ProS Region Weekly CAO Briefing
June 24, 2019
About this Briefing:
This briefing is designed to codify information that we believe will be most useful to our regional clients. This briefing will be provided to CAOs on a weekly basis as necessary. CAOs will share the information in this briefing more broadly within their school. Additional information and periodic updates can also be found in the announcements section of the ProS website located at https://pros.berkeley.edu/home. The ProS website provides more detailed information on the services we provide, how to contact your RA, HR or purchasing staff for further assistance, service completion timelines and how to provide feedback on ProS services. Note that the ProS website is still under development and new features and information are added weekly.
Research Administration Update:
ProS Management of Non-Sponsored Funds Reminder: ProS research administrators have the capacity to administer all faculty-designated funds, not just sponsored projects. Please set a meeting with RA Manager Katie Hudson to discuss the appropriate scope of funds for your school and to better clarify roles.
Research Administration and UCPath: Thanks to all for your UCPath vigilance! We'd like to ask you to help us keep approval for our funding entries and direct retros within our team by ignoring approval notices for funding entries and direct retros initiated by RA folks. If a ProS RA has occasion to route an approval initiated by us to your team (because of shared funding sources or movement between school and sponsored funds), we'll let the intended unit approver know if/when there is a need for secondary approval.
ProS RA Staffing: Please join us in welcoming Ryan Phan and Everett Kim. They will both start 7/1/19 as RA 1 interns will the ProS pre-award team. Both are recent UCB graduates. They will be working at the UHall location.
Summer Salary Transactions: Summer Salary for July must be entered and approved before July 1st. PIs should send their RAs the information as soon as possible to make the July deadline.
Human Resources and Academic Personnel Update:
Onboarding of Graduate Student Hires: This year the fall semester begins on 8/21/19 and instruction begins 8/28/19. This is a week after the payroll deadline for UCPath. In order to ensure that graduate students receive timely pay, access and fee remissions, BRS is working on 2 a strategy to ensure that student information can be entered into UCPath before the student start date. New ASE/GSR Hires will need to complete a triage expedited employee onboarding process by 8/8/19 for a 9/1/19 monthly pay date. More information on this expedited process will be forthcoming this week. ProS HR will need to work very closely with the school staff to ensure we have the information necessary to ensure that the graduate students can be paid in a timely manner.
Purchasing and Reimbursements Update:
Information Sessions: There have been quite a few changes in P&R over the past six months. Latara Harris and her team would be happy to conduct in-person information sessions with your staff and faculty to provide the most up-to-date information. Please reach out to Latara to schedule an information session for your school.
Close-out of Purchase Orders (POs): We are aware of the back-log in close-out of POs for the ProS region at this time. Please note that Supervisor Latara Harris did not have access to modify POs for most schools until recently and we are working on SARA requests to correct this for a few remaining schools. CAOs please approve the SARA access when/if it comes across your desk for approval.
New Contact Emails for ProS P&R:
- General inquiries should be sent to ProSPR@berkeley.edu
- To close out or modify a purchase order please use: ProSchangePO@berkeley.edu
BluCard: Please note that recurring BluCard charges will be transitioned to departments that have BluCards. As was indicated at the recent CAO meeting, ProS purchasing and reimbursements will provide assistance to departments that need ProS BluCard support.
BearBuy Transactions: There have been several instances (3 in the last month) of student stipends being submitted in BearBuy. It is important that all payroll or financial aid requests are sent through the appropriate channels as they are not allowed to be submitted through BearBuy. Please see the below guidelines for more information: