Your Ideas Matter

Optimizing the Finance Data Service Portal for Bulk Submission Efficiency

Nancy Snow had just wrapped up a conference at KU and found herself spending two full days submitting payment requests—one by one—for each attendee who needed reimbursement. It was tedious and time-consuming.

As we rolled out the Independent Contractor Payment Request (ICPR) Form in KU’s new Finance Service Portal, we heard similar frustrations from faculty and staff. Those managing conference reimbursements or contractor payments said entering each participant’s information separately was slowing them down and pulling focus from their core responsibilities.

In response to this feedback, we introduced a bulk upload feature that allows users to submit multiple names and payment details in a single request. Faculty began using it right away—and it’s already making a difference by saving time, reducing errors, and streamlining the process. Now, KU researchers can spend less time on data entry and more time doing what they do best.

Fellow Change Agents:

• Nancy Snow
• Missy Somers
• Tanner Grubbs
• Katrina Yoakum
• Karen Schaller
• Michael Lewis 
• Cindy Jacobson
• Judy Hamner
• Colette Gillespie

Impact of idea:

$1,500 annual efficiency savings

Improve Clarity for Vendor Payment Forms

Cameron Piercy was trying to reimburse a non-employee. His team submitted the required paperwork of a W-9 and Direct Deposit forms. Unfortunately, those forms were returned since both forms were not setup for Adobe signatures that the State of Kansas accepts and the individual was frustrated because they weren’t sure how to fill out the Direct Deposit form. 

To fix this, we published clear instructions to help vendors (both business and individuals) complete forms correctly and converted the W-9 to allow electronic signatures. These changes have already reduced errors and delays, making the reimbursement process smoother and more efficient for everyone involved.

Fellow Change Agents:

• Cameron Piercy
• Mike Lewis
• Melissa Stewart

Impact of idea:

$3,000 in savings annual efficiency savings from fewer errors and returns.  The clear instructions and having both forms setup for electronic signatures should reduce errors and clear up misunderstandings about what type of signature is required.

Enhanced Additional Fringe Form

Melissa Bissey noticed the existing Additional Fringe Form needed an overhaul to help address State of Kansas Payroll process changes, create lookup integrations to prevent errors, and improve the workflow to address other process delays.  This new form has multiple benefits. First is an improved workflow which will prevent dependence on manual follow-ups with employees, provide notifications to submitters for progress/errors, and has an integrated employee step to acknowledge the additional fringe compensation.  Additionally, the functionality of the form itself has been improved to include searchable fields to prevent entering incorrect funding and employees from being selected.

With the previous form, there were delays in additional fringe transactions from being processed and required more manual reviews for accuracy.  These improvements not only benefit those involved filling in the form but employees will get paid faster as a result of the new workflow and fewer errors.

Fellow Change Agents:

• Jenni Stinnett
• Brenda Barski
• Pam Burkhead
• Marty White
• Teresa Mock
• Diana Beisner
• Mike Lewis

Impact of idea:

$2,500 annually in efficiency savings

Technology Procurement Review Improvement

Caty Movich began to see many of their units payments being delayed based on needing a Technology Procurement approval.  Caty raised the concern about the lack of communication on this new process, its requirements, and how to complete a request quickly.  The IT and Procurement teams were in the process of redesigning the original attempt at the Technology Procurement approval workflow.  Now the process has been redesigned to create a workflow approval process where multiple approvals can happen simultaneously rather than in a sequential order. This will speed up the review process. In addition to the newly designed workflow, both teams created a communication and training efforts to explain to our campus partners the “why” behind these reviews along with Knowledgebase articles in the Finance Service Portal to help provide further transparency in the process.

Find more details about the process for Technology Purchases in our IT knowledgebase.  Scroll down to the articles with "Technology Purchase" in the name.

Fellow Change Agents:

Caty Movich, Matt Ochs, Bill Rachal, Ben Lizak, Rob Randall, Erin Sommer

Impact of idea:

The improved communication and transparency will lead to less frustration with the process.  The Technology Procurement reviews will also help find duplicate spend on similar software solutions to save KU money in the long run. 

Redesign Rec Services Credit Card Deposits and Student Billing

Gabe Moreno and his team noticed how much time they spent on our old deposit process. They would print receipts, highlight cost centers and tax amounts before taping the receipts to a piece of paper and scan them to their email.  Each day they would then send all the information over to their SSC support, Katie Stone who had to use a combination of their documentation and Fusion sales system reporting to tie back to what was deposited in the bank. In addition to that reconciliation, Katie would manually enter all charges into Enroll & Pay for the activity to be billed to the students account.  They helped redesign the process to use monthly reporting from Fusion for credit card payments and reconcile the whole month at one time rather than daily to eliminate all the printing and scanning student hourly staff had to do each day.  The bill to account process now takes a monthly report and creates a file to automatically post in Enroll & Pay.  This will save about five hours every week for all the staff involved.

Fellow Change Agents:

Katie Stone, Craig Alexander

Impact of idea:

$7,000 annually in efficiency savings