When depositing cash or checks via a Department Deposit Form with University Bursar Cashier Operations, keep in mind that there are several fields within this form that are very important from a financial reporting perspective. Thus, these fields need to be accurately completed every time a deposit is made. See below for further details:
- The Date Payment(s) Received by Unit field is a very important field for UAFR, as this date helps us identify any payments that may need to be recorded as a deposit in transit at year-end. The date that we need within this field is the date that you received the payment (such as the date that a check was received in the mail, or the date that you received an in-person cash payment from your customer).
- The Earliest Start Date and Latest End Date fields should reflect the date range of the period covered by the payment. This will help ensure that the revenue resulting from the deposit is properly classified for accrual and deferral cutoff reporting purposes, which is a crucial part of the financial reporting process and a heavy point of emphasis during the external financial audit. See below for additional guidance:
- If the period covered by the payment is only one day (such as a payment for a good or service sold to a customer, where the service started and finished on the same day), then enter the same date into both the Earliest Start Date and Latest End Date fields.
- However, if the period covered by the payment spans a range of days (such as a payment for a service that your unit provided to a customer over the span of a week), then you would need to enter the date of the first day of service within the Earliest Start Date field and the date of the final day of service within the Latest End Date field.
- When multiple payments (which all have different start and end dates) are being deposited on one deposit form, we ask that you do the following: (1) find the payment which has the earliest start date, and (2) find the payment which has the latest end date. Then, enter those two dates into the Earliest Start Date and Latest End Date fields. In these cases, UAFR may need to follow up for a more detailed breakdown of the deposits to properly determine how much of the overall deposit needs to be accrued or deferred for financial statement reporting purposes.
- Finally, in addition to the importance of these various date fields, keep in mind that it is also important to provide a clear description of the deposit as well as an appropriate C-FOAP (paying close attention to the account code – for example, deposits for the sale of goods or services should be deposited to a revenue account code).
Contact
For additional information on this topic, refer to the Department Deposit Form Instructions as well as the Cash Handling section of the Business & Finance website.
For questions surrounding the financial reporting impacts of the department deposit process, feel free to reach out to UAFR via phone (217-333-4568) or email (uas@uillinois.edu).
