Interest is paid to the vendor at the same time the voucher is paid. Pursuant to Section 179-h of the State Finance Law, interest charges should be charged to the same appropriation that was charged on the original voucher.

Occasionally, an interest reclassification journal entry has errors and is unable to post in SFS. State agencies are expected to monitor these errors and take appropriate action to post the entry immediately. The OSC Bureau of State Accounting Operations (BSAO) Budgets and Spending Accounting Section actively works with State Agencies and the Statewide Financial System to get the reclassification journal entries posted. It is extremely important for these entries to be posted immediately because a payment has gone to the vendor for the interest but no appropriation has been charged.

Prompt payment interest errors typically result from:

• Lack of appropriation/segregation authority
• Closed budget
• Agency KK issues
• Plan Ledger Issues

These reclassification Journal Entry IDs all begin with “LP…” and can be viewed by going into General Ledger module and searching by Journal ID. To access the information, Business Units should:

• Click on the lines tab of the journal,
• Click on the blue “E” under budget status to see the budgetary chartfields in error and the ledger group that is causing the issue.

Depending on the reason for the error, agencies will take the following action(s):

• Failing for lack of appropriation/segregation authority:
  • Prepare a Budget Transfer Journal to increase appropriation/segregation authority.
    • The normal interchange rules established in section 51 or 93 of SFL should be followed first.
    • If it is not possible to do an interchange in accordance with these sections, an interchange should be done between appropriations within the same fund.
    • If neither of these types of interchanges is possible, funds should be transferred from the appropriation that is used to pay for administration and operation of the agency.
    • Agencies should enter, “Transfer authorized by section 179-h of SFL” in the Budget Transfer long description box. Please see Chapter VI, Section 3.B – Budgets Transfer Within a Business Unit for more information.
  • Reallocate expenditures if appropriate, or
  • Reduce encumbrances, if possible

• Budget is Closed:
  • Provide an alternate chartstring to charge by email to [email protected]
  • Any coding changes submitted to OSC cannot include a change to the fund
  • OSC staff will make the necessary changes to the LP journals to clear the errors in SFS.

• Failing for Agency KK:
  • Make any necessary adjustments to agency KK to allow entry to post

• Failing for Plan Ledger:
  • Work with DOB examiner to make necessary adjustments

Guide to Financial Operations

REV. 12/07/2018