Wednesday, November 3, 2021
The SFS Team is pleased to announce that WISEdata Finance is ready to receive data submissions from school districts for the 2021-22 school year. Additionally, WISEdata Finance is open for submissions of 2020-21 data for testing and comparison purposes.
Before submitting data, we ask that districts make sure to refresh their Ed-Fi charts of accounts for 2020-21 and 2021-22. If you are not sure how to do so, review your vendor’s documentation or contact their customer support.
Mindset Shift: SAFR to WISEdata Finance
Data submissions in WISEdata Finance are point-in-time looks, and it helps to think about data validations more as bringing issues to your attention than giving you a list of errors to clear—especially during the school year. Each validation should be considered in the context of when and why it is being triggered. This is a big part of the shift in mindset transitioning from SAFR to WISEdata Finance, both for business officials in the field and for us on the SFS Team.
For example, the expected value for 10 R 211 (General Fund tax levy) is a straightforward check—either it matches your certified levy reported to DPI or it doesn’t.
By contrast, a negative amount in an account isn’t as clear-cut. Perhaps a salary or benefit account is temporarily negative because of payroll cycles, WRS processing, or staffing changes. Maybe a purchased service account is negative because parent payments for a field trip were improperly recorded as negative expenditures. The question to consider with a negative amount validation during the school year is not “how do I get rid of it?” but rather “why is it happening, and do I need to do anything about it right now?”
Rejected Fund Balance Accounts
One thing most, if not all, districts should expect to see when submitting data is that the API rejects a Fund 27 fund balance account, such as 27 B 939000. This is because fund balance accounts for Fund 27 are not defined in WUFAR, as it cannot have a balance at year end. We know Fund 27 will have a temporary balance throughout the school year to be resolved with an operating transfer from Fund 10—the rejected Fund 27 fund balance account is expected and not something you need to correct.
Similarly, many districts will have the API rejecting B 939000 Unassigned Fund Balance accounts in the funds that do not allow unassigned balances at year end, such as Funds 38 or 46, because their software uses these accounts as defaults when recording activity. We know balances will be reclassified at year end, so having these accounts rejected by the API is not a problem in and of itself.
First Priorities: 2020-21 Comparisons and 2021-22 Budget Data
As you begin submitting data, the priorities you should be thinking about now, in November and December 2021, are:
- How do my district’s 2020-21 actuals in WISEdata Finance compare with the PI-1505 Annual Report?
- How complete are our 2021-22 budget data in WISEdata Finance? Are there gaps to work on?
- Do all of our Fund 27 budgeted revenues and expenditures come through for 2021-22?
The WISEgrants team will soon begin updating the IDEA Maintenance of Effort tool to connect with WISEdata Finance, so that budgeted Fund 27 revenues and expenditures for 2021-22 can be used to verify current year eligibility. More details will be provided when available.
All that said, we do not expect perfection in four weeks’ time. The year of implementing WISEdata Finance was always going to be a year of transition. There will be a learning curve for everyone, and we will doubtless identify some bugs and needed refinements. Be patient, focus on the big picture, and take advantage of learning opportunities as they come.
Coming Up
We are setting up a couple of webinar sessions on using WISEdata Finance. Dates and registration details will be announced in the next regular School Finance Bulletin, and a recording will be available afterwards. We are also working to populate the WISE Knowledge Base with articles about the individual validations in WISEdata Finance.