Commitments is a web application designed for tracking financial commitments made by executive leadership of the Medical School and Hospital. Per the process used by financial administrators, it is divided into two parts -- Commitment Details & Data Entry (both viewing and editing) and Reconciliation. This guide supports users working with the Commitments system and addresses feature workflows, roles, permissions, migration, financial integrations, and support. 

COMMITMENT DETAILS & DATA ENTRY

The application's Details & Data Entry portion is composed a Commitment List page and Commitment Detail pages.  The app initially loads the Commitment List page view.

Commitments List Page - The Commitments List Page is a holistic view of all Commitments in the system and allows for the following actions:

• Filtering: the list of commitments can be narrowed down in multiple ways
  • Include Completed and Include Cancelled toggles allow the user to include Commitment workflows that are closed/not active or that have been cancelled.
  • Receiving Department: this is a hierarchical list of all U-M departments associated with the commitments entered into the application. Selecting one of these departments will show all the commitments relating to that department (as well as its sub-departments).
    • E.g. selecting "Internal Medicine" will show all commitments associated with Internal Medicine and any of its sub-departments (divisions). 
    • Note: if your particular access restricts you to a subset of departments, you will only see those departments in your list. 
  • Classification: selecting one of these options will show only those commitments matching that classification. 
  • Action Required: "Change Request Pending" will show only those commitments that have a change request awaiting for approval and "Expired" will show only those commitments that are past their End Date and still open.
  • Status: selecting one or more of the status options - Draft, Awaiting Review, Awaiting Approval, Active, and Completed/Inactive - shows commitments with any of the selected statuses.
• Initiate Commitment button: clicking this button will display a modal asking user to provide Receiving Department, Classification, and Title, create a new commitment and then show its detail page.
• Select a Commitment: clicking on an existing Commitment ID in the list will open the detail page of the selected commitment. 

Initiating a New Commitment Workflow & Commitment Detail Page

One of the primary actions within the application is adding details and initiating a workflow for a new commitment. The Initiate Commitment button will prompt for Receiving Department, Classification, and Title and then take users to the Commitment Detail page. The Detail page provides a series of input fields (some of which are required) that allow details about a commitment to be entered, reviewed, approved, and maintained in the system.

Commitment Workflow Process: A commitment must go through a workflow process before it enters an Active state for maintenance. The following are the process statuses:  

• • Draft: This is when the commitment is brand new and in the hands of the department user or commitment admin user
  • Awaiting Review: Commitment admin users on the Finance team are reviewing the commitment for all necessary data fields
  • Awaiting Approval: Commitment admin users are waiting on executive leadership approval to move the Commitment to an approved & active status
  • Active: Commitment has been approved and a Journal Entry for the General Ledger has been created. This is the working status for a Commitment when the funding is available.
  • Completed/Inactive: Commitment's life cycle has ended and all fields are read-only to all users.

Actions available on Commitment Detail page:

• Input Fields: each data point has its own input field, and the information expected and allowed for that field varies according to the content. 
• Timeline and Fiscal Year Breakdown: by providing an Effective Date and End Date, users will see a Fiscal Year Breakdown table the corresponds to the commitment's timeline. The Fiscal Year Breakdown allows for projected spend values to be allocated for the Commitment on a year-by-year basis. 
• Recipients: this allows a faculty member with an active appointment to be added as a Recipient of the Commitment funds.
• Subcommitments: a user can add subcommitments or view its family (children/grandchildren). Subcommitment creation is exactly the same as a normal Commitment, it is just related to the main Commitment from a money/funding perspective. 
• Approvals: the Finance team can use this area to record executive leadership approval and details of the commitment.
• Funding: this section captures the fund code associated with the Commitment, sources and destinations (project grants) for the Commitment.
• Change Requests: to be able to maintain the Commitment during its Active lifecycle and make certain changes like changing the commitment Title or updating the Timeline/Commitment Amount.  Each change request must be created and approved. 
  • Update Title
    • User will provide the justification for changing title and a new Title for the commitment. This change request will be reviewed by the Finance Team and upon approval, the Commitment Detail page will reflect the new Title. 
  • Update Timeline/Commitment Amount
    • User will provide justification for updating the Timeline and Commitment Amount. This change request provides opportunity to update the Effective and End Dates as well as the Fiscal Year Breakdown for current and future fiscal years only. This change request will be reviewed by the Finance team and upon approval, the Commitment Detail page will reflect the new Timeline and Fiscal Year Breakdown amounts. 
• Action History: this table represents the General Ledger activity for the specific commitment along with its amount, approved date, and whether reconciliation with the General Ledge has taken place. The Action History table allows a user to navigate to see all journal transactions associated with the specific Action such as "Add Commitment", "Add Subcommitment", "Increase Commitment Amount" or "Transfer Cash"

COMMITMENT RECONCILIATION DASHBOARD

The Commitment Reconciliation Dashboard is ONLY available to Commitment Administrators on the Finance Team as it showcases the reconciliation process with the General Ledger. This part of the application allows Commitment Admin users to perform Monthly Reconciliation and monitor any Unreconciled activity coming from the General Ledger.