Before you decide if GUS is the best tool for your needs, you should first see how it is being used by other departments and compare GUS' functionality to your own departmental business processes.

The GUS Executive Committee and the GUS Development Team can help you find other users. They can also help answer your questions.

You may find that in adopting GUS you will need or want to change some of your existing business processes. This should be carefully thought out. The experiences of other GUS users can be extremely helpful with this. Time spent carefully planning the transition will be time very well spent.

If you conclude that you want to move onto GUS the next step is to contact the GUS Executive Committee with your request.

The committee will evaluate your needs and our ability to provide support. They will also ask that you find one or more "mentor" departments to help support you during the transition and training process.

If the committee determines that we are able to support you at this time, you'll need to purchase appropriate 4D software licenses. We will also need to identify a computer to act as a server. GUS can then be installed and the transition and training can begin.

Costs vary depending upon how your particular GUS installation is configured.

Assuming you already have a suitable computer for a server, you will need to purchase a license for 4D Server and an appropriate number of client licenses. Prices may vary depending upon how this is purchased. Contact the GUS support team before you make a purchase.

Here are some general estimates: (August, 2009)

4D Server + 2 client licenses ~$1,000.
Additional client licenses $340. each, 5 for $1,500.
Web Apllication Expansion $600. (need this to get GUS reports on the web)
GUS no charge.

If you choose to use the Contracts & Grants module of GUS you will also need 4D Write licenses.

4D Write $125 (1 needed for each person who uses C&G)
4D Client free (you pay for the licenses)

The prices above are one-time, not annual, expenses. 4D supports the current version plus one version back. GUS will work for both of these so you can wait for two 4D version cycles before you need to upgrade the licenses above. 4D version cycles have historically occurred about every three years.

If you do not have a computer to function as a server, you will need to obtain one as well. Costs for a server computer can vary widely. In general you will not need the latest and greatest hardware. The most important factors are: sufficient ram, network connection speed and hard disk speed. We have many departments using a Mac Mini as their server. ($600 - $800)

Please contact the development team support@gus.ucsb.edu for more detailed information.

WARNING! DELETING PROJECTS IS PERMANENT! If you're really sure that you need to delete a project, follow these steps:

1. Log in as administrator
2. Go to the Utilities > Admin Projects menu to bring up the Admin Projects screen
3. Select the project(s) to be deleted (you can use the Select tools to drill-down to the appropriate records, or select a set containing the records to be deleted and choose them one at a time)
   
   NOTE: All actions shown in the Actions column will be performed on the corresponding records when you click Perform Actions, so to prevent unintended actions from being executed on unrelated records, you should clear the actions on all visible records before proceeding.
   
   To clear the Actions column for all visible records:
   • Click the Actions button
   • Choose None
   • On the popup window click Set Action
     
4. To delete all shown projects (otherwise skip to #5):
   • Click the Actions button
   • Choose Delete Project
   • On the popup window click Set Action
     
5. To delete individual projects one at a time:
• Double-click a project to be deleted
• In the Project Setup screen click the Action button
• Choose Delete Project
• On the popup window click Set Action
• Click OK
• Repeat for each project you wish to delete
• When the Actions field for all appropriate projects have been set to Delete Project, click the Perform Actions button
• On the popup window, click Set Action
6. Log out as administrator and log back in as yourself

Make sure it's only acting strangely on your computer. Try logging in from another computer, or ask another user if they're experiencing similar problems also. If it's working from other workstations, then the problem may be with the copy of GUS that the 4D system copies to your local machine. In order to refresh that copy, you'll need to delete the current copy and log back into GUS. When you do that a new copy will be automatically generated on your machine and the problem should be resolved. If problems remain, please report this to us via the bug reporting form on this website.

To remove the local copy:

For Macintosh machines - Open the hard drive and go to /Library/Application Support/4D/
Inside this directory you'll find another folder which has the same name as your GUS database. (Commonly this will be "GUS"). Delete that folder. When you log into GUS again, the folder will be automatically regenerated and the problems should disappear.

For Windows 2000/XP machines - You'll have to be able to view hidden folders on the machine to do this. If you have administrator privileges on your machine, open any folder. Go to Tools > Folder Options and click the View tab. Scroll down in the list and select the option to Show Hidden Files and Folders. Click OK. (If you can't do it, you need to contact your local system administrator for help). Now go to your application data folder at C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR LOGIN NAME HERE\Application Data\4D\. Inside this folder you'll see another folder which is named the same as your GUS database (usually "GUS"). Delete that folder. When you log into GUS again, the folder will be automatically regenerated and the problems should disappear.

You should then go back and reset your hidden files and folders view setting to make them invisible again, to avoid accidentally deleting system files in the future.

