ctcLink Chart of Accounts is a “Go”

The ctcLink Steering Committee approved a July 2019 implementation of the new Chart of Accounts (CoA) for the ctcLink FirstLink (pilot) colleges — Community Colleges of Spokane and Tacoma Community College — at its June 18 meeting.

The committee arrived at the decision after extensive discussion, questions and input from the FirstLink colleges and ctcLink/SBCTC staff.

This milestone was a critical step for the entire ctcLink project. A successful CoA go-live for Spokane and Tacoma directly affects not only Deployment Group 2 (DG2) implementation/upgrade go-live in October, but also directly impacts DG3 and the deployment groups that follow.

In the end, the Go/No-Go vote was a unanimous “Go” with the following conditions:

• SBCTC will provide funding to Tacoma and Spokane to hire local resources to support the additional manual work that is expected with the new CoA implementation, as well as bringing on an additional SBCTC resource for ctcLink ERP support.
• The ctcLink project team will bring on a technical resource to work on an automated solution to mitigate the required manual effort.
• The SBCTC ctcLink project team will create documentation to assist the colleges and the ctcLink ERP support team with how to perform and troubleshoot the identified scenarios where manual corrections are needed.  

“This decision marks positive progress towards implementation of ctcLink across all the colleges. The mitigation strategy to handle the last remaining technical issues is another example of the creative problem-solving employed throughout this project. Staff at Spokane, Tacoma, and the ctcLink Project Team have invested a large effort to get ready for July 1 and they all deserve recognition for their work.” ~ Choi Halladay, Steering Committee Chair and Pierce College Vice President of Administrative Services

The Issue

In the weeks leading up to the decision, the ctcLink Technical team faced major issues in two areas: Student Financials and Cross-Year Transactions. 

Certain Finance and HCM scenarios were identified in which a transaction performed in the “new CoA” timeframe against “old CoA” activity generates journal lines that “error out” in the general ledger. (For example, if a check is cut in the old CoA, but cancelled in the new CoA.)

While the Student Financials issue was resolved, the only short-term solution for the Cross-Year Transactions issue is to manually update lines in the general ledger until an automated solution is developed.

What’s Next?

This “Go” decision means technical cutover tasks (deploying a portion of the new Chart of Accounts configuration into Production) began this past weekend.

SBCTC will coordinate with the colleges on the plan to support additional staff resources for what is expected to be a short-term process of making manual adjustments.

Where to Find ctcLink Documents and Resources

• ctcLink
• ctcLink Project Governance
• ctcLink Project Status Reports
• Document and Resource Links for ctcLink & ERP
• ctcLink Deployment Groups
• ctcLink Quality Gates & Milestones  

Subscribe to ctcLink CONNECT

Was this blog forwarded to you? Get your own copy. SIGN UP to receive notices when ctcLink Connect editions are posted.

NOTE: Members of certain community and technical college distribution lists — SBCTC all staff, ctcLink Executive Leadership Committee, ctcLink Steering Committee, ctcLink Working Group, ctcLink Executive Sponsors, PM/OCM, Presidents, PIOs — are on the regular distribution list.