Glossary of SAP Terms |
Primary Authorizer: (also called an Authorized Requestor). A person who is permitted to make changes to the Authorizations and Structures of a DLC. A list of these Authorized Requestors is maintained here
Base Funds (Cost Objects): Base Funds contain the approved MIT support for ongoing operations. The base budget normally includes salaries and wages, associated employee benefits and operating expenses for permanent faculty and staff. Your base budget does not include non-recurring items, research assistant salary or tuition, research-related telephone service and equipment, or academic programs supported by fund drafts (see Non-Base Funds).
Cost Center: One of the three types of cost objects currently used in the SAP system. Cost centers are centrally allocated funds, budgeted on the fiscal year.
Department Head Fund Center: These fund centers are prefixed by the characters DH- in the ROLES database, although in DLCs where this is not appropriate other abbreviations are used (e.g. DN- for Dean's offices, DIR- for DLCs with directors). DH fund centers contain departmentally controlled sponsored research funds (WBS elements) and non-sponsored funds (Internal Orders).
Fund (Cost Object): Fund and Cost Object are interchangeable terms for an MIT account. There are three types of Cost Objects used: cost centers, internal orders and WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) elements.
Cost centers are budgeted on the fiscal year. Internal orders are non-sponsored fund accounts used to keep track of a particular activity. WBS elements are sponsored activities (research); WBS elements track the costs of a particular research project over its life span.
Fund Accounts (legacy system): If a fund account is a sponsored account and carries a 4-digit sponsor code (e.g. a corporate fellowship program) it is a WBS element. If the account is a non-sponsored fund account it will be an internal order. These cost objects are used to track expenses for a particular activity and are not tied to the fiscal year. Some of these cost objects receive interest income.
Fund Center: A Fund Center is a collection of funds (cost objects). Fund centers can be one of four types:
- General Operating
- General Non-operating
- Principal Investigator (PI) fund centers
- Department Head fund centers
For more detail on each type of Fund Center see the corresponding entry in this glossary.
General Accounts (legacy system): see Cost Center.
General Operating Fund Center: A general operating fund center contains base and non-base cost centers (general budget) for which the DLC is responsible for any overrun. An example of a non-base fund (cost object) of this type is the budget carry forward of previous year's unexpended funds. General operating fund centers are identified by the prefix GO- in their names.
General Non-Operating Fund Center: A general non-operating fund center contains base and non-base cost centers for which the DLC is NOT responsible for any overrun. Examples of this are research telephone funds (cost objects) and certain types of tuition short-fall funds (cost objects). Not all DLCs have GNO fund centers. These fund centers are identified with the prefix GNO- in their name.
Internal Order: One of the three types of cost objects used in the SAP system. Internal orders are used to track non-sponsored funds (e.g. funding from the MIT provost). These cost objects are not tied to the fiscal year and may receive interest income.
Non-Base Funds (Cost Objects): Non-base funds are non-recurring budget items. They include:
- any non-recurring budget items that have been authorized by the Provost or the Executive Vice President
- the portion of a Research Assistant's salary and tuition that is supported by general funds (cost centers)
- any non-recurring academic program expense supported by fund drafts
- telephone service, equipment and local usage charges.
Principal Investigator (PI) Fund Center: A PI fund center contains those funds (cost objects) for which a principal investigator is the supervisor. Any of the three types of cost objects can be found in these fund centers although in practice the majority are WBS elements. PI fund centers are always named for the PI whose funds (cost objects) they contains.
Profit Center: An MIT Department, Laboratory or Center. Denoted by the legacy 6 digit department code prefixed by a 'P'.
Qualifier: WHERE (see Roles) a user can execute the functions they are authorized to do. SAP qualifiers include fund centers, spending groups, profit centers, profit center groups and funds (cost objects).
Roles database: An MIT-developed database that manages authorizations in SAP and other systems (e.g. MITSIS, NIMBUS). Authorizations are considered to consist of WHO (Kerberos ID) can do WHAT (function) WHERE (qualifier). A look-up only web page for the ROLES database can be found at web.mit.edu/rolesdb.
Spending Groups: A spending group is a collection of fund centers.
Sponsored research account (legacy system): see WBS Element.
WBS element: One of the three types of cost objects currently used in the SAP system. WBS elements are used to track costs on sponsored research projects over the entire span of activity.
