MSA budget reveals PeopleSoft accounting issues

By Erica Zucco

Published April 8, 2008

Missouri Students Association Vice President Chelsea Johnson and the MSA Budget Committee reported an estimated $40,474.42 carryover from the 2007-2008 academic year in their 2008-2009 budget proposal, but that number should be closer to $116,746.04.

MSA Senate Speaker Jonathan Mays said his investigation of how the Student Health Center spent funds in preparation for a SHC fee recommendation prompted him to conduct a more thorough analysis of what departments within MSA estimated they would spend by the end of the semester and how much they have actually been spending.

“If we want to hold the Student Health Center to its budget, we should do the same for MSA,” Mays said.

Mays told the budget committee last week to expect somewhere between $60,000 to $80,000 of additional carryover beyond the budgeted $40,474.42.

The Student Activity Fee Budget Summary provides columns for a department’s approved budget and mid-term budget revision for a given fiscal year. Mays added columns with the departments’ actual expenditures thus far derived from PeopleSoft, revised expense estimate taking actual expenditures into consideration and the new carryover that would result.

For example, midway through the 2007-2008 fiscal year, the Department of Student Communications reported a revised budget of $2,352.95 for Special Projects, a division that coordinates mass e-mail surveys with prize incentives attached. PeopleSoft documentation showed that only $352.95 has been spent so far, and through discussion with DSC and analysis of how much more money will be spent, Mays concluded that the revised budget should actually state $452.95 for Special Projects expenses, resulting in a carryover of $2,847.05 instead of the $947.05 estimated by DSC.

These discrepancies occurred in many other departments as well, and Mays met with each department to discuss how much they planned to spend and the resulting carryover.

STRIPES is another department with a significant discrepancy between the carryover the department estimated midway through the year and the carryover that will most likely result. STRIPES estimated no carryover, while an estimated $8,276.06 is more accurate. Mays said there were departments that accurately maintained and followed their budgets, including MUTV/Channel 23 and the MSA/Graduate Professional Council Box Office, meaning that the problem shouldn’t be considered standard or acceptable. Mays said that in most cases, the large discrepancies between estimated and actual carryover resulted from inaccurate consideration of expenses, placement of expenses in the wrong line items of budgets and a general disregard for spending funds in line with the way the budget mandates.

MSA Budget Committee Chairman Aaron Wynhausen said the committee will not make any changes to the budget previously submitted to MSA Senate, and is working on legislation to allocate the additional carryover to expenses for the new student center. Wynhausen said legislation will be written by Tuesday.

Mays said MU has made a long-term commitment to use PeopleSoft, but that right now the program does not serve the needs of its users in terms of real-time budgeting. Mays said the computer program contributes to the problem, but that a culture of fiscal irresponsibility existing within certain departments of MSA is also to blame.

“We need incentives for fiscal responsibility that encourage people to see savings as opportunity,” Mays said. “MSA has enough funding to try some great things, but if our expenses are exaggerated, we won’t know what we can do until it’s too late.”

MSA Budget Committee Vice Chairman Seth Botts said improving conditions for accurate budgeting will take a lot of brainstorming and deliberation to determine a more effective process.

“It will take a lot of people working together and a lot of time on the part of the Budget committee chair to come up with a policy that makes sure people don’t just make up numbers and throw them into their spreadsheets,” Botts said.