Go To: How Attachments Are Used | When to Include Attachments | What to Attach | What Not to Attach | How to Make Corrections
Financial Processing (FP) e-docs
Financial Processing (FP) module e-docs include Advance Deposit (AD), Auxiliary Voucher (AV), Budget Adjustment (BA), Disbursement Voucher (DV), Distribution of Income and Expense (DI), General Ledger Transfer (GLT), Indirect Cost Adjustment (ICA), Internal Billing (IB), Pre-Encumbrance (PE), Transfer of Funds (TF), and the Procurement Card Document (PCDO), which is system-generated.
These guidelines do not address attachments required for Purchasing and Accounts Payable module documents (Requisition [REQS], Purchase Order [PO], and Payment Request [PREQ]). They also do not address I Want Doc attachments.
Note: Since an I Want Doc has very few required fields and is a request for action that could create a FP e-doc, documentation requirements still apply for the proper creation of FP e-docs.
How Attachments Are Used
FP e-doc attachments clarify or substantiate the purpose of a transaction and provide an audit trail for certain groups who review those transactions:
- Approvers: An e-doc should have enough information available to approve the e-doc without having to look elsewhere to confirm the purpose, account, object codes, and amount.
- Reviewers: Colleagues within your department or college might review post-transaction details when reconciling or monitoring activity.
- Central offices: Central offices such as Accounting frequently scan and review financial transactions for accuracy when preparing financial statements. This review relies on e-doc supporting documentation to provide enough information to understand the nature of the transactions.
- Auditors: The university’s external financial auditors have access to KFS to audit financial transactions. The audit includes confirming that the e-doc initiator and approver are two different individuals, examining the purpose, and reviewing the accounting entry. The auditors rely heavily on available adequate documentation, including attachments, to better understand the purpose of a transaction.
When to Include Attachments
Include attachments when:
- A transaction cannot be fully explained in the description and explanation fields of the document header.
- The e-doc description and explanation fields do not contain an adequate audit trail or sufficient information for the approver.
- It’s important that a transaction has an adequate audit trail of six months, one year, or five years from now.
Before attaching documentation, ask yourself the following:
- Does it provide adequate information for approvers and external auditors?
- Does it tell the transaction story? Will it be understood one year from now?
- Is it relevant? Do not attach something that will raise more questions or that provides information unrelated to the transaction. Any and all attachments remain with the e-doc and must be presented to internal and external auditors when requested. With that in mind, do not include defamatory or personal information. Use discretion and only include pertinent information versus extraneous information.
Note: For additional information on documenting cost transfers on sponsored agreements, including Federal Appropriations, refer to University Policy 3.20, Cost Transfers on Sponsored Agreements. If the e-doc description or explanation does not fully explain the correction or contain the required information for a cost transfer, a note or an attachment is required. For late cost transfers (i.e. those occurring more than 90 days since the original charge was posted), consulting the appropriate SFS personnel prior to preparing the e-doc is highly recommended.
What to Attach
Attachment formats and types may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Email (clarification or approvals).
- When attaching an email, attach it as a PDF. Do not attach it as a .msg file, because Outlook is required to open the file.
- Be careful when attaching an email string. Only include relevant information. See What Not To Attach.
- KFS screenshots.
- Do not attach a copy of an e-doc; instead, reference the e-doc number. See What Not To Attach.
- Excel, Word or PDF documents.
- Analyses, invoices, contracts, and reports, etc.
General Guidance for Attachments
- Providing attachment descriptions: Provide a description of what is being attached instead of typing a consistent message, such as “backup.” Descriptions help approvers know which attachment is necessary to review to approve the e-doc. Avoid vague descriptions or explanations such as, “To correct transaction,” which do not adequately or fully identify the purpose. Use the explanation field to provide additional details, including why the transaction is appropriate to the account, which otherwise would be contained in an attachment.
- Deleting attachments: Once the e-doc has been acted upon, the attachment cannot be deleted unless it contains sensitive information. Therefore, think twice before including an attachment.
- Deleting sensitive information: Submit a KFS Help Request only to have attachments deleted that contain sensitive information.
- Maintaining documentation in the department: Central offices that include a note indicating documentation is maintained in the department should include enough information about the nature of the transaction either in the description or explanation fields.
What Not to Attach
- Confidential or sensitive data. Do not include attachments containing confidential information such as social security numbers, W9, W8-Ben, credit card numbers, driver’s license numbers, bank account numbers, protected health information, human resources sensitive or confidential information, or any data defined as confidential by University Policy 5.10, Information Security.
- Private information. Do not attach documents including private information such as salaries and the names of human participants in research studies.
- Original e-doc documentation. Do not attach documentation from the original e-doc when referencing another e-doc.
- E-docs. Do not attach a copy of the e-doc being processed or corrected.
- Voluminous details. Do not attach overly detailed information such as backup from a subsidiary system. Backup not attached to the KFS e-doc must be accessible from the subsidiary system upon request.
How to Make Corrections
When corrections are required on a previous transaction, use the GLT e-doc. The GLT references the initial transaction using the reference origin code and reference number, therefore additional attachments may not be necessary. However, you may wish to add an attachment that further explains the correction.
If you are correcting a large number of transactions with a GLT, the best practice is to attach the download and/or report used to identify the necessary corrections.
If the transaction is within the current fiscal year and does not use an expired account, users can initiate an error correction (i.e., reversal) from the completed initial transaction e-doc. Error corrections reverse the transaction in its entirety, so use this feature judiciously! For additional information on using a GLT, refer to the GLT standard operating procedure.