The Problems List is located near the bottom of the Account/Fund Status form. (Budget:Account/Fund Status).

It is a place where financial transactions which appear on the general ledger but which we don't have entered into GUS can be recorded.

Some common examples of this are interdepartmental recharges for which you have received no backup documentation, invoices which have been posted by accounting but for which you haven't received a "green block", intercampus recharges from other UC's, and appropriations on the ledger which don't match what you have in GUS.

The two main advantages of entering this information in the problems list are that it helps you keep track of problems which need to be solved and the totals of the GUS balances plus the problems list totals should match the general ledger totals during the reconciliation process.

Adding an item to the Problems List

You can manually add an item to the Problems List three ways:
1. Double-click on a blank line in the problems list
2. Click on the "New PL Item" button near the bottom of the Account/Fund Status form.
3. (In GUS 4.3a or later) Click on the "+" button near the top of the scroll bar for the Problems List subform.

You can fill in whatever information is appropriate. Items outlined in red are mandatory. Everything else is optional. You can't enter Lien data or the ADA Time Stamp. The GL Date, Account and Fund will be filled in automatically. The Project Code can be selected from a pulldown.

If you use the GUS Assisted reconcile features and import your ledger from the data warehouse, Problems List items will be automatically entered.

Deleting an item from the Problems List

To manually delete an item from the Problems list, double-click on it to open the record and then click on the "Delete" button near the bottom of the form.

If you use the GUS Assisted reconcile features you will see that your ledger data from the Data Warehouse is imported into the Problems List. As you reconcile each Account-Fund combination the reconciled records will be removed from the Problems List until finally you have either no problems remaining or only those for which you'll have to do some additional research.

After a problem has been researched, the next steps would be to post and reconcile the items in GUS.

If you reconcile the newly posted transactions using the Edit/Reconcile screen you will have to manually go to the problems list for that particular account-fund combination and delete the related problems list entries.

If you reconcile the newly posted transactions using the Assisted reconcile forms, the problems list entries will be automatically taken care of.

******

Liens are future costs which you expect to incur but for which you have not actually been billed.

Expenses are costs which for which you have already been billed, either by receiving an invoice or by seeing the expense on a campus ledger.

Liens and expenses frequently don't exactly match. In the case of purchasing, commonly this is because tax or shipping costs may not be included or known exactly. In the case of payroll, it's often because benefits costs may vary from month to month.

For example:

I place an order for a computer. The vendor tells me that the cost will be $1500.
Since the vendor hasn't actually billed me yet and I haven't received the invoice I now have a lien for $1500.

Action	Lien	Expense
I place an order for a computer and a monitor. The vendor tells me that the cost will be $1500. Since the vendor hasn't actually billed me yet and I haven't received the invoice I now have a lien for $1500.	1500	0
The computer arrives, but the monitor is delayed. I receive an invoice of $900 for the portion of the order I have received. I now have an expense of $900 and the lien is reduced by $900. There is still a balance of $600 in the lien.	-900	900
The monitor finally arrives and you receive the invoice for $600. You now have an additional expense of $600 and the remaining lien is reduced by $600.	-600	600
The transactions are now complete. You now have a total lien of $0 and total expenses of $1500.	0	1500

How does GUS deal with liens and expenses?

GUS does not require that you enter liens. If you wish you can choose to only enter expenses as you receive them. However, if you choose to do this you lose the ability to project future costs as well as the ability to keep track of expenses you've already initiated (such as a purchase order) but for which you haven't yet received actual invoices.

GUS ties liens and expenses together via the "Control Number". For this reason, control numbers must be unique to the particular financial activity being tracked.

This is usually easily accomplished in Purchasing as PO numbers provide unique tracking numbers. Personnel liens are more difficult as you must have control numbers which are unique to each project and payroll category (such as salary, benefits, fees, etc.)

If you use the GUS Purchasing and Personnel modules, the control numbers will be managed automatically for you. If you choose to use the manual posting option, the user is responsible for the uniqueness of the control numbers.

Many departments wish to enter descriptions such as "Recharge", "UFIN", "Benefits", "Form 5", etc in the Control Number field. Since these are not unique they can't be used to tie liens and expenses together. Restricted control numbers are defined by the users in the Posting form (Budget:Post) under the "Restricted Ctrl Numbers" pull-down menu.

When GUS encounters a restricted control number in the Post screen it will allow you to enter Expenses, but will not allow you to enter Liens.

When GUS sees a group of transactions with the same control number it will automatically reduce any liens by the amount of the expenses (total of expense, shipping and use tax).

If the expenses exceed the liens, the lien will only be reduced to zero. For this reason you may see expenses in which the lien reduction is not the same size as the total of the expenses.

