Overview
Two budgetary management tools—Fiscal Panther (Tableau) and Grants Forecasting (Oracle Planning & Budgeting Cloud Solution or Oracle PBCS)—are now available for grant administrators, financial approvers, department administrators, and responsibility center business managers.
Detail
Grants Forecasting gathers data from General Ledger, PittWorx, Purchasing, RPA, and SPAR. The tool lets you see the impact of future grant expenses, including compensation and non-compensation costs. Fiscal Panther gathers data from Concur, PantherExpress, PERIS, Pitt Worx, and PRISM which includes General Ledger, Payables, PCard, Purchasing, RPA, and SPAR. Fiscal Panther provides 360-degree view with a convenient dashboard that gathers detailed grant transactions, from multiple source systems in one platform. Development is underway to incorporate Grants Forecasting projections into Fiscal Panther in the coming months.
The initiative represents a collaboration between the Budget and Financial Reporting Office and Pitt Information Technology and is based on department requests for centrally-supported grants management tools. These tools provide users with an alternative to department purchased grants management software.
These tools are the first ones to be made available in a larger plan to develop forecasting applications and financial dashboard offerings. The next collaborative effort will focus on developing a forecasting module and dashboard for non-grant funds. New project planning begins soon and additional communications will be distributed to gather information, collect feedback, and engage with our user community.
Key Benefits
-
Automated daily updates to data sources that collectively promote process efficiency and allow you to manage both current grants-related data and projections without additional data entry
-
System driven calculations for indirect costs, mandatory cost share, fringe benefits, and annual salary increases
-
An automated tool to assist you in generating your grant forecasting projections, analyzing grant trends, and compiling reports
Steps to Get Started
Access to Grants Forecasting is granted through completion of a user form. For access to the corresponding Fiscal Panther Hub dashboards, users must also have access to the GL Mart. GL Mart access is requested through the Federated Authorization process.
To request access:
- Log in to the Grants Forecasting SharePoint site.
- Follow the instructions in the Access section.
To use Grants Forecasting:
- Log in to My Pitt (my.pitt.edu)
- Search for “Grants Forecasting,” then select the task from the results.
- At the Oracle sign in page, click Company Sign In.
- Enter your University Computing Account username and password, then click Sign In.
More Resources
About Data Updates to Grants Forecasting
Posted General Ledger data is loaded to the PBCS Grants Forecasting application on a nightly basis, Monday through Friday. As a reminder, GL month-end closing generally happens three business days into the following month. When running reports on the first of the month for the prior month, not all transactions will be posted for month end yet. For example, Payroll Costing is not posted until the last day of the closing cycle.
Beginning April 1, 2019, encumbrance values are calculated in PRISM, summarized by account number, and exported nightly to PBCS. The detail for these encumbrances found in the Loaded Encumbrance columns may be obtained in PRISM by running the new report, FGAE138 Extract of Calculated Encumbrances by Entity and Department (PDF).
FAQs
What if there is a Fiscal Panther feature that I would like to request?
Please contact the Technology Help Desk at 412-624-HELP (4357). Your request will be reviewed and an analyst from Pitt IT will follow up with you.
Who do I contact with questions about Grants Forecasting?
Please contact the Technology Help Desk at 412-624-HELP (4357) if you have any questions.