Welcome to SkyVU in Review – features, announcements, tips & tricks and other updates for Vanderbilt’s Oracle Cloud system and related processes.

Oracle Cloud Updates

Recent Updates

Update 21A Completed

Vanderbilt’s Oracle Cloud environment was updated to release 21A during the weekend of Feb 19-20.

Promotion actions and reasons added

The Promote quick action and associated actions and reasons have been placed into production as discussed during the most recent Finance and HR user group meeting.

Additional details are available in the meeting recording and related materials – click here to access in Oracle Learning.

Forthcoming updates

Updates for international tax coming to Non-PO Payment Request forms in March

The Non-PO Payment Request smart form will be updated in March to incorporate automatic tax withholding instructions for international payees.

With these updates, the required Additional Information on the NPO smart form will be updated and a field to select the foreign tax withholding rate added.

The training guidance will be revised to reflect this update and distributed as soon as available.

Supplier self-service registration coming soon

We continue our implementation work for the Supplier Portal, which is a self-service registration solution that will to allow our suppliers to enter and update details such as contacts, addresses and bank information directly in Oracle Cloud.

Please stay tuned for additional details as we roll out this updated capability.

In Focus: Meals and the De Minimis Fringe Benefits policy

Updates to Vanderbilt’s policy on De Minimis Fringe Benefits (i.e., de minimis gifts) were reviewed during the Finance and HR user group meeting this month, and several questions arose regarding meals for in-office events.

The Payroll team reviewed these inquiries and have noted that the IRS guidance for meals provided to an employee differs based on the facts and circumstances, including location – specifically:

• Meals provided to employees working from home (whether in the form of a gift card, meal delivery service or expense reimbursement etc.) are never considered de minimis and must be reported as income to the employee; however
• Food and beverages provided on the business premises (e.g., coffee and doughnuts) and/or as occasional employee parties and picnics (e.g., holiday luncheons) are generally considered de minimis and thus would not represent income to the employee.

In addition, cash and cash equivalent items (i.e. gift cards) are also never considered de minimis and must be reported as income to the employee.

Please consult the policy directly when determining the appropriate treatment for any de minimis fringes or gifts and contact the Payroll team via the Oracle Help Desk or email (payroll@vanderbilt.edu) if you have any questions or would like to discuss application to a specific scenario.

Important Reminders

2020 Year End Documents available in Oracle

Employees may now view or download their 2020 Form W-2 within Oracle Cloud or by following the instructions available in the Help Center:

• Access your Year End Documents

Note: Users who receive a Service Free Stipend will receive a separate communication, as these are not reported on Form W-2 or 1099.

2021 Oracle User Continuing Education

Financial Unit Managers, HCM Specialists and BU/E Approvers

FUMs, HCM Specialists, Approvers and other enrollees can access the Oracle Cloud Continuing Education: Financials and Core HR User Group 2021 series in Oracle Learning.

• If you were unable to attend, please be sure that you review the video and presentation materials for Session 21A.
• All enrollees can view and download calendar invitations for future sessions within the Oracle Learning course.

Procurement Users

We appreciate the feedback our Procurement users have provided so far regarding your experiences with the 2020 user group series.  If you are a Procurement user and have not yet completed the survey, please click here to provide your feedback – this survey will close on February 28.

After the feedback is reviewed, we will publish the 2021 continuing education series for Procurement users in Oracle Learning.  All Procurement Requesters will be automatically enrolled in this course and notified when it is available.

Archived recordings from 2020 are available in Oracle Learning

• Combined 2020 Approver, FUM and HCM Specialist user group recordings are available in the Oracle Cloud Continuing Education: Financials and Core HR course 
• Procure-to-pay user group recordings and materials are available in the Oracle Learning catalog by searching the key phrase “procure-to-pay”