Financial

Roles & Responsibilities

College Level Administration

The College is responsible for developing our internal business processes and monitoring the activity in our academic units to ensure compliance with all state regulations, University policies, and college-level business practices.

The Business Support Services (BSS) unit in ROSS is responsible for reviewing all expenditure requests from faculty, students and staff to ensure they're allowed under state statute and University policy. Unallowable expenses will be either declined or recommended to be paid from an alternative funding source by BSS.

Administrative staff in ROSS also reconciles funds that are managed at the college-level, which include the following:

  • E&G Operating Funds
    • ALL Salaries and Benefits – College-wide (incl. CAS academic departments)
    • ALL summer funds – College-wide (incl. CAS academic departments)
    • ALL Study Abroad programs – College-wide (incl. CAS academic departments) 
    • CASDO administrative offices operating funds
    • CASDO Reserves (start-up)
  • Auxiliary Funds – managed by CASDO
  • F&A Returns – College share (Fund 18300/COLLEGE)
  • USF Foundation funds assigned to CASDO

Department Chair

Chairs are Accountable Officers at USF. They are expected to be good stewards and prudent in their approved consumption of university resources. Part of that responsibility includes ensuring financial reconciliations are completed on a monthly basis. In the College of Arts & Sciences, chairs are required to personally review the monthly reconciliations and officially sign off as the final step in the business process. Academic departments and chairs in CAS are responsible for managing and reconciling the following types of funds.

  • E&G Departmental Operating Funds (Current Year E&G – Fund ID: 10000 and Carry Forward E&G – Fund ID: 10009)
    • Salary and Benefits – As noted above, these are treated as an exception.  The financial responsibility for managing/reconciling these two budget categories resides with the college-level administration. However, the decision to hire, establish assignments and evaluate the performance of faculty and staff employees is the responsibility of the department chair.  Chairs are ultimately responsible for managing the full array of human capital supported within their academic unit with the goal of maximizing the instructional and research productivity.
    • Non-salary funds (all other budget accounts) – financial responsibility for managing and reconciling these funds are assigned to the academic departments in CAS.  
  • Auxiliary Funds
    • Student Fees – Material and Supply and Facility and Equipment Fees tied to specific courses and paid by students.
    • INTO funds - third-party paid tuition payments for international students enrolled in the program
    • Core Facilities – are housed in some CAS academic departments.  These facilities generate fee revenue from use of scientific equipment shared by many faculty and students. Chairs are also responsible for approving fee waivers and oversight of the billing function.
    • Centers & Institutes (where the director reports to the Department Chair)
    • Other revenue-generating operations related to educational business activities
  • F&A Returns – department share (Fund 18300/DEPTMNT)
  • USF Foundation funds

Faculty/Principal Investigators (PI)

Faculty with grants, internal awards and/or F&A returns are Accountable Officers at USF. They are responsible for the prudent management and approval for the consumption of university resources. Part of that responsibility includes ensuring financial reconciliations are completed on a monthly basis. In the College of Arts & Sciences, the faculty is required to personally review the monthly reconciliations and officially sign off as the final step in the business process. The faculty in CAS are responsible for managing and reconciling the following types of funds that may be available to them.

  • Grants – both internal and external awards
  • F&A Returns – department share (Fund 18300/Initiative=EEID)
  • Start-up and retention funds allocated to individual faculty

Academic Support Staff @ the department level

They serve as the reconcilers for all the funds managed by chair and faculty in their academic department. Generally, the Academic Services Administrator or Office Manager is responsible for reconciling the funds managed by the chair and the Unit Research Administrators (URA) are responsible for reconciling funds managed by faculty/ PI. For academic units that do not have enough grant activity to support a full-time URA, a URA from the College (CASDO-ADR office) will be assigned to support the PI in that department.

Per USF UCO best practices, "Reconciliations should be performed by appropriate parties. Simply put, an individual who creates or controls a financial transaction is not the appropriate person to reconcile those transactions." Staff assigned the reconciler role may not approve any purchases of goods or services.

Controller's Office – Best Practice for Departmental Reconciliation of Expense and Revenue.