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For the University of South Carolina Controller’s Office, their investment in eForms automation is delivering valuable payback with faster turnaround, fewer errors, and lower operating costs.

Journal Voucher eForm

Over the past 12 months, over two-thirds of USC’s 3,800 journal vouchers were processed as automated eForms rather than manually, improving efficiency and avoiding errors including:

  • Duplicate Invoice ID
  • Vendor from the original voucher is no longer active
  • The chartfields string is no longer in the current year’s crosswalk

Prior to the JV eForm, USC calculated that reversing duplicate entries consumed an average of 1.5 hours per day for an accountant, totaling more than 360 hours (or 9 weeks) per year. By eliminating manual keying of JV information, they’ve saved an additional 648 hours (over 16 weeks) per year. That is a cost equivalent of more than $26,000 per year (0.5 FTE) saved with just one form!

Senior Accountant Adriana Harley says, “Everyone agrees keying into an eForm is easy. They like being able to see instantly, the current distribution lines of the original voucher that are being adjusted and know the information they are seeing, is accurate because it’s pulling directly from PeopleSoft. They like the copy down lines feature, as it aids in keying in their adjustment lines more quickly.”

The combination of (1) being able to enforce and track online approvals and (2) having the process executed within PeopleSoft using PeopleSoft data has also significantly improved compliance reporting.

Grant Time & Effort Report eForm

USC’s new Grant Time & Effort Report eForm went live in early April 2020. In its first month, 3,292 grant effort eForms were created.

The new eForm replaced a manual, paper-based process that required business managers to retrieve and review reports from USC’s online system. They would then print the reports and gather the wet signatures of the employee and a second approver that was familiar with the work that was referenced on the report. The role of that individual varied by department. Once the signatures were complete, the forms would be submitted to the Controller’s Office via campus mail or email with scanned copies. The business process was sound but often took MONTHS to complete.

Having the new eForm within USC’s core PeopleSoft Financials system and integrated with PeopleSoft HCM system to manage the workflow approvals has made a huge difference in the speed of approvals and the transparency of the process.

Director of Grants and Funds Management Tiffany Boyd commented, “The new process has increased transparency greatly because Principal Investigators and Primary Supervisors are included in the approval workflow of the report for the first time.”

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