The finance module for the Banner project will be ready to use July 1, the start of the next fiscal year, making it the first phase to go live.

Banner Finance, which is a web-based system, focuses on purchasing, accounting and budget.

It has been about a year since the Banner team started working on Banner Finance, and is now almost complete, said Jeff Cooley, vice president for Business Affairs.

This new system has its advantages over the previous Financial Record System Plus.

FRS could only be accessed during the day whereas Banner Finance can be used all the time.

“Folks can log on 24 hours a day,” Cooley said.

The old system has a series of codes and screens. Banner Finance has more screens, but they are menu based.

“This is something that will benefit the university in the sense of efficiency,” said Bill Witsman, enterprise information system enhancement project director.

The system is efficient because it will be easier to enter and pull data, Cooley said.

Having a Banner menu based system will also be useful when hiring new employees.

It will be easier to train them because the program will be familiar, Witsman said.

Since the project will be in use soon, training for the program has also began.

There are about 400 fiscal agents being trained for the project. Currently, only training for Banner Finance is being held.

“[It] is very popular,” said Larry Cannon, director of finance and accounting. “The [training] sessions are filling up.”

In training, employees are taught how to navigate the program, put on requisitions and approve invoices.

Cooley has attended one of the sessions and was pleased at what he saw.

“I was very impressed,” he said. “It’s going very well.”

Training sessions are scheduled through mid-June but will most likely continue into September and a couple of months after that for new hires, Cannon said.

The entire Banner project is going according to plan and is still scheduled to be complete by early 2008.

“We are on schedule and on budget,” Cooley said.

About 100 people are contributing to the project being on time and on budget.

“Most are not your typical IT people,” Witsman said. “It’s not just about [the] software.”

There are information technology people working on the project but others are in business or finance.

Everyone is looking at how Eastern does things, like purchasing and budget and seeing how things could be better, Witsman said.

As of now, there have been no major problems while making the transition to Banner.

“We are fairly confident things will run smoothly,” Witsman said.