FI$Cal recently released the FI$Cal to SCO Monthly Reconciliation Report in Power BI. This report will help departmental staff reconcile their FI$Cal system accounts with the corresponding accounts maintained by the State Controller’s Office (SCO). The release of this report is FI$Cal’s latest use of Power BI – a joint effort of the Information Technology and Business Operation and Solutions divisions at FI$Cal and the Department of Finance.
In July 2020, FI$Cal implemented Power BI to its end users – a powerful new tool for departments to view their data and build reports. In November 2020, FI$Cal and Finance started designing the Monthly Reconciliation Report, with the objective of leveraging system data to replicate and complete the monthly reconciliation worksheet maintained outside of the FI$Cal system with improved accuracy and reduced staff time.
The report is used by departments to help verify the accuracy of departmental accounting records by performing monthly reconciliations with corresponding appropriation accounts maintained by the SCO. The SCO legacy system is a cash basis system while the FI$Cal system is a modified accrual basis system. To reconcile between both systems, departments need to adjust the SCO appropriation balances with the accruals recorded in the FI$Cal system.
Historically, the report is completed through a cumbersome process of running multiple reports and queries in PeopleSoft and SCO for each fund and then inputting the reported values into the corresponding appropriation account columns within an Excel template. The new Monthly Reconciliation Report automates much of this work by running a new FI$Cal extension, which prepopulates the appropriate values in the final report. This significantly reduces the time spent completing the report and also minimizes user errors.
To view the report, department staff must obtain access to the new role “Power BI Monthly Reconciliation Viewer” by submitting a request through the Identity Self-Service (ISS) page on the FI$Cal website with departmental authorized designee (DAD) approval.
For more information, please review Job Aid FISCal.484 – FI$Cal to SCO Monthly Reconciliation Report – Power BI.