FAS stands for “Future Administrative Systems”. The FAS project will result in the implementation of integrated Financial, Student Information, and Human Resource systems.

CUFS has been the university accounting system since fiscal year 1990 and while the system works well as initially designed and implemented, CUFS is no longer supported by the vendor which is making it increasingly costly to maintain. Texas State has maintained, expanded and modified the system but Texas State's changing needs and expectations have exceeded the practical limits of this system. Useful information is not available in a timely manner which has caused a proliferation of shadow systems across campus. User ad hoc reporting is not available without technical assistance. Therefore, the Future Administrative Systems (FAS) project was initiated with the main purpose of replacing CUFS. While the state of the current Financial System is the main business driver of this project, Texas State wishes to implement software that would allow it to replace all of its existing legacy systems and implement a complete, totally integrated information system with distributed processing capability.

The project team has spent the last year preparing an "RFO" document, evaluating the responses to the RFO, preparing for and sitting through vendor software demonstrations, conducting reference checks and is currently documenting the “As-Is” processes of each affected area.

The SAP Finance functionality is scheduled to be operational September 2004. Human Resources functionality is planned to go live January 2005.

Yes. Anyone in the University who deals with Accounting, Budgeting, Grants, Materials Management, Payroll, Purchasing and/or Human Resources will see changes. As soon as we have information on exactly what those changes will be and how the end-user can prepare for the changes, it will be communicated.

Take advantage of any University offered training on the use of Microsoft Office products such as Word and Excel.

It is hoped that the new software will offer enough flexibility, ease of use, and up to date information that the majority of “shadow” systems currently being used by departments will no longer be necessary.

Yes.

Yes. The plan includes dedicating resources to provide user training before go live and on a continuing basis post go live.