2024 was a busy year with a number of new updates to the Beacon Finance application. Below is a summary of all significant changes to the application made this year.  Heading into 2025 we will continue adding new features, data, and reports based on your feedback. We are starting by adding new data from QVR including State ID and Congressional District for Grants. If you have requests please email [email protected] and your idea can benefit all of NIH!

 

New Finance Reports: 

  • UDO Report: Significant updates to the UDO Report, found under the Multi Year tab, allow users to check for undisbursed balances over the last funding FY's.
  • Monthly Roll-up Report: A summary of all OC code or category spending across all CAN's in a summary account
  • Travel Report: A summary report of travel expenses by the traveler name (Requester)
  • New Budget Data Entry: Budget data has been simplified and now rolls up from CAN to Summary Account
  • Task Balance Report: This new report summarizes a CAN's multi-year expenses by Processing FY and then Task number
  • Pay Period Sums Report: A summary of all payroll obligations summed by the expense type (ie FTE, CC, Fellow, CAN Flips). Users can drill down from the sums into the transaction obligations.
  • Shareable Accounts Page Reports: System admins can create IC wide reports by customizing and saving column preferances. All users have access to these reports.
  • Multi IC Comparison Report: New charts and graphs were added to display the comparison data visually
  • Display Funds Report: 
  • Expired Funds: a new transactions screen dedicated to all Expired Funds activity. Found under the Transaction tab


New or Altered Data Fields

  • TRANSACTIONS: (Learn how to add new columns HERE)
    • IAA #
    • Gift Fund #
    • Invoice #
    • PY Upward/Downward Paid/Unpaid
    • Fund Description
  • ACCOUNTS: (Learn how to add new columns HERE)
    • CAN Flip
    • PY Upward/Downward Paid/Unpaid
    • Previous Year Obligations
  • Multi-Year GIFT / CRADA (Learn more about Gift Fund and CRADA accounts HERE)
    • Last Updated Collections
    • Total Allotted Collections
    • Pending Collections
    • Principal Investigator PI (Gift Fund only)
  • OTHER
    • Added Commitment data to the Unposted Transactions (Near Real Time)
    • Added an Obligations-only option to the Balance of Accounts


Planning and Admin Screens:


  • New Alerts: Overall improved UI and reduced the number of emails through concatenation of alerts
    • Prior Year Obligations: A new Alert for when a transaction marked as a prior de-obligation downloads to a selected account(s)
    • Transaction Alert: Alert for when a transaction downloads to an account(s)
  • Manage View Updates: Admin users can Right Click an account which opens a module to either edit the account title or to move the account(s) anywhere in the view
  • Audit of Changes made to the Accounts Page: The Accounts page now displays the history of all accounts added, moved, or deleted from the view displayed. The alert directs you to the Audit log for a full history
  • Customizable Menu Options: System Admin users can create customized Finance views and assign users to these unique views. This allows system admins to restrict what data each user can access. 
  • Audit Log Improvements: Overall UI improvements and new filtering capabilities. Additionally, the Audit log now allows users to find changes to dollar amounts when applicable. 



New Features:

  • Quick Transaction Search: A new feature to easily search the entire system for Transactions based on Order #, Document #, Req #, Vendor Name, or Description. Users can use partial values when using this search.
  • Improved Description Search: For the current year and multi year searches users can now perform a contains search using the equal/contains symbol.
  • Document # AND Search: Users can now search for multiple Document numbers in the same search using the AND search builder
  • Improved Filters on the CSA Rollup Report:
  • Customizable UI Preferences:
    • OO/PS default
    • Customizable Column Headers (Learn more HERE)
    • Account Title (Formal vs Informal)
    • Set the Ad-Hoc page as your default
    • Accounts page Folders default open/closed setting
  • Transaction Page Fellow Award Links to HR: From the Transactions page, click on the OC code column value of a Fellow award to link to that employee's HR page
  • Summarize by Requisition Number: On the Transaction screen users can summarize transactions by Requisition number.