Final copies of the fiscal 2015 Annual Report (Statewide Hiring Practices) will be sent to each state agency and institution of higher education via electronic file transfer on Oct. 9.
For more information, including HRIS, SPRS and USPS contacts, see Annual Report (Statewide Hiring Practices for the Fiscal Year) (FPP F.005).
Encumbrance Report and Lapsing of Appropriations (APS 018) has been reorganized to include CAPPS instructions.
Please review the new format of this APS. Each APS should be carefully reviewed to ensure compliance with the most current policies and procedures.
State agencies and institutions of higher education must report annual binding encumbrances and payables to the Comptroller’s office per APS 018. Because the annual reporting requirement encompasses the fourth quarter of the previous appropriation year, there is no requirement for separate fourth-quarter reporting.
Agencies must enter encumbrances and payables into USAS for AY 2015 and prior years’ appropriations by the due date for their agency type for annual financial reporting:
All agencies must submit the online Annual Certification by Oct. 30.
By Oct. 30 each year, all agencies must lapse appropriation balances that exceed the level necessary to satisfy any outstanding binding encumbrances and/or payables.
The Comptroller’s office is statutorily required to lapse all unencumbered nonconstruction appropriation balances for all prior appropriation years on Nov. 1 of each fiscal year. To facilitate this, an automatic lapse program will run in USAS as early as the Nov. 2 nightly cycle.
Appropriation balances on the USAS Appropriation Record Inquiry (62) screen may require adjustments or corrections before unexpended balance (UB) forward, lapsing or collected cash disposition. All transactions for budget revisions and expenditure transfers for affected years should be completed before processing UB or lapse transactions. Doing so will reduce the number of issues that may arise with the automatic lapse program.
For full details, see APS 018.
Beginning Oct. 1, there will be new comptroller object codes (COBJs) to record state hotel occupancy tax when traveling to the following three cities: Corpus Christi, Quintana and Surfside Beach. HB 1915 expands the definition of a coastal municipality to add these three cities to the list of those that receive a partial refund of their hotel occupancy tax.
When traveling on state business to one of these cities, employees will use the corresponding COBJ on the travel voucher when seeking reimbursement for the state hotel occupancy tax. Currently Galveston (7136), South Padre (7137) and Port Aransas (7138) are receiving the refund. Starting Oct. 1, Corpus Christi (7139), Quintana (7140) and Surfside Beach (7141) will also begin receiving a 2 percent refund of the state occupancy tax paid.
The Fiscal 2015 Fourth Quarter Post-Payment Audit Reports are available for view, print and download. For more audit resources, including Fiscal Policies and Procedures, forms and contact information, see the Audit topic page on FMX.
To receive email notification of each audit report posted, subscribe via GovDelivery.
Security coordinators are required to certify that their records are up to date through a semiannual security verification process that is concurrent for all Fiscal Management applications.
On Oct. 1, Fiscal Management will mail each agency and institution of higher education a printout of those with access to each system. An online attestation form must be completed and returned by Friday, Oct. 30, for agency or institution security requests to continue to be accepted.
If you have questions, email sfs.security@cpa.texas.gov or see Semiannual Verification of Users’ Security Access Levels (FPP K.009) (login required).
The scheduled maintenance on the non-production environments was successfully completed Sunday, Sept. 20.
The following environments are currently available:
Passwords
For Financials users, your password is your Financials UAT password as of Sept. 10.
For HR/Payroll users, your password is your HR/Payroll Production password as of Aug. 31.
Note: if you access HR/Payroll as well as Financials, your password will be your HR/Payroll Production password as of Aug. 31.
Password hints have expired and need to be set up when you first log in.
The annual State Employee Charitable Campaign (SECC) runs from Sept. 1 through Oct. 31. During the SECC, state employees may elect to deduct contributions to participating charities from their paychecks; those contributions are then sent to the statewide federations or local campaign areas. Payroll/personnel systems must be updated for December 2015 payrolls. Each year, changes are made to some participating groups, including mailing addresses and contact information. Payee codes and Texas Identification Numbers may also change.
For more information, see the SECC website or State Employee Charitable Campaign Participation (FPP F.033).
Reporting of State Debts and Hold Offset Procedures (APS 028) has been updated through acts of the 84th Legislature, Regular Session.
Hold Procedures (FPP E.020) has been updated to reflect:
Confidential Employee Information for Open Records Requests Requiring Agency Input (FPP L.004) has been updated to reflect:
The CAPPS Enterprise Portal is scheduled to go live on Oct. 12, 2015. A major benefit of the new portal is that agencies currently using the CAPPS HR/Payroll and CAPPS Financials portals will soon be able to access both systems from a single portal.
In order to prepare your end users for this change, CPA has developed a CAPPS Enterprise Portal Overview document on the CAPPS Training Website located under Helpful Links.
The following environments remain unavailable:
CAPPS Financials Production environments will remain available.
Several Accounting Policy Statements (APSs) have been updated through acts of the 84th Legislature, Regular Session. The APSs include changes to terminology, policies, procedures and transaction coding blocks. Some APSs have been updated to include information applicable to CAPPS.
Each APS should be carefully reviewed to ensure compliance with the most current policies and procedures.
The HRIS Employees Without Reappointments Report for institutions of higher education will be available to download on Tuesday, Sept. 22.
For each employee listed on the report, one of the following needs to be added in HRIS:
— OR —
All employee information listed on the report must be corrected by close of business Tuesday, Sept. 29. It is important to reconcile the report information against your institution’s records to ensure the information in HRIS is accurate. HRIS uses this information to generate the Equal Employment Opportunity Report, Annual Report (Statewide Hiring Practices for the Fiscal Year) and Veteran Workforce Summary Report.
