iNews: Administrative services

UC Berkeley Foundation migrates to BFS

Helen Norris, Technology Program Office

Effective February 1, the UC Berkeley Foundation (UCBF) has begun using the Berkeley Financial System (BFS) to manage its accounting. Moving to BFS is a significant upgrade for the Foundation, changing from an out-of-date, PC-based system with paper reporting to the state-of-the-art, web-based accounting system used campuswide.

Compelling reasons to change

One of the unique characteristics of the University of California, Berkeley is that gifts can be given via either of two entities: the UC Regents or the UC Berkeley Foundation. The different systems and steps that evolved over time to manage these gifts began to impede the campus's best use of these donated dollars. As with other campus initiatives to streamline and automate processes, this project is meant to manage gift information better and make it easily available.

By using the centralized, automated campus accounting system, the UC Berkeley Foundation will achieve better fiscal control and security. And because BFS is a modern enterprise system, it's strongly supported by both the vendor and a technical team on campus.

Providing executive leadership and committing campus resources to integrate the Foundation's financial processes with those at the University are Acting Vice Chancellor for Budget and Finance Bill Webster and Vice Chancellor for University Relations Don McQuade. Collaborating on the project are staff from Budget & Finance, the Controller's Office, Information Systems and Technology, and University Relations.

Converting to this new system has taken nearly a year and many staff hours, but the benefits have been well worth the wait.

Impact to the campus community

Implementing the Foundation's accounting move to BFS has several very visible impacts on the campus community.

• Beginning February 6, campus staff are saving time by taking all Regents and Foundation gift checks to one place, Billing and Payment Services at University Hall, instead of having to take Foundation checks separately to University Relations. Changes were made to the CADSWeb Gift Management Module and the Campus Deposit System (CDS) to accommodate this functionality, impacting about 300 users. Training was conducted for this population in the first few days of February.

• Staff can look online anytime at fund information, which is updated daily, instead of waiting for UCBF Financial Services to print and mail quarterly paper reports. Foundation fund reports will be available through BAIRS in March. Training on these reports will be offered in early March. Campus staff needing access to Berkeley Foundation reports will need to request access thru SARA (Systems Access Request Application, http://fbaccess.berkeley.edu/users/logon/logon.cfm).

• It is possible to look up what gift funds are available to spend for their intended purpose such as research, teaching, and student aid, and find out the market value of Foundation endowments.

Coming soon in spring or summer 2006:

• New fund reports will be available, with information on both Foundation and Regents.

• Foundation fund historical financial data from prior fiscal years will be available in BFS.

More information is available on a special UC Berkeley Foundation BFS Project website (http://foundation-bfs.berkeley.edu/). For questions, send email to and a response will be sent within a day or two.

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