PURPOSE

· To provide a best practice for reviewing and clearing suspense accounts on a monthly basis.

POLICY STATEMENT
· It is the responsibility of the each department's Business Administrator or designee to ensure that all charges are appropriately assigned to their respective accounts.

REASON FOR PROCEDURE
· To provide instruction on clearing suspense accounts monthly to ensure all suspense object codes have a zero balance by the fiscal year end.

WHO SHOULD BE KNOW THIS PROCEDURE
Deans
Center and Institute Chairs
Department Chairs
School of Medicine Administration
Business Administrators
Office of Research Services
Office of Research Support Services

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS
· If a transaction coming from a feeder system (e.g., Mail, Telecommunications, etc.) has an invalid or expired account, the transaction will be posted to the home ORG's 000000 fund in the 95XX series of object codes.
· Suspense activity should be routinely reviewed and removed from the suspense account and charged/credited to the appropriate account via manual journal entry
· On a monthly basis a 510 report (Detail Transaction by Object by ORG) should be scheduled to print in your specific org with the following parameters:

· All transactions should be reviewed and transferred to appropriate object codes or funds that are not frozen. If the source/feeder system of the expense has an incorrect fund number or object code, the source should be contacted and given the appropriate information.

· Journal entries should be prepared on a monthly basis to move all of the expenses from the suspense object code to appropriate account combination.

· Once the transactions are moved, a 160 report (Account Analysis with Payables Detail) should be scheduled and reviewed to ensure the accuracy of the transactions as well as ensure that suspense is brought to a $0 balance.

· Reviewing the account on a monthly basis is preferable because it is easier to identify the appropriate fund for an expense due to the timeliness constraints of sponsored project reporting.