Fiscal Management will rerun the report weekly until all necessary corrections have been made.
For more information on the reappointment process, please see HRIS Higher Education Reporting Procedures for Reappointments (FPP M.003) or contact your HRIS representative.
Note: Institutions that do not have employees without reappointments will not receive a report.
Institutions of higher education hold appropriated funds outside the State Treasury and must enter fiscal 2015 expenditure activity into USAS by Oct. 15 for reconciliation with the Legislative Budget Board’s Automated Budget and Evaluation System of Texas (ABEST).
In addition to D23 Fund 7999 — Other Educational and General Expenditures, expenditure activity must also be entered for D22 Fund 0369 — American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, if applicable.
Note: Community/junior colleges are excluded from these requirements.
For more information, see Entering Higher Education Expenditure Activity into USAS for USAS/ABEST Reconciliation (FPP B.011).
Per Texas Government Code, Section 403.273, the property manager of each state agency must conduct an annual physical inventory of the trust, capitalized and controlled personal property (excluding libraries and historical arts and treasures) in the agency’s possession.
State agencies must submit the Certification of Physical Inventory Conducted by Agency (73-283) form for fiscal 2015 with the signature of the agency head or designee to the Comptroller’s office by Sept. 20. For more information, see Certification of Physical Inventory in Chapter 2 “General Policies” of the SPA Process User’s Guide.
Sept. 20 is the deadline to enter all property transfers between external and internal agencies in SPA so simplified reporting agencies can complete their year-end reconciliations.
See Transferring Property from External to Internal Agencies in the SPA Process User’s Guide (FPP N.005) for instructions.
CAPPS Central HR/Payroll Portal UAT and Non-Production environments will be unavailable beginning at 6 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 11 in order to prepare for the transition of HR/Payroll environments to our new datacenter.
This transition is expected to be completed on Oct. 12, 2015 and includes the deployment of the new CAPPS Enterprise Portal. New Portal UAT and Non-Production links will be provided to individuals participating in the transition testing effort on Monday, Sept. 14, by CAPPS Project Manager Pete Marcell.
The following environments will be unavailable:
CAPPS Central HR/Payroll Production environments will remain available.
A number of substantive changes have been made recently to the Texas Comptroller Manual of Accounts (FPP Q.009) due to legislation passed by the 84th Legislature, Regular Session. The list includes entries that have been added, deleted or significantly modified.
The manual provides current information on state agencies, appropriated funds and accounts and object codes to be used in properly recording accounting transactions.
For questions, please contact Samuel.Miller@cpa.texas.gov.
Effective fiscal 2016, state agencies and institutions of higher education are no longer required to submit reports on American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds as outlined in ARRA Information Required to be Reported on a Monthly Basis (FPP B.008).
The ARRA Activity Reporting application will be locked to prevent changes to the database. The application will be available for viewing and reporting capability only through fiscal 2016. Agencies should retain backup records in accordance with record retention requirements.
Agencies and institutions must continue any required reporting for active ARRA awards to your federal granting agency as required in your grant agreements.
For more information, please contact Kevin Klein at kevin.klein@cpa.texas.gov or (512) 463-4495.
Several Accounting Policy Statements (APSs) have been updated through acts of the 84th Legislature, Regular Session. The APSs include changes to terminology, policies, procedures and transaction coding blocks. Some APSs have been updated to include information applicable to CAPPS.
Each APS should be carefully reviewed to ensure compliance with the most current policies and procedures.
Fiscal 2016 travel reimbursement rates are now available for:
For more information, see Textravel, email Expenditure Assistance or call (512) 475-0966.
Agencies that reimburse employees for state-related hotel stays are due a refund for the associated hotel occupancy taxes. The refunds are generated automatically through USAS each quarter.
The hotel occupancy tax refund for August will be available on the DAFR8190 and DAFR8200 reports on Sept. 9.
For more information, see Hotel Occupancy Tax Quarterly Refund (FPP B.006).
Sept. 20 is the deadline to enter all property transfers between external and internal agencies in SPA so simplified reporting agencies can complete their year-end reconciliations.
Note: External agencies are institutions of higher education not reporting to SPA. Internal agencies are all state agencies and those institutions of higher education using the SPA system or reporting to SPA via batch. Please refer to the Internal/External SPA Institutions of Higher Education List and notify your SPA analyst if your agency’s status is incorrect.
Transfers between two external agencies cannot be entered into SPA. If your institution made any applicable transfers, please submit the fiscal year-end External to External Agency Transfers In and Out Excel template to spa@cpa.texas.gov by:
See Chapter 7 “Transferring Property” of the SPA Process User’s Guide (FPP N.005) for complete instructions.
Each state agency (and institution of higher education choosing to report to SPA) is required to annually reconcile SPA ending balances with its annual financial report (AFR) and submit a certification form and other documents. The due dates are as follows:
See State Property Accounting System/Annual Financial Report Reconciliation (FPP C.015) for more information.
State agencies and institutions of higher education must report certain salary supplements to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, the State Auditor’s Office and the Secretary of State no later than Sept. 15.
The online Salary Supplementation Report form must be submitted electronically to the Comptroller’s office and a hard copy must be mailed to the office of the Secretary of State no later than Sept. 15 to allow for the processing of September payrolls.
For additional information including instructions and the online report form, see Salary Supplements Paid From Sources Other Than Appropriated Funds (FPP F.031).