WDF, WiSFiP and Financial Reporting Updates

All the latest buzz regarding the SFS WISEdata Finance (WDF) and Wisconsin School Finance Portal (WiSFiP) reporting systems, including the Budget Report, Debt Schedules, the legacy SAFR system, Annual Report, Aid Certification and Beginning Fund Balances. Be sure to review all these financial reporting updates to stay current!

Budget Report

Due to the progress of our development of the Budget Report in WiSFiP, the SFS team used raw budget data from WDF for calculating the July 1 Estimate of General Aid. However, the Budget Report is now live in WiSFiP so districts can access the budget report and address budget validations and addenda in order to submit the Budget Report (and allow the generation of the Budget Certification Statement). Per Wisconsin Statute §121.05, districts are required to maintain this signed Budget Certification on file at the district—the form should NOT be submitted to DPI.

Debt Schedules

The Debt Schedules module has been moved from the Resources panel in the WiSFiP home page to the default Financial Data Reporting panel and we have addressed the access issues users were experiencing as well. We will be further updating the interface within the Debt Schedules module to make the process of adding new debt clearer. TIP: To access the Add New Record button in the module, be sure to first select the Debt Type from the associated dropdown menu!

SAFR

We have updated the Financial Data screen within the legacy SAFR portal to indicate which reporting has been transitioned to WiSFiP. We had temporarily removed the links to the Debt Schedules and Referenda reports in SAFR to ensure data was entered only in the new WiSFiP modules, but we have since restored those links as read-only in SAFR to allow users and the public to view historical data entered into those modules through June 30, 2023. The SFS team is currently determining a plan to provide public views of financial data in WiSFiP going forward.

Annual Report and Aid Certification

The current focus of our development is to complete the Annual Reporting process, which includes the District Aid Certification (formerly the PI-1505-AC), the Auditor Ending Fund Balances (PI-1506-FB), the Auditor Aid Certification (PI-1506-AC) and the Annual Report (PI-1505).

While the SFS team prepares to roll out that reporting, districts can prepare for completing these reports by first making sure that their 2022-23 accounts and Actual amounts have been pushed so WDF has up-to-date data, and then work on addressing any Validations and Addenda that are being triggered. We have turned on required Addenda based on Actual values and Validations that compare specific accounts against On Record amounts.

Beginning Fund Balances

Finally, WDF has been updated to pull in the Beginning Fund Balance amounts for the Trial Balance screen based upon the Ending Fund Balance in the previous year in WDF (until now, we were pulling in that value from SAFR). If this is triggering a trial balance validation, please ensure that your fund balance equity accounts are present and accurate in WDF 2021-22.