Report to the Lane Community College Board
LASR Project
June, 2002

The project is on schedule and within budget.  

FINANCE
Finance is in the final month of preparation for the July 1 ìgo liveî date.  The Finance Team has completed adjustments to the Chart of Accounts to reflect the new organizational structure in Extended Learning. The Accounts Payable Team has completed mock vendor payment test runs and has printed ìchecksî on blank paper. They continue to work on development of the actual check form.  The purchasing process and approval queues are working and the development of Lane's purchase order form is nearing completion. The Funded Projects area is progressing well, and plans to do one-on-one training for grant administrators after July 1. The Finance Team begins end-user training on June 3 for departmental budget managers and purchasers.   This training series consists of five classes with a total of 16 hours of training for each participant.  Trainers will also be available in June in an ìopen labî setting, providing departments with help and support in initiating purchase orders for the beginning of the 2002-2003 fiscal year.

HUMAN RESOURCES
The Human Resources Team recently completed the web for Lane employee, electronic approval, and web-based time entry training provided by SCT.   Work is on schedule for the parallel testing that will take place October through December, with "go live" scheduled for January 2003.  The implementation of Banner HR results in a need to modify the timing of employee payroll processing.  Currently, the College pays employees monthly, on a real-time basis with an optional mid-month draw, which 400 employees use.  Banner payroll does not support the mid-month draw feature.  In addition, the current practice of paying employees once per month on the 31st for work performed from the 1st through the 31st creates problems.  Since leave records are not turned in until after the 1st of the month, employees without sufficient accrued leave are overpaid, which creates a need to adjust future pay.   Also, the current payroll schedule requires employees to estimate the time they will work for the final seven to nine days of each month.  To alleviate these problems, the Human Resources Team is planning to implement a semi-monthly, lag-time payroll schedule beginning January 2003, with all employees receiving 2 checks per month, on the 10th and 25th days. This approach will address the current deficiencies of basing pay and leave on estimated information.  It will also continue providing pay twice per month that is important for many Lane employees, and reduce, or eliminate, requests for emergency pay advances. The Human Resources Team conducted informational sessions about this change for employees during the first two weeks of June, and will offer additional sessions during the summer and in the fall. The Banner HR System will be fully implemented and ready for use by all College employees on January 1, 2003.

STUDENT
The Student Core Team completed their fifth training May 30.  This session focused on tuition and fee assessment and transaction level detail codes and how these tie back to the Finance system. Over the next month or two, the student team must evaluate the student account receivable process at various levels of detail, including charges that result from registration processes and other charges that can be placed on a student's account.  During the next few months, the Student Core Team will also begin building the College's catalog in the pre-production database.  The team is working very hard on integrating credit and non-credit student systems.  On June 4, they hosted the first meeting of the Extended Learning Advisory Group (ELAG).  The purpose of this meeting is to provide an overview of the student system in Banner and the tools that staff will use to do their jobs. The student system will be ìliveî for the 2003-2004 academic year.

FINANCIAL AID

The Financial Aid Team participated in their first training during the week of May 20.  The session covered general system set-up, loading Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and Institutional Student Information Report (ISIR) data from the U.S. Department of Education and general information about how financial aid processing works in Banner.  The financial aid module is scheduled to be operational for the 2003-2004 academic year, which means a March 3 2003 ìgo liveî date.

For more information about the project, contact Linda DeWitt, Ext. 3006, or visit our web site at http://2011sitearchive.lanecc.edu/lasr/.  For more information about a specific system, contact the following staff:

 Finance   Stan Barker, Ext. 5608
 Human Resources Linda Simmons, Ext. 5313
 Student   Helen Garrett, Ext. 5686
 Financial Aid  Linda DeWitt, Ext. 3006