Finance Stream
The Chart of Accounts (COA) is an essential framework that defines the financial structure of the University of Alberta. It serves as an index of all the Chartfields the university uses to record and report its financial transactions.
This structure is critical for categorizing and classifying accounting and budgetary transactions, which supports effective financial reporting, stewardship, and decision-making across all levels of the institution.
Inconsistencies with the university’s chart of accounts limit our ability to generate comprehensive financial reporting. The Finance Stream is working to rectify these issues by standardizing the use of the chart of accounts across the colleges, faculties and departments.
Completed PROJECTS
On October 1, 2024, Finance, Procurement and Planning (FPP) rolled out a number of changes as part of the modernization of the Chart of Accounts.
The changes lessen redundancies and address pain points shared by users, enable more consistency with the use of chartfields across the university, and simplify the preparation of institutional reporting to the provincial government and other stakeholders.
- The revised chartfields better categorize operating activities into higher-level functions allowing for more robust analytics and reports.
- The system clean up resulted in the deactivation of approximately 10,000 inactive values (expense codes for programs, classes, projects) that have not been used in the last five years.
A new procedure also came into effect in October under the Financial Management and Practices Policy. that better governs and enforces the modernized chart of accounts.
Specifically, the chartfield request procedure now describes the updated definitions and parameters for the eight chartfields and identifies the FPP portfolio as the owner of the university’s chartfield structure.
what we're working on
Browse the below list to see projects we're moving forward to improve administrative processes.
Note: Each project will deliver a series of incremental changes with all changes being completed by the expected completion date. Dates are subject to change based on new information.
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Status
Expected Completion
membership
- Todd Gilchrist, Vice President, University Services, Operations and Finance — Program Sponsor
- Matina Kalcounis-Rueppell, Dean and Vice-Provost, College of Natural and Applied Sciences — Program Sponsor
- Kerrie Johnston, College General Manager, College of Social Sciences & Humanities — College Liaison
- Glen Sabatier, Acting Executive Director, University Initiatives Office — Program Lead
- Darrell Dancause, AVP Finance, Procurement and Planning — Stream Lead, Finance
- Andrew Reid, Business Analyst
- Donna Harrop-Mckinley, Senior Consultant, Organizational Change Management