Do you know one of the responsibilities of managing a Banner fund type 3E self-supporting service or storeroom activity is tracking the financial data properly and systematically by each distinct line of service? How does your unit currently track financial activity (expenditures/revenue/fund balance) within a Banner 3E service activity fund?
The need to track related services within one fund may exist in certain circumstances. Only like and similar activities may be tracked within one Banner 3E service activity fund. For example, a lab may have two staff that manage 5 unique pieces of equipment, each with different costs. Sometimes a customer may only need to utilize 2 pieces of equipment for a certain test, while other times they need to use all 5 pieces of equipment. Since there are different costs and different usages, the service center must track the actual costs and actual usage separately for each piece of equipment.
The best way to allocate to multiple related lines of service is to know in advance which expenditures belong to each line of service and to allocate those expenditures directly. Program codes and/or activity codes can be used to allocate expenditures to individual lines of service at a transaction level.
Banner offers program and activity codes that should be utilized when tracking multiple related service activities within one fund. This means when a Banner 3E service activity fund is required to track related activities and calculate different rates for the services offered, each activity should be tracked using fund/program code or fund/activity code or fund/program/activity code in order to determine accurate expenditures, revenue, and fund balance by line of service.
- Fund Code – A Fund maintains a Fund balance and a cumulative record of the sources and uses of monies.
- Program Code – A Program can be used by units to group similar activities that are ongoing or span more than one year. They’re a segment of the C-FOAPAL accounting string that determines the use of monies at the expenditure level.
- Activity Code – A C-FOAPAL segment for use in tracking non-budget control financial activities.
It is important to note, if the need exists to have multiple related activities in one fund, the department will be required to manually track the cumulative fund balance by program/activity code, or line of service each year. This means the year-end fund balance by program/activity code will need to be calculated every year and the ending fund balance carried forward to include in the next year’s cumulative ending fund balance calculation. This is critical so that customers, including the federal government, are given the appropriate credit in the event of an over-recovery. Or in the event of an under-recovery, to ensure the costs of doing business are fully recovered.
NOTE: Banner will carry forward a fund balance from year to year, but not by activity or program code. Banner rolls everything together at the end of the year, so it is important that you track the fund balance manually. Therefore, you should track your net income by line of service, and as part of that, you should track your accumulated fund balance.
If you have questions if a separate fund, program, or activity code that should be set up for your 3E service activity fund please contact the System Government Costing Office at your university.
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For questions, please refer to Service Activity Rates on Government Costing’s Who to Ask list.
