Division of Financial Services
Accounting
If you have any questions about abandoned property, contact Accounting.
Abandoned property is defined as any property held by the university that is unclaimed by its rightful owner. In the State of New York, the university is obligated to complete due diligence steps to attempt to contact the rightful owner of unclaimed property. If the owner of the unclaimed property is successfully contacted, the property is returned to them.
The university holds unclaimed abandoned property for up to three years, after which time the university is obligated to turn over the property to the New York State (NYS) Comptroller. If you believe you are entitled to unclaimed property that has been remitted to NYS, see the NYS Comptroller’s website.
The types of abandoned property held by the university includes, but is not limited to:
Checks payable to vendors are issued by Accounts Payable and are valid for six months. Vendor checks are issued through the Bank of New York Mellon. Outstanding checks are monitored monthly, and any that are six months old or older are voided by the university and the bank. Due diligence steps are taken to locate the check recipient, and, if attempts are unsuccessful, the funds are remitted to NYS after three years.
Travel and expense reimbursement checks are issued by Accounts Payable and are valid for six months. Travel and expense reimbursement checks are issued through the Bank of New York Mellon. Outstanding checks are monitored monthly, and any that are six months or older are voided by the university and the bank. Due diligence steps are taken to locate the check recipient, and, if attempts are unsuccessful, the funds are remitted to NYS after three years.
Employee payroll checks are disbursed by Payroll and are valid for six months. Payroll checks are issued through the Tompkins Trust Company. Outstanding checks are reviewed on an annual basis, and any checks issued that became stale within the calendar year are voided. Payroll and the Accounting perform due diligence steps to locate the check recipient. If steps fail to locate the check recipient after three years, the funds are remitted to NYS.
Please see the NYS Comptroller’s website if you believe you have an uncashed check that is three years or older.
Credit balances on a student’s account are the result of an overpayment on the account when a refund has not been issued. The Office of the Bursar tracks student account credit balances throughout the year, and makes multiple attempts to locate and return the funds due the student. Students are alerted to account credit balances via a Student Credit Letter and emails from the Bursar.
If the Bursar fails to reconnect the student with his or her credit balance, then it will be remitted to NYS after three years. These funds can be claimed from the NYS Comptroller’s website.
Payments to Cornell flow through the Treasurer’s office. Depending on the type of payment and to which university bank account the payment is made, the Treasurer’s office disperses the funds to departments across campus. In some cases, payments in the form of cash or checks are received by departments, which are responsible for processing the deposit transaction in the general ledger.
For the payments that are received centrally at the Treasurer’s office, an identifier is required to disperse the funds to the correct department. For recurring payments, this is not a problem, and there are systematic IDs that flow in with payments, so the Treasurer’s office knows where to send the funds. For one-off payments or infrequent payments, the system ID may not be an option. In some cases (wires), the department needs to notify the Treasurer’s office that a wire is expected, what the dollar amount will be, and where the funds should be sent when received. One common type of payment that is difficult to identify is an ACH (direct deposit) payment. The information contained on the ACH file is very limited and does not contain a helpful description in most cases.
If for some reason a payment can never be placed with the correct department, it then ends up on the Treasurer’s Unidentified Receipts list. On a monthly basis, an email is sent out to the university financial community asking departments to review the list and see if there are any unclaimed monies that they are missing. When the department finds an item, the department claims it and the Treasurer’s office records the funds on the department’s general ledger account.
If the money is never claimed, DFS must eventually remit it to NYS with the abandoned property filing after three years.
For more information about unidentified receipts, notifying cash management of expected wires, or claiming unidentified receipts, see Unidentified Receipts on the Treasurer’s website.
The Center for Technology Licensing (CTL) is Cornell University’s technology transfer office. CTL licenses Cornell intellectual property to companies ranging from Fortune 500s, to medium and small businesses. A royalty payment of one-third of the net income received from licensing of an invention is paid to the inventor. CTL actively works to identify contact information for recipients of royalty payments. Unclaimed royalty payments are included in the abandoned property due diligence process and remitted to NYS after three years.
