1:12 p.m., May 18, 2007--The UD Financials team is making final preparations for upgrading the current system from version 8.4 to version 8.9.

"In order to accomplish this transition to the new version, we anticipate the system will be offline for four working days, June 5-8, and two weekend days, June 9-10," Ellen Lepine, assistant director of financial services and associate treasurer, said. "The timing at the beginning of June will allow for the financial records for the month of May to be closed before the upgrade."

To lessen the impact of UD Financials being down for a week, most financial web forms will continue to be available for initiation and approval, though they will not be processed or posted until June 11.

"Complete details will follow next week," Lepine said. "We encourage people to submit and approve as many web forms as possible before June 1."

UD Financials being offline also will affect anyone who uses the Labor Allocation Module (LAM) to change salary distributions, Grants to enter proposals, Billing and Accounts Receivable to inquire about nonstudent billing, or UD Processes to lookup Purpose or other chart-field information.

The UD Financials reporting database (FIRPT), as well as the web Monthly Statement View will continue to be accessible as usual during the upgrade process from June 5-11, "with one very important difference," Lepine said. "The financial data will remain static after June 4 and will not be updated again until June 11, when normal processing resumes."

"The UD Financials upgrade to version 8.9 is a normal updating of the system with new features and functionality, as well as technical enhancements. Campus users of the system will largely be unaffected by these changes," Lepine said. "The greatest area of impact is in Grants, where the system has been streamlined and processes improved. There will be Grants hands-on training offered in late May and early June for those people who work with grant proposals. The Nonstudent Billing and Accounts Receivable inquiry pages have also changed. Informational training sessions are planned for June to alert departmental staff to these changes," she said.

Watch UDaily for more information about these training sessions.

Human Resources, UDSIS and other non-financial web forms are not affected by the UD Financials upgrade and will be processed normally from June 5-11, Lepine noted.