Financial Interface is a feature of UCM that is an add-on to Sub-Tables. It will allow you to track data and receive notifications for purchases or other orders that are entered into your Sub-Table.
This article will show you what you can expect to see inside of a Contract Container and Sub-Table that has this feature enabled, as well as what notifications you may receive that directly relate to your financials.
Do you have a Financial Interface in your system?
When you are inside a Contract Container, if you see extra tabs (A), or a green plus (B) next to the Contract Data tab, then you know that your organization is using Sub-Tables.
To know if you also have the Financial Interface configured, head into the any Sub-Table that would be tracking financial data, and look at the top above the grid. If you see data fields such as Not to Exceed and Threshold Amount (C), then you know that Sub-Table is configured with the Financial Interface.
How the Financial Interface Works
Now that you know where to find the data for the Financial Interface, let's take a look at how it works, and where these numbers are coming from.
Back on the Contract Data tab, under your standard Field Groups, you should see a Field Group named something along the lines of Financials, that will contain the two fields, Not to Exceed (A) and Threshold Percentage (B).
Note: These items may be named differently in your organizations system. If you do not see these Fields, but you do see Financial data on a Sub-Table, please contact your Local UCM Admin for instructions.
These Fields directly relate to the information you see at the top of your Financial Sub-Table, and are used to set the limits of that specific Contract, see image below.
If these fields are empty, then pre-set system defaults may be applied. During set-up, your local admins would have decided what the default Threshold Percentage would be if no value was assigned, and if there is no value in the Not to Exceed field, then no Financial tracking will be done on that specific contract.
The values that are being added together to weigh against the Not to Exceed amount come from the Sub-Table itself. When a new value is added, either manually or automatically through an FTP (additional costs apply for automation), a predefined field will be calculated towards the overall total. In our example above, that would be our Amount field.
How to Enter New Values to the Sub-Table
To manually add a new item to the Sub-Table, simply click the Add (1) icon above the grid. From there, you'll have a pop-up appear (2) that will have your fields available to be completed. The information you enter will then appear in the grid after you save it (3). As a reminder, one of the fields will be tied into the calculations for the total value of the contract, which is Amount (4) in our example.
To automatically add items to your Financial Sub-Table, an FTP needs to be set up, which would have been done by your local admins. If an FTP is configured, then you'll see these items being added in without you even needing to do a thing in UCM. All the data will still appear as if it were manually entered.
When the Threshold Limit is Reached
Whether it is a manual or automatic entry, UCM's Financial Interface is configured to send out notifications to the Owner and any Responsible Party, assigned to the Contract when the Threshold limit is met, or if the Not to Exceed amount is surpassed. An example of the notification is below:
Inside the system, the Financial information at the top of the grid will also let you know if anything is over it's limit. As you can see below, our total from the Amount column (A) equals $8,600, which if our Not to Exceed value of this Contract is $10,000, means we are currently using 86% of our budget, which is also over our 80% limit. As a result, the Current Total and % Used values are in bold red text (B). This lets you know the threshold percentage has been surpassed, and the notification has been sent out to the responsible parties. If the Not to Exceed amount is ever surpassed, that number will also appear in red and another notification will be sent out.
To be clear, UCM's Financial interface WILL NOT stop a purchase from being made or entered, it will just notify all responsible parties that an amount was exceeded.