Only authorized personnel are able to access Stanford financial systems to originate or approve transactions or to view financial data on reports. Financial authority is granted based on individual roles and responsibilities. This page describes Stanford’s authority management system, the different types of financial authority privileges and the importance of managing authority privileges.
Stanford developed Authority Manager to grant authority to many systems used across the university, including Oracle Financials, Oracle Business Intelligence (OBI) Financial Reporting, Cardinal Planning & Budgeting (CPB), PeopleSoft HR, and many more.
Authority Manager allows employees to:
- View financial authority assignments
- For themselves or others, including active, pending and recently revoked authority (data is displayed for 360 days from the date of revocation)
- By organization
- By running OBI authority reports
- Grant or update financial authority assignments as authorized
To grant to another employee, grantors need to specify the grantee's organization(s), role or responsibility and limits (i.e., access to specific projects, project-task combinations or awards and dollar amount limits). To grant authority to others, grantors must have an equal or greater authority level themselves and have the Can Grant condition associated with their authority assignment. A grant-only feature in Authority Manager provides the flexibility to identify an employee who can have the responsibility for granting authority to others to complete tasks, even though they may not have individual access to do the tasks.
Authority Manager also allows those with some form of grantable authority to initiate requests to have authority copied, edited, or revoked by someone with the appropriate authority for instances when they themselves don’t have the necessary authority to make the change