Your Ideas Matter

Faculty Budget Tracking for Law School

Faculty in the KU Law School receive annual research and professional development allocations (PDAs), but previously had no easy way to view their available balances. The only option was to email the finance director directly, which created bottlenecks and delayed faculty planning.

Professor Alex Platt submitted a Jayhawks Elevate idea recommending a self-service method for faculty to view their balances in real time. Jessica Brown, Director of Finance and Planning, was already exploring a solution. Over the summer, she created individual CF1s (ChartField 1 codes) for each faculty member to help track their specific balances in OAC.

At the start of the fall semester, Jessica rolled out the change by sending a personalized mail merge message to faculty members, each linking to their real-time PDA balance with transaction-level detail. The update now allows faculty to track their expenditures and remaining funds without needing to request a manual update, improving transparency, planning, and responsiveness.

Fellow Change Agents:

• Jessica Brown
• Alex Platt

Impact of idea:

This change saves the finance director approximately 10 hours per month that were previously spent responding to balance inquiries. Faculty now have real-time access to their PDA and research balances, reducing delays and improving financial awareness across the school.

Executive Admin Support Resources

While working on a project, Emily needed to schedule some time with an executive. Typically, there is an individual who supports their calendars but while looking at organization charts and outlook resources it isn’t always clear who that is.  If there was a way to contact or find who the appropriate people are to request meetings with executives, then our campus partners would not have to spend precious time guessing and searching for that information. 

When this idea was brought up to a team of executive admins, they developed a new Teams site for University support staff to share resources and create a listing of all executive staff members across KU.  This includes Alumni, Endowment, Medical Center, Research Centers, Edwards Campus, and Lawrence campus.  This new site and resource will facilitate a greater community and readily give admins the tools they need to know who to speak with for executives across the whole organization.  Now people can reach out to their nearest Administrative associate and they can help connect our team members with the information necessary to eliminate the guesswork and searching through Outlook organization charts.

Fellow Change Agents:

• Emily Shipley
• Sam Byer
• Jana Collins
• Amanda Burghart
• Jill Hummels
• Karen Gates (KUMC)
• Michelle Benne
• Chris Blanchard (KUMC)
• Taylor Breyann Wren

Impact of idea:

This resource will reduce the time spent searching for the right scheduling contacts as well as begin building a better coordinated Admin community.

Streamline Student Late Fee Process

Student Accounts Specialist Justin Carroll identified a recurring issue in how late fees were assessed and reversed on student accounts. Departments were expected to use a late fee deferral service indicator to exempt certain students, but many instead submitted manual lists to Justin each month. This created an inconsistent, error-prone process where he had to manually review the late fee file and approve charges before posting.

To improve the process, the team ensured the deferral service indicator functioned correctly and re-established accountability across departments for using it properly. With that structure in place, they worked with SIS to implement automated late fee processing on the 18th of each month – removing the dependency on Justin's manual review.

Finally, to support tracking and transparency, the team created a new item type specifically for late fee reversals. This allows KU to monitor how many late fees are waived each month/year and ensures consistent documentation of credits, reinforcing institutional accountability, and, thereby, reducing workload.

Fellow Change Agents:

• Justin Carroll
• Angie Dopp
• Amanda Tucker
• Dee Anna Rendall
• Kay Walden
• Deborah Rollf
• Erin Otter

Impact of idea:

• Eliminated manual monthly review for late fees
• Strengthened use of the deferral service indicator
• Established automation for consistent billing dates
• Enabled tracking and reporting of late fee reversals
• Estimated annual staff time savings: $3,900 and 152 total hours

Create Researchers Toolbox

Laura Wolfe was consistently being asked for direction in which office PI's should use for different tasks.  Laura saw an opportunity to better support our PIs, research staff, and department admins by creating a single location for easy navigation of the numerous research related resources KU has to offer.  This resource could be an extension of AMS to help reduce overall administrative burden associated with sponsored awards.  This resource would include links to our Human Resources department, Financial quick links for immediate action, and details of all the administrative research tasks Award Management Services (AMS) supports.

Three individuals in Award Management Services teamed up and designed a new webpage to guide researchers to for support.  Researchers and support staff can now use this resource to know which office to contact and in some cases to immediately start a service request from the Quick Links section.  Other helpful information available are important policies, contacts, and links to the most recent Federal Research news.    

Researcher Toolbox | Office of Research

Fellow Change Agents:

• Laura Wolfe
• Rebecca Bilderback
• Olabimpe Okosun

Impact of idea:

The use of this toolbox page will free up time for researchers to focus on their research and reduce administrative burden, while also freeing up time for AMS.

Leveraging Purchase Orders to Streamline Invoice Processing

When the University team reviewed how invoices were being processed, they discovered a cumbersome and time-consuming workflow. Invoices were handled through a manual, non-PO process that required individual check requests and multiple handoffs between departments, the Shared Services Center (SSC), and Accounts Payable. This outdated method prevented leveraging IDR (Invoice Document Recognition) technology, slowing payment times and creating a heavy administrative burden.

To improve this, we set up POs with key suppliers like Anda, PBA Health, CINTAS, Kingston, Thomson Reuters, and others, covering a total of 2,789 invoices. Now, when the University places an order with a supplier under a PO, the supplier’s invoices are sent directly to the Accounts Payable email inbox. The IDR system automatically scans and processes these invoices for payment without manual data entry.

This change is already helping the University improve payment turnaround and meet the 30-day payment goal. More importantly, it’s reducing administrative work and allowing staff to focus on strategic priorities rather than manual invoice entry.

Fellow Change Agents:

• Angel Gillaspie
• Lee Goetz
• Haylie Lancaster
• Shauna Owens
• Dave Moore
• Dave Hunt         
• Lori Haaga
• Krissie Druen
• Lindsay Reiter
• Wilisha Thompson

Impact of idea:

Ability to automate ~2,800 invoices annually and $42,000 in productivity savings