Welcome to FIN ERP and Accounting and Reporting at Columbia (ARC)
Overview
Columbia University has embarked upon a long-term initiative to replace most of its administrative technology systems and to develop a new, integrated environment to manage human resources, finance, facilities, student services, and information technology.
What is FIN ERP?
As a part of this major initiative, the Finance Division will be implementing a new Financials Enterprise Resource Planning System (FIN ERP). ERP refers to a category of business software that is designed to integrate functions across an organization into a single computer system. The University will implement PeopleSoft’s ERP package to replace several of our current financial systems with one, web-based application, with the following goals:
Improve administrative efficiency and effectiveness
Improve quality, timeliness and access to financial information
Reduce security and compliance risk
Implement a platform for future strategic initiatives
What is ARC?
The name of our new financial system is Accounting and Reporting at Columbia (ARC). The system will go-live in July, 2012.
The implementation includes the following PeopleSoft software modules:
General Ledger (GL) with Commitment Control (KK)
Project Costing (PC)
Payables (AP)
Purchasing (PO)
eProcurement (ePro), requisitioning only
ARC will provide users with many benefits including:
Integration of several financial and reporting systems into a single, integrated system for general ledger, budgeting, purchasing, accounts payable, including a new chart of accounts
Improved quality of data
Improved grants and contract financial management
Better visibility into transactions
Advanced reporting capabilities
The Financial ERP implementation will impact the following areas of the Columbia community:
Finance (Central, School and Administrative Units)
Sponsored Projects
Procurement
Reporting
The following systems are being replaced by ARC:
FINSYS (CO), the Financial Systems Contract Management section of My.Columbia Portal
FINSYS (VM), the Financial systems Vendor Management section of My.Columbia Portal
AP/CAR, Accounts Payable Controlled Analytical Review, the system used for processing payments to vendors.
CAPS, Columbia Assisted Purchasing System, our backend purchase order system
DARTS, Departmental Advanced Reporting and Tracking System, used for creating financial reports from FAS data.
Many of the modules in FFE, Financial Front End, the interface that brings together various action and report modules.
Any system that integrates with FAS today will integrate with ARC tomorrow.
Users will be supported with a formal training program beginning in April, 2012 that includes:
