Federal Work Study (FWS) funds are self-help aid for students. FWS provides payment for part-time employment for students with financial need. Eligible students work in campus departments and earn money to help pay educational expenses. Departments benefit by not having to pay the student from their operational funds.

Current procedures require approved time sheets for students working under this program to be faxed by the approver to the Financial Aid office in a timely manner for payroll processing. However, Departments are still required to send the original time sheet to Financial Aid for verification purposes. A copy of the timesheet should be retained in the department for check verification purposes.

It is critical that Departments employing FWS students follow this procedure in order to help prevent potential abuse. In the future, Financial Aid will not allow departments to participate in the FWS program if the program requirements are not met. Please help UMBC maintain its reputation as an institution working hard to prevent potential fraud or theft. If you have any questions you may contact either MAS or Financial Aid.

Several departments on campus employ temporary help throughout the year. Please note that although the temporary agency may have a procedure that suggests a supervisor should return a signed timesheet to the employee so he/she can send it to the temporary agency for processing, UMBC procedures require that signed timesheets should never be returned to employees. Therefore, you must inform your temporary agency that they should provide stamped self addressed envelopes for the return of their employee's timesheets by the supervisor. Supervisors will not be returning approved timesheets to their employees.

An additional control that your department should employ is the tracking of temporary employee hours for verification to the resulting temporary agency invoice prior to payment. If you have any questions regarding this process, you may contact MAS or Human Resources.

We wish to thank all those who attended the recent Internal Control Education Session. The session was well attended and the evaluations suggested many of the attendees liked the open discussion format. We appreciate your evaluation comments and we use them to redesign and improve future presentations. A recurring suggestion was to request department heads attend internal control education sessions. Dr. Hrabowski has also expressed his concern over the importance of adequate internal controls and the need for department heads to be cognizant of their importance and to understand their roles in the administration of policies and procedures affecting internal controls. As a result, MAS is planning to provide Internal Control Education Sessions designed for Deans, Directors and Department Chairs beginning in the last week of September 2004 and continuing until the first week of November 2004. In addition to a memorandum which will be given to all department heads with registration information, the information will be announced in Insights in September. All department heads are expected to attend. At the President's request, MAS will provide him with a list of those who have not attended at the end of the series of presentations.

A PS query report (currently available via the Reporting Tools -> Query Viewer navigation) has been the method required to reconcile your P-Card logs and should have been retained in your P-Card logs monthly since July 2003. A new report, created expressly for cardholders to reconcile their P-Card logs has been made available. This report should be used for reconciling and maintained in your logs beginning with July 2004. Due to the varying needs of using departments, the cardholder may choose from one of three versions of the report: 1) Report by Card; 2) Report by Amount); and, 3) Report by Department. The description and navigation for these reports was recently sent to all cardholders and supervisors and is available on the Delta Initiative website. If you do not currently have access to the reports, you need to complete and submit a "proxy" request form to Procurement which can be found on Procurement's website under "All Forms." If you need additional information on the new reports, contact Ina Caplan at 53915.

Remember that charges for all cellular telephone equipment and services are now required to be allocated monthly to account 7030600. The allocation is required by the State's Department of Budget and Management who is monitoring expenditures related to cell phones. Also, sensitive equipment charges are required to be allocated to the Sensitive Equipment account 7099951. The description of sensitive equipment can be found on Financial Services website under Plant Fund and Inventory Accounting http://www.umbc.edu/accounting/ .

Use of the purchasing card to pay for temporary help is specifically prohibited under the purchasing card program policy. You may submit a requisition for payment of temporary help. Preferred temporary help agencies can be found on Procurement's website.

The purchasing card log envelope format has been revised as follows:

• The reallocation column has been enlarged to allow for recording the PS chart string.
• The last column is now entitled "Reconciled to Bank Statement Dated" to remind cardholders that the date of the bank statement to which you reconciled your charges is the date that is required in this column.
• The back of the envelope has a check list of procedures to help cardholders ensure they have performed all required monthly procedures.

New logs can be obtained in the Procurement office or you can view the new log format on their web site under Forms at http://www.umbc.edu/adminaffairs/procurement .

…to the Health Administration & Policy Program. A recently completed purchasing card review by MAS has shown that the department is managing its program well. Thanks for your efforts and keep up the good work!

MANAGEMENT ADVISORY SERVICES

Michele L. Evans, CPA

Director

Email: mevans@umbc.edu

Extension: 51354

Frances Toth, CPA

Management Analyst

Email: ftoth@umbc.edu

Extension: 56257

Sharon D. Doherty-Ritter, CPA

Management Analyst

Email: doherty@umbc.edu

Extension: 51620

Shared Fax: 51009