FARM Overview

Summary

Financial Approvers and Related Metadata system , also known as FARM, is a system used to streamline the management of financial transaction approvals across the University. FARM enables Planning Unit CFAOS/Financial Leads and their delegates to centrally maintain who can approve transactions in BobcatBUY, Concur, and Individual Compensation Distribution (ICD) based on their university organizational structure. It is also used to track approvers for OHIO Business Service Center requests and planning unit leadership roles such as Current Dean/Director/VP and CFAO (Chief Financial and Administrative Officer) and Signature Sub-delegation.

Key Features

The FARM system has a number of features that allow planning units to maintain their approvers while minimizing the effort required:

• Can assign approvers based on the organization hierarchy, as new organizations are set-up the approvers are already established based on the hierarchy
• Can copy an existing employee’s approval levels
• Can replace one employee’s approval levels by assigning someone else, due to reorganization/turnover
• Can easily remove/end date an employee’s approval levels

Logging into FARM

You can access FARM from:

• The Finance Home Page
• The Financial and Administrative Systems page on the Finance site

Use your OHIO email and password to single-sign on to access FARM.

Access and Roles

• Fiscal Officer:
  • CFAO or Financial Lead of planning unit
  • Can establish delegates to maintain approvers
  • Can set up and maintain approvers
  • Access to the fiscal officer role is maintained centrally.  Current fiscal officers or CFAOs should email financecustomercare@ohio.edu if a fiscal officer needs to be added/replaced.
• Delegates:
  • Can set up and maintain approvers
  • Access to the FARM delegate role is maintained by the planning unit’s fiscal officer(s) directly in FARM.
• Approvers:
  • Roles set up within FARM to approve financial transactions in systems such as BobcatBUY, Concur, and ICD.
  • These approvers do not have access in FARM

Definitions

Organization:The units within Ohio University that have responsibility for sections of the University budget. Organizations range from entire budgets devoted to each vice president’s area of responsibility, down to each individual office or department.

Approval Type:The different systems for which FARM provides approver status. Includes BobcatBUY, Concur, Individual Compensation Distribution (ICD), OHIO BSC, and other planning unit roles.

Approval Level: The range of financial and/or approval levels per approval type. 

BobcatBUY

Approver Levels	Limit Amounts
$0 - $1500	$1,500
$1500 - $5k	$5,000
$5k - $10k	$10,000
$10k - $25k	$25,000
$25k - $50k	$50,000
$50k+	$50,000+

Concur

Approver Levels	Limit Amounts
Approvals for Travel/PCARD expense reports	$100,000

Individual Compensation Distribution (ICD)

Approver Levels	Limit Amounts
Escalation for Department Head	$100,000
Department Head	$100,000

Organization Hierarchy

Parent vs. Child Organization Levels

Parent values summarize child values for reporting purposes. Parent organization values begin with a letter followed by five numbers.  For example: C14000 or E14020.

Child values are used for posting transactions and entering budget.  Child organization values consist of six numerical characters.  For example: 140200 or 140210.

Example:

For more information about the Organization hierarchy, please review the Organization Segment Quick Reference Guide .

All approvals in FARM will be based on organization and utilize the organization hierarchy. Approvers can be set up at any level in the organization hierarchy (planning unit level, department level or by individual organization value); however, it is recommended to set approvers at the planning unit or department parent levels when possible.

Approvers set at a parent level will trickle down to the individual organizations in the hierarchy. This requires less data entry and is easier to maintain than setting approvers at each individual org child value. Additionally, if new orgs are created, they will inherit the approvals that you have already set at the parent level. If you choose to set an approver at an individual org level, that approver will only apply to that specific org.

When approvers are set at multiple levels in the hierarchy, the logic used to identify which approvers get sent to BobcatBUY, Concur, and ICD varies.  See details below: