Back to Basics
There are a variety of different kinds of fund types at CU Boulder. Monitoring each one comes with its own set of rules and processes.
More About Fund 10s
Fund 10s, or the general fund, are used to account for the major revenue and expenses of the university’s primary mission of instruction and its support functions of academic support, student services, institutional support, operation of plant, scholarships and fellowships. We record all tuition revenue (except Continuing Education), all instructional fees, administrative student fees, some student activity fees and rental of general fund space in our general fund.
Your Available Budget
All the revenue collected from tuition and fees is then distributed to departments as budget. This means that the available budget on your fund 10 is your spending authority, rather than your available cash balance. To check your available balance, you can run a speedtype summary or operating summary in CU-Data. The available balance is calculated by looking at the total budget less expenses and encumbrances.
Recording Revenue
Revenue should not be recorded in fund 10’s, except for ID (interdepartmental) revenue and rental revenue from general fund space. Any ID revenue would be from smaller, incidental sales. You are never able to record SSEA (250000-259999) or miscellaneous revenue (325000-334999) on a fund 10 (barring a few departmental exceptions). These two types of revenue are used to account for sales to parties external to the university and should only be recorded in fund 2Xs. For more details on recording revenue on departmental speedtypes, please see our webpage on internal sales activity.
Spending in Fund 10
One of the basic tenets of fund accounting dictates that once we have determined the proper revenue bucket to put our funds into, the expenditures will naturally follow. This just means that you should be spending your fund 10 dollars to support our primary mission of instruction and its support functions, as mentioned above. This can cover payroll for faculty, staff, and student workers, student aid, office supplies, official functions, building costs, etc.
Since fund 10s are budget-based, it’s necessary for those fund 10s to be spent down to 1% of their total budget by fiscal year-end. If you have budget in excess of this 1%, it can be moved to a fund 72 (plant or renewal and replacement fund) which is accomplished through a cash transfer. When moving funds between two fund 10s, you’ll need to do a budget journal entry.
If you have questions about the budget process, you can contact Budget and Fiscal Planning office at bfp@colorado.edu. Any other questions can be directed to your campus accountant.
Link between Fund 10s & Fund 72s
Speaking of fund 72s, many fund 10s are “linked” to an associated fund 72 through an identical program number. This allows a transfer to take place from the fund 72 to the fund 10 through the UNP (unrestricted net position) journal entry. The transfer moves funds from the 72 to cover the before encumbrance budget deficit in a fund 10, assuming the fund 72 has enough funds to fully cover the deficit. If you would like to see the available balance between a “linked” 10 and 72, the speedtype one-liner in CU-Data is a great report to run.