Essential Information

Daily activities

Our high priority service teams, identified as Payroll, Accounts Payable, Income Section and aspects of Cash Office, are working hard to ensure that business continues as normally as possible. Please be assured that we are putting all our efforts into ensuring that staff and supplier payments are unaffected this month and are putting in place measures to ensure business continuity as long as the current situation lasts.

The vast majority of services and processes are currently conducted electronically, but there are still some instances of paper submissions to various teams in Finance. We need to support of our colleagues in this new situation, therefore it is important to ensure that all documentation that is sent to any of these teams is done so electronically (Payroll, Accounts Payable, Income Section and Cash Office). This is because we may not be able to guarantee that paper-based internal/external mail will be received and actioned in our usual timescales. This may mean adopting a flexible digital approach; scanning documents, sending images or ensuring suppliers provide electronic copies of invoices in some cases.

The Cash Office is closed. It would be very helpful if you are able to identify any major issues that this may cause for your areas. It is our expectation that the need for Cash Office services will decline as the number of staff and activities around the University reduce. If there are circumstances where the physical activities or functions of the Cash Office are required in some capacity, we will then plan how to deliver these.

Additional Accounts Payable information:

Working from home

Some essential services will always be need to be delivered on campus. Options to deliver your role through remote working must be discussed and agreed with your line manager. If remote working is to be considered, please check the advice on the IS website and review it frequently as it will be updated.

Capturing the financial impact

The University is now incurring unplanned expenditure in response to the uncertainty and changing situation regarding Covid-19. There is no budget for expense incurred on Covid-19 and therefore any additional spend needs to be closely controlled.

To support this, a new job code of GCOV19 has been set up. The purpose of setting up this new job code is to capture exceptional one off spend associated with our response to the developing situation only. This does not include costs that have been accelerated from later in the year. Local budget areas must carefully control all spend associated with this code.

The approval process in local areas for spend that is to be recorded against GCOV19 must follow the appropriate authorisation route.  Please ensure that you liaise with your Finance Executive representative before committing to expenditure against this job code to keep them informed on spend that will impact College and Professional Services Group financial forecasts.

As well as incurring additional expense, there is a potential loss of income. Any refunds that are made directly due to Covid-19 should be recorded locally and sent to the Financial Information, Reporting & Strategy Team (FIRST).

FIRST will track and review spend that is being coded to the new job code. Reports presenting spend across the University will be shared with the appropriate audience and discussions held with College and Professional Services Group Heads of Finance on a routine basis to review financial impact and impact against delivery of University budget surplus.