If the total expenses are less than the lien, a lien balance will remain. This balance will be released when the order is marked "complete". If you are using the Purchasing module, this will happen when the "Billing Complete" box is checked on the PO form. If you are manually posting expenses, this will happen when any of the transactions associated with the control number are marked "Complete" in the Edit/Reconcile form.

Example 1: Total expenses are less than the lien.
Note that the lien is zeroed when a transaction is marked complete.

Example 2: Total expenses exceed the lien.
Note that the last lien reduction is different in amount from the total expenses.

GUS’s underlying runtime engine, 4D, was designed to work most efficiently with postscript printers, which are standard in Apple operating systems. Many small office printers, however, are set up to run using non-postscript drivers from Windows clients, with varying results.

If you are having trouble with printing GUS reports from a Windows machine, try these things:

• Use the “Manual Print Settings” option in GUS where possible and choose a printer that uses a postscript driver.
  
  
  Many times the driver protocol type, (PCL, Postscript, etc.) will be listed next to the printer name in the drop-down list on the print driver setup screen.
  
• Because it uses a postscript driver, if you have Adobe Acrobat installed on your machine, you should be able to print to that, saving the report as a PDF file. Then you can print the PDF normally. Note that PDF Viewer is not the same as Acrobat and does not contain the drivers needed to create PDFs.
  
  
• Many printers offer more than one protocol for communication, often PCL or Postscript. You may have to go to START> CONTROL PANEL>PRINTERS and choose “Add a New Printer”, browse to the printer you want to use and see if there are any options shown to install the Postscript driver instead of the PCL one. Once the new instance of the printer is installed, you can choose that one from the Print Settings screen when printing a GUS report manually.

When running GUS from a Windows-based server, you may get a "Record not saved - Disk full" or similar error. Normally this error is intended to indicate that more hard-disk space is required on the server, however, on rare occasions it pops up unexpectedly even when there's plenty of space on the disk.

To alleviate the problem:

• Make sure that the hard disk on the server which contains your GUS files isn't full.
• If the disk isn't full, try restarting the server machine.

The June Ledger is different from other months in that it comes in two stages; preliminary and final. Because of this split, you may be thinking of waiting until the June Final is released to import June ledger data. This would require you to wait until August to finish your June reconciliations.
There is another option. GUS will allow you to import two ledgers with the same ledger date (though it will warn you that you are doing so.). This means that you can download and import the June Preliminary ledger as soon as it is released. You can then use this data to perform most of your reconciliation process. You won't be able to finish until the June Final is released.
When the June Final is released you can use properly formatted queries to extract the data which was not included in the June Preliminary, import the new data into GUS, and then finish your June reconciliation.
If you are using Brio to access the Data Warehouse you can get the preliminary data by setting your GUS export report to select the appropriate fiscal month and set the Closing Cycle field to Equal P. This will select the Preliminary data which you can export to your computer and import into GUS.
To add a new limit on the closing cycle field, users must navigate to the Query section of the document and double-click on the field Closing Cycle in the list to add the new limit. When the final is done they will need to change the operator in the limit box from Equal to Not Equal and then type in the P.


When the June Final is released you will do a similar query except that the Closing Cycle is set to NOT Equal P. This will select the data which was not in the Preliminary. You can export this selection to your computer and then import it into GUS.



Mary Wenzel's group in the Data Warehouse has modified Easy Access to also allow the selection of ledger data based on the closing cycle.



Thanks to Deb Owens at MSI and Mary Wenzel and her team at Data Warehouse for their work with this.

Fiscal year designations should generally not be used on extramural funds because they are not limited by fiscal years. A grant may last 5 years, for example, and while funding increments may be received in each fiscal year the project as a whole is not associated with a particular fiscal year.

Departmental funds, however, are rolled up into sub 3 every year by accounting and must be re-allocated for the new FY. Also, some departmental funds (recharge funds) are collapsed into sub 8, and gift funds are not consolidated, but only the balance forward is reallocated in the sub in which the balance exists in the next fiscal year. therefore you should use fiscal years on these types of funds.

Use of fiscal years only in Projects which will be affected by the accounting roll-up process makes the carry-forward process in GUS much easier.

1. Open your web browser and go to ftp://ftp.4d.com/PRODUCTS/4D/Current. You'll have to drill down into the folders shown to find the appropriate client for your 4D installation, (i.e. 4D version number 2004 or v11_SQL, Mac or Windows, etc.).

2. Find the file called 4D_Client.xxx (this will be either a .zip file for a Windows machine or a .sit file for a Mac). Drag and drop this file to your desktop and then you can close your web browser.

3. Double-click the downloaded file to open it and you should see another folder inside. (Windows should open the .zip file automatically. For Macs, if you don't have the Stuffit Expander utility on your machine you can get it free from http://www.stuffit.com/mac/expander/download.html.)

• On a Windows machine - Drag the folder inside the .zip file to another location on your machine. (Usually program files are kept in C:\Program Files, but you can drag it to My Documents or anywhere you prefer.)
  
  NOTE: If you use WinZip to extract the files, make sure you check the "Use Subfolders" box, or you'll get a "...4D Extensions folder is either incomplete or missing" error.
  
  Open the folder and right-click the 4DClient.exe file and choose Send To > Desktop, create shortcut. Close the folder. From then on you can just double-click the 4D shortcut on your desktop to open 4D.
  
  
• On a Mac machine - Open the folder inside the .sit file and drag the 4DClient file into your Applications folder (or wherever you prefer). Open that folder (if it's not already open) and select (highlight) the 4D Client file. Go to File > Make Alias. Drag the newly-created alias to your dock. From then on you can just click the 4D alias in your dock to open 4D.

GUS is a program that was written to run in 4D. You need 4D to run GUS. If GUS were a spreadsheet, 4D would be Excel.

The files that make up GUS have their own versions, since the programmers are constantly working to improve GUS. 4D occasionally comes out with new versions as well. For example, you may be running GUS 5.4 with 4D 2004.7. Unfortunately, this causes a good deal of confusion about the difference between GUS versions and 4D versions.

Imagine a complex spreadsheet that you've created as a template for your monthly reports. If at some point you make significant changes to its formulas or structure you may want to call it something else to identify this new version. This is similar to how we identify GUS versions, such as 5.4a or 5.5.

Now, imagine that you've upgraded from Excel 2003 to Excel 2007. The design of your reports spreadsheet would not be affected, although Excel may update it behind the scenes for compatability with the new program. This would be similar to upgrading from 4D 2004 to 4D v11.

Another point of confusion is that a single GUS version is released for use with various versions of 4D, so, for example, you can download different copies of the same GUS version (say 5.4) which are formatted to run in either 4D 2004 or 4D v11.

It's very important to understand the difference between the two. Call us at 893-5219 if you still have questions.

Steps to upload Financial Journal to the Account ftp site from a WIndows machine.

1st. Open a Command Window
--------------------------

from Start ->
Run ->
Where is says Open: type,

cmd (return)

This should open a Command Window

2. Go to directory/folder where you wrote the Financial Journal
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Let's say your file is named c:\GUS\stuff\FinJo123

need to first go to drive C by typing,

C:

Now your prompt should look like,
C:\>

then change directories to GUS\stuff

C:\> cd GUS\stuff

Now your prompt should look like,
C:\GUS\stuff>

to see what files are in this folder type,

dir

You should see your financial Journal file there.
If not check to see where you put the file and and use the cd
command to get there.

3. begin ftp
-----------------------------

From your Command Prompt window type,

ftp ccnh.ucsb.edu (return)

This will then ask for your Accounting username and password.
Type these in and hit return (remember these are cAsE sensitive)

Now your prompt should look something like,
ftp>

Now you need to change directories to the place where you will upload
your financial journal by typing,

cd 'am1p.gl.ld' (don't forget the single quotes)

should get a message back saying "AM1P.GL.LD" is the working directory.

**This next command is critical for getting your file to Accounting in the proper form***
type,

LITERAL SITE RECFM=FB LRECL=368 BLKSIZE=27968

This will *literally* send the 'site' command with the above values.
Not all ftp clients understand the 'site' command. The 'literal' command
is a way to get this specific command to the Accounting ftp server.

Now to upload your Financial Journal file, FinJo123, to accounting
type,

put FinJo123

Should get a message back saying you were successfull.

You can now quit ftp by typing,

quit.

Alternate (more complicated) way to do this
------------------------------------------------

Create a .txt file that looks like, (blank lines are OK)

open ccnh.ucsb.edu

username
password

cd 'am1p.gl.ld'

literal site recfm=FB lrecl=368 blksize=27968

put C:GUS\stuff\FinJo123 FinJo123

quit

Where username and password are your actual username and password.

If the above file is called ftp-2-accounting.txt, then to execute it
from a Command Prompt window type,

ftp -s ftp-2-accounting.txt

If you are not in the folder where the financial journal is or where the ftp-Accounting.txt file is,
you can reference them using full pathnames ( C:\something\or\other\filename.txt), but
if the pathname has spaces in it (C:\Program Files\4D\blug) make sure to enclose the full
name in quotes ("C:\Program Files\4D\blug")

After you upload your Financial Journal, send and email to Accounting letting them know
what you did and what the filename is. They will test that the file is in the right format
and let you know if it is OK.