Budget Guidelines

Vice presidents, vice provosts and deans are responsible for assuring that within their administrative units or colleges/schools:

1. All proposed expenditures are consistent with all university policies and federal and state regulations.
2. Adequate funds are in a unit's budget to support proposed expenditures.
3. Supplies, space, and other requirements are available to support expenditures.

• The Office of Budget and Regents Reporting will review each request to fill or change a position. The review will include, but is not limited to, the following tests: existence of the position, full-time-equivalency, dollar availability, rank. If there are questions, the originating office will be contacted for clarification.
• When a personnel action is permanent or temporary, but can be funded within the unit's budget, the personnel action requires the approval of the president or respective vice president. The vice president for academic affairs has additional guidelines.
• Any personnel action requiring additional funding (except ledger 6 accounts), whether it be of a temporary or permanent nature, requires the approval of the president or his appointee (the vice president for academic affairs).
• Changing a faculty position from nontenure track to tenure track requires the approval of the vice president for academic affairs.
• All personnel actions involving restricted funds and having an account number beginning with 5, must be approved by the director of the Office of Financial Services or designee; account numbers beginning with 6 must be approved by the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs.

Any increase in the permanent base budget must be approved by the president, except mandated increases such as reclassifications that occur because of the audit of a classified or unclassified position.

The budget manager of each unit can transfer funds from a Special Development Account (object code 7700) or any other budget line from the unit's permanent base budget, except personnel or benefits, to capital. Capital funds also can be made available through the regular capital budgeting process. Funds should be available in account and budget lines before a requisition is initiated.

• All unencumbered monies in classified, unclassified, and faculty personnel lines shall be removed from the unit's budget along with the corresponding funds in the benefit line(s). One-half of the unencumbered salary funds shall be transferred to the university Special Development Account (SDA) or the vice president for academic affairs' SDA. The other one-half of the unencumbered salary funds shall be transferred to the unit's SDA. All benefit monies go to the university SDA. When funds are transferred into the SDA, object code 1110 shall be used for unclassified personnel, object code 1200 for classified personnel, and object code 1400 for faculty. These funds, with the limits noted, can be utilized for the following purposes:

  1. To hire adjunct faculty or other temporary teaching replacements

  2. To fund temporary nonteaching personnel or nonpersonnel expenditures which cannot be met from the established unit budget

  3. To purchase capital equipment

• If an authorized vacancy is filled, one-half of the salary needed for the balance of the fiscal year will be funded by the unit's Special Development Account. Funds shall be transferred from the SDA using the appropriate object code for classified and unclassified personnel or faculty. The balance of the salary shall be restored by the Office of Budget and Regents Reporting from the university SDA or the vice president for academic affairs' SDA. All benefits shall be restored from the university SDA.

  In no case, except for the approved filling of vacant positions, can the monies made available through an SDA be used for any purpose which constitutes an expenditure commitment which extends beyond the end of the current fiscal year.

• When a unit desires to utilize funds from its SDA for other than personnel positions, a budget transfer form using object code 7700 shall be prepared prior to the time that the transaction is initiated. The budget transfer form shall be submitted directly to the Office of Budget and Regents Reporting.

• Units may not charge expenditures directly to the SDA. Rather, a budget transfer must be utilized to move funds from the SDA to a regular departmental account. The expense shall be charged to the appropriate operating account.

• Budget transfers that require a permanent increase in university funding must be approved by the president.

• The following budget transfers require approval by the president or the vice president for academic affairs:

  1. Transfers from the Contingency Fund

  2. Transfers from the Capital Budget not previously approved as part of the capital budget process

  3. Transfers from the university SDA

• The following budget transfers require approval by a vice president (excluding the School of Medicine):

  1. Transfers from capital of more than $500, except for a transfer into the supplies line item in the same budget

  2. Transfers from summer salaries to nonpersonnel object codes

  3. Transfers involving classified/unclassified position dollars

  4. Transfers involving GA/GTA and GRA stipend dollars

  5. Transfers involving fee waivers

  6. Transfers involving benefit dollars

  7. Rotaries-Transfer of funds from a regular ledger 2 account to a rotary ledger 2 account 

  8. Transfers involving "other faculty" salaries (object code 1500)

  9. Transfers involving credit workshops in the College of Education and Human Services

Upon receipt of a grant or contract award notice, any portion of an investigator's salary funded by the grant should be charged to the grant. All funds thus released shall remain available to the college/department to support the hiring of temporary faculty or to underwrite the overload contracts to carry the teaching/instructional/administrative load released as a result of allocating the salary to the contract or grant. The respective departments should initiate the appropriate budget transfer and reallocation request.

• Each unit is expected to function within its authorized budget. The authorized budget does not include the unencumbered vacancy funds removed from the budget.

• Deficits in individual accounts shall be charged at the end of the fiscal year against the unit's Special Development Account. A negative balance in a unit's SDA shall be carried forward to the next fiscal year, dependent upon the determination of the president.

• Colleges/schools retain 100 percent of their year-end free balance which is carried forward into the college/school SDA; however, the fund shall not exceed one-tenth of the total authorized budget for the then current year.

• Since year-end surplus funds are apportioned to SDAs, requests to carry over uncommitted funds in a given operating account will not be approved.

• Responsibility for budget control begins at the level of the department/account manager up through each successive level of management to the respective dean or vice president.

• It is the manager's responsibility to bring any significant variances in budgeted expenditures or projected revenue to the attention of the manager's immediate supervisor. Any budget adjustments should be made at the lowest operational level possible, but may have to be addressed by the appropriate vice president if the budget variance is too large to address at the lower management level. The vice presidents should utilize their Special Development Accounts or other budgeted lines to address variances.

• The department manager shall notify the Office of Budget and Regents Reporting of any significant variance in projected revenue.

• The following transactions require approval by the director of Financial Services or designee:

  1. The director of Financial Services will review any single purchase requisition involving more than $5,000. In general, the transaction shall not be processed unless funds are available.

  2. Requisitions relating to personnel, travel, and capital charged to a ledger 5 account shall be reviewed before processing to determine that there is adequate budget, as well as for compliance with the requirements of the grant or contract.

• All transactions/expenditures charged to a ledger 6 account require the approval of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs or its designee.

• To facilitate budget control, management, and analysis during the year, managers should, if needed, annually reallocate their budget base among their accounts and/or line items as part of the annual budget cycle for the next fiscal year. This reallocation will make the annual budget a more realistic statement of expected expenditures and will minimize the processing of budget transfers.

• Amending the budget base can be done at any time during the current fiscal year by notifying the Office of Budget and Regents Reporting via memo, part B of a budget transfer, or by verbal request.