November 2022

Published monthly, the Fiscal Administrators' News is where you can find the latest information regarding the Office of Procurement Services.

Table of Contents

Procurement Services

Procurement Impacts during Banner Cloud Migration

Banner will be down beginning Friday, December 2nd at 5pm to Wednesday, December 7th at approximately noon. RealSource’s activities will also be limited during this time. If you have items that you need to order, we ask that you order them before December 2nd. If an emergency situation arises, we recommend the use of the pcard.

Requisitions: RealSource will not push any pending Change Requests, Purchase Orders (POs), One-Time Payment Requests or Vendor Requests through the RealSource approval cycle until Banner is back online. This means POs will not be generated and sent to Vendors until Banner is back online. Users can "enter" new Requisitions, Change Requests, POs and One-Time Payments; however, these will be held in the approval workflow until Banner is back online.

Invoices & Check Run: Invoices will not be pushed to Banner starting Friday, December 2nd at 5pm, until Banner is back online. A final check run will occur on Friday, December 2nd that will pay all invoices due through December 12th. There will not be a check run the week of December 5th through 9th, so please plan accordingly.

Receipts: Receipts will not be impacted and can be keyed at any time.

Other Requests: Users can continue to submit Ship to requests, User requests, and Contract requests throughout the process.

Chrome River: Chrome River transactions may be submitted during the downtime, but payments will not be issued until the next available check run. No new non-employee Vendor requests will be processed until Banner is back online. Travel Advances needed during this time must be requested and approved by November 29, 2022.

If you have any further questions, please submit general help Cherwell service ticket to the RealSource Procurement Services team under School/Unit IT Support.


New RealSource Software Release

RealSource deployed a new software release (22.3) on Monday, November 7. This is not a major release and changes are minimal. To see what has changed, visit the Quick Links in RealSource for an updated document.

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Grants & Contracts

Effort Certification Reminders

The effort certification period for both, MCV Campus and Monroe Park Campus will close on November 30, 2022. Faculty, please log into ECC and certify your effort and project statements as soon as possible.

Please contact effortreport@vcu.edu if you need assistance or have any questions.


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Controller's Office

Communications have been sent by VCU IT regarding downtime in December for all Banner and Operational Data Store (ODS) systems, which will be migrating from VCU's on-campus University Computer Center into the Ellucian cloud. As a result, staff and faculty should plan ahead of the following scheduled outages:

  • Friday, December 2nd at 5:00 p.m. to Wednesday, December 7th at approximately noon. All Banner systems will be unavailable, including Banner Admin Pages, Degree Works, RealSource and eServices (Banner Self-Service), among others.
  • Friday, December 2nd at 5:00 p.m. to Friday, December 9th at approximately 10:00 a.m. All ODS systems will be unavailable, including the VCU Reporting Center and SAS Visual Analytics dashboards among others.

For more information, please visit administrativesystems.ts.vcu.edu/ or visit VCU IT's list of FAQs.


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Business Services

Mail Services Winter Hours

On Wednesday, November 23, VCU Mail Services will close at noon on the Monroe Park and MCV Campus and at 1 pm at the Ownby Main Processing location. We will be closed all day on November 24 and 25 and reopen on Monday, November 28.

Facilities will be open on December 22 and December 27 through December 29 from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm on Monroe Park Campus, 8:00 am to 12:00 pm on the MCV Campus, and 8:00 am – 1:00 pm at the Ownby location. We will be closed for observance for the university holidays on December 23rd, 26th, 30th and January 2nd. All incoming mail will be sorted and posted to the mailboxes daily. All outgoing mail received before the facility's close will be processed the same day.

Departments receiving pickup and delivery services must contact VCU Mail Services in writing or by email to request assistance during the winter closing. Otherwise, mail deliveries will resume on Tuesday, January 3, 2023. Please be on the lookout for our "Special Hours of Operation" memo for more information in the coming weeks.


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Edit | Last updated: 12/02/2022