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SMARTFinance
SMARTFinance

SMART Finance is a fully featured, sophisticated financial accounting tool to meet your highest expectations well into the 21st century. Its features include modules for General Ledger, Budgeting, Requisitions and Purchasing, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Inventory, Project Accounting, Administration, and more. It also has fund accounting procedures, encumbrance, and unique Minnesota State reporting features. This system will meet all Minnesota state requirements for UFARS.

SMART Finance is an integrated solution that supports interfaces to other school district systems. This system makes it easy for everyone in the school district to have access to the information required for making good financial decisions. We are confident you will agree that providing a way for your staff to move financial data from one desk to another electronically can save time. Your staff will love the features that reduce data entry time, allowing information to be entered only once while also making it available to all authorized users.

In addition to the contemporary functionality of SMART Finance, Region I provides an unparalleled level of support services to school district administrators and staff. The following is a summary listing of support services –

General Training and Support –

Individual and group training is provided, as requested, for beginning through advanced users. 

Unlimited Region I telephone support is available to answer any questions that may arise on a day to day basis in the use of the software, simply by calling our toll free number.

Real time support of users is handled through screen “shadowing”, allowing active demonstration of software procedures while district user looks on.

Region I staff will provide guidance on basic accounting procedures.

Software application upgrades and database backup are handled by the Region I staff. (See Database Administration section).

UFARS (Uniform Financial Accounting and Reporting Standards) Training, Support, Editing and Reporting –

The UFARS account code structure is complex and constantly changing. The current Chapter X UFARS account code grid is updated and modifies the allowable account code structure in SMART Finance to assist the user in making the correct account code selection.

Region I staff conducts an annual training session to update district staff as to what account code changes have occurred and how to handle the changes.

Districts are provided an easy to read manual, highlighting the UFARS account code changes, as a reference tool.

Region I telephone support staff is available to field any UFARS questions that may arise in your district.

At the end of the fiscal year, we will run any number of edits on your district's data and account structure, work with you to clean up any UFARS errors and submit your UFARS data to the DCFL.

Audit Assistance

Region I conducts annual training sessions with most audit firms to ensure that the audit staff members understand changes that have occurred in financial reporting for school districts.

Our operating environment allows audit firms to directly access a district’s database in order to conduct audit work off-site, thereby reducing the time spent at the district during an audit and theoretically reducing or holding down audit fee increases.

Prior to the final submission of your district financial data to the DCFL, Region I will review your data, using a specific, detailed Y/E checklist for any unusual items or improper coding, which could negatively impact the district's revenue.

Other Accounting/Financial Assistance Provided

State foundation aid revenue projection review.

Preparation of all year-end 1099 forms for the district.

Ordering and delivery of blank check stock, on an as needed basis.

SMART Systems is owned, developed and supported by Regions I, II, III, IV and V, serving Minnesota school districts and other education related service agencies for more than 35 years

News Items
News Items

New UFARS Codes:
We have loaded the latest FY 12-13 UFARS codes into SMART Finance including finance 316 for Staff Development.  We will be running new Chapter X edits for all districts.  Stacy or Kath will be contacting districts that have FY 12-13 UFARS compliance reporting errors.

Staff Development:
After we added the new finance dimension for staff development-finance 316.  We did the following dimension changes for all districts:
• If there was a balance in account B01-403 (Reserved for Staff Development), we made no changes to your staff development accounts.  You should continue to use finance dimensions 306,307, and 308 until the balance in B01-403 is zero; then, switch to finance dimension 316.
• If your district did not have a Reserved for Staff Development fund balance, we referenced finance dimensions 306, 307, and 308 to finance 316.  You may want to consider converting accounts using finance dimensions 306, 307, and 308 to finance 316.
We will be discussing staff development accounting options at our yearend meetings.

SMART Finance has 1099 printing capability for vendors that have been flagged for 1099s.  If the 1099 flag has been used, review the 1099 amounts by running the Vendor 1099 Summary report or the Vendor 1099 Detail report. More ...>

For more information on the SMART Finance 12.2 Release, click here...>