TRACKING NON-CAPITAL ASSETS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH
This message is intended for Business Unit 01 Activities and Projects. (Not Hospital Accounts)
On November 17, 2017, we notified campus that the State of Utah Legislative Auditors will be evaluating, testing and tracking the non-capital assets at the University of Utah (please refer to that FS Post for more details; Audit of Non-Capital Assets.) The Legislative auditors have now announced their visit; they will be on our campus on Monday and Tuesday, February 26 and 27, 2018. Planning is underway to coordinate their work. Please ensure that you are prepared for their visit to your department.
The auditors will be investigating compliance with our applicable university policies for tracking non-capital assets (having an initial purchase cost between $1,000 and $4,999). The Account Code for these items range from 61400 to 61499. You should also carefully review the expenses in your Account Code 62500 (“Office Supplies”) and make any corrections, if necessary.
We remind you that your department should have a detailed “List” of these assets and that numbered “Yellow Inventory Tags” should be affixed to each of those items on your “List”.
We encourage you to evaluate the appropriateness of also tracking “certain” other purchased items in your department, with an initial cost of less than $1,000. In particular, your department may have purchased various mobile devices (less than $1,000 each) that currently store confidential data, including personally identifiable information. Examples of mobile devices are cell phones, laptops, and tablets.
President David Pershing and John Nixon (VP for Administrative Services) sent the campus a January 25, 2018 e-mail message, reminding each of us that, every university faculty and staff member is responsible to safeguard the university’s physical and financial assets, ensuring those resources are used only for lawful and authorized purposes, and being alert to possible exposures, errors and irregularities. (See Rule 3-003B) In addition, it is imperative that each of you, particularly principal investigators and those in leadership and management positions, understand and faithfully execute your stewardship responsibilities. Finally, The university has well-established standards and guidelines in this area. Refer to the letter on this subject here, describing basic requirements and offering some precautions. We urge each of you to review and conscientiously follow these guidelines. We also ask that supervisory personnel periodically refer their employees to this notice.
