommendations of the review of financial support activities at McMaster. If you have questions or want to learn more, please contact us at finrev@mcmaster.ca.

2017 saw the completion of the functional review of the financial support activities provided by the Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster Research Finance and Financial Affairs. Since that time, Financial Affairs and the Research Finances offices have been working on implementing recommendations arising from that review.  These changes have been developed in consultation with cross-faculty researcher and administrator focus groups and other stakeholders.  This update provides further detail regarding progress of implementation, which has continued since the communication provided in June of this year.

MOSAIC Usability and Workflow:

Effective the second week in December, several updates to Mosaic will be made as part of a larger plan to increase usability and user-friendliness. Upcoming improvements include:

1. An upgrade to the Travel and Expense module that will provide a more fluid interface that is scalable for use with different screen sizes (e.g. tablets, phones) and provides efficiencies such as accounting chartstring defaults and recalling most commonly used expense types.
2. The creation of two new Finance “navigation collections” (one for administrative tasks and one for administrative reporting) that will group relevant menu items together with the ability to bring the selected item’s screen to the same page. This will reduce the amount of navigation required (fewer clicks).  These changes in large part affect tasks undertaken by administrators.  For researchers, the “My Research” tile will also be further refined to provide easier navigation; that process is currently in the requirement gathering stage
3. Inclusion of related content such as quick guides and policies directly within a finance task page. For example, when entering a journal entry, you will see the applicable training guide and journal entry policy links available on that page.

Changes to Workflow include:

1. For all transactions in finance, with the exception of P-card, the workflow approval order for research related transactions which are reviewed by Research Finance* will place the research accountant approval ahead of the PI/Delegate. For those transactions which are reviewed by Research Finance* this will ensure eligibility and compliance prior to PI/delegate approval and eliminate the PI/Delegate having to re-approve transactions that were returned by the Research Accountants.
2. Attachments to a travel and expense report can now be added by anyone in the workflow steps which eliminates the need to send back a return for missing supporting documentation.

*Change to research compliance checking

The Finance Review indicated that McMaster’s conservative approach to risk, which resulted in the research finance offices checking 100% of transactions, has led to a lack of value-added services.  Review of data has indicated that the McMaster research community is well-versed in the expectations of both the university and the funder and that errors in submission are rare.

Through consultation with focus groups within McMaster, external colleagues and with assistance from KPMG, McMaster has developed a new sample-based approach to risk for Travel and Expenses which will facilitate increased customer service while keeping risk to the university very low.  Through this approach, the research community will see fewer returns through the MOSAIC system.  The research finance offices will experience increased efficiency, allowing greater attention to value-added support.  A sampling approach for other types of transactions is also in development.  Data on the impact of this new approach will be reviewed annually, with processes revised as needed.

This new approach will begin in January 2019.

Research Project Statement

Work is underway to move the Research Project Statement to the Business Intelligence (BI) tool.  This will allow the report to be enhanced to include labour distribution data so that researchers will be able to see which students/employees they are paying.  A summary dashboard report showing all of a researcher’s projects and ending balances will also be developed.  Usability enhancements include the ability to see multi-project summaries and to easily customize the dashboard.  Research Project Statements will be emailed to researchers each month and can also be accessed on an ad hoc basis.

The expected completion date is May 31, 2019.

Renewal of the Tri-Agency Financial Administration Guide – McMaster involvement in Pilot Project

The Tri-Agencies (the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) have launched a new initiative to reduce administrative burden and harmonize requirements across the three agencies.   This new approach focuses on principles and, in most cases, allows institutions to rely on their own institutional policies without having to also meet additional requirements based on Tri-Agency rules.

McMaster was one of 10 institutions across the country invited to participate in the pilot of this new initiative.  Through January to June of 2019, McMaster will begin operating under the direction of the new Tri-Agency Financial Administration Guide and will assist in its evaluation and assessment.  The Finance and Research Finance teams are currently reviewing McMaster’s policies and the new guidelines from the Tri-Agencies to determine any potential gaps and/or amendments to existing McMaster policies.  These are expected to be minimal.  As they work through the policies, these offices are also reviewing different types of expenditures to assess the impact of the new approach.  Impact to the research community will be tracked, summarized and communicated to researchers and department administrators.

MacBuy

Over the next several months, McMaster will implement a streamlined eProcurement system, “MacBuy”.  This new functionality allows for a shopping cart purchasing experience, supports e-invoicing, improves reporting and analysis and provides a supplier portal.

A Town Hall held November 27 was well attended and the presentation will be communicated via the Daily News, McMaster Update and MOSAIC News in the coming weeks.  Updates on the progress of the project will be communicated monthly beginning in January 2019 and a Town Hall will be scheduled for March 2019.

Mosaic Billing and AR module (MacBill)

In June 2018, McMaster began implementation of the billing and accounts receivable modules of MOSAIC for several departments. As of the end of September 241 invoices, totalling over $2.41 million had been issued. This new functionality within Mosaic will ensure that external customers are billed on a timely basis, and that payments can be easily tracked and identified for customers.  Implementation has brought many benefits to the University, including:

• Customers are billed on a timely basis
• Billing Units are generating an official McMaster invoice customized by department
• Billing Units can easily send reminder notices to customers until the invoice is paid
• As payments can be easily tracked and identified for customers, the number of unclaimed payments has decreased
• Complete listings of unpaid invoices are available by department
• Revenue is recognized at the time of invoicing

Work is complete on this project and all phase one users for non research departments are live. It is anticipated that MacBill will be used in the near future for any new research projects where invoicing is needed, for example, research funding provided by the private sector.  In those cases, Research Project Statements will include a note identifying the portion of funding that has been invoiced but not yet received.

FHS Admin Hub:

A new model is being explored to better support research and operating finance in the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS). The proposed model involves providing better support to individual PIs and departments by having some financial transaction entry done by staff who will specialize in that work. For example, departments or research groups might have employees who enter all of the travel claims for their areas.  Detailed data-gathering regarding how financial transactions are entered by FHS users has taken place.  The next step is a pilot where the “hub model” will be tested.

The launch of a pilot hub is planned for the spring of 2019. 

These are only some of the initiatives underway that support the findings and recommendations of the review of financial support activities at McMaster. If you have questions or want to learn more, contact the Research Finance office at finrev@mcmaster.ca

Significant progress continues to be made towards improving the University’s systems and supports for financial services. Several steps have been taken since McMaster completed its functional review of Financial support activities provided by the Faculty of Health Sciences, Research Finance office and Financial Affairs last year.

The goal of the functional review was to develop an understanding of the finance units and structures that support the University, which finance services were needed most, and what opportunities existed for synergies, improved service levels and user experiences.

The Review committee was composed of external experts and McMaster faculty members. Key stakeholders included researchers, research administrators, finance leads and administrators within faculties.

The review provided insights and recommendations on a number of key areas of work within Research Finance, Financial Affairs and the Faculty of Health Sciences Research and Finance Offices, ranging from governance to research support. The full list of recommendations can be reviewed here.

Since the completion of the review, the recommendations have been used to initiate a number of projects, and the teams behind the work are eager to share progress.

Here are some of the highlights:

Research and Administrator Focus Groups

These cross-faculty groups meet monthly to discuss pressing issues like Travel and Expense AP-01, Research Project statements, Mosaic Fluid changes, Tri-Agency Changes, and Compliance Checking. The goal is to collect input and expertise and ensure proposed solutions meet the needs of the impacted stakeholders.

Staff Training Workshops

Research Finance offices come together several times a year to discuss common goals, align on processes and have scenario-based discussions to share efficiencies and best practices.

Payroll Updates

Human Resources Services has been working on a number of continuous improvement initiatives to improve and streamline payroll process and end user experiences, including:

• Payroll team model has been revised to include specialized roles supporting systems strategy, payroll and analytics
• A Service Catalogue and Payroll Guide are in the final phases of development to provide clarity and details for Administrators across the
• New capabilities within Mosaic are being developed and released, including a Reporting Hub and Termination Date functionalities for

MacBill

McMaster will implement the billing and accounts receivable modules of the Mosaic system across the university. This new functionality within Mosaic will ensure external customers are billed on a timely basis, and payments can be easily tracked and identified for customers. Successful implementation will have many benefits to the University, including:

• Billing units will be able to generate an official invoice
• Issuing Billing Units can easily send reminder notices to customers until the invoice is
• Complete listings of aged receivables will be available by department
• Fewer ‘unclaimed payments’ are expected
• Billings can be integrated with the Research Grants
• Duplicate billings should be reduced
• Revenue will be recognized at the time of invoicing
• Research Project statement will have additional information on outstanding invoicing

MacBuy

McMaster will implement a buying system to streamline procurement across the university. Expected benefits include integration with Mosaic and approximately $3.7M in savings annually.

~$3.7M/YR savings when fully implemented.

AP01 Reimbursements to Individuals Policy Changes

Regular updates are being made to the Travel and Expense policy based on feedback from focus groups to increase operational efficiencies and simplifying the submission and approval processes.

FHS Administrative Hub Model

A new model is being explored to better support research and operating finance in the Faculty. The new proposed model involves building expertise in a focussed area and providing better support to individual PIs and departments.

Mosaic Interface Updates

In the coming months, updates will be made to the Mosaic to improve the user experience within the Mosaic platform. These changes will provide a more intuitive interface, allow for some user customization, improved navigation, and better accessibility across multiple devices.

These are only some of the initiatives underway that support the findings and recommendations of the review of financial support activities at McMaster. If you have questions or want to learn more, contact the Research Finance office at finrev@mcmaster.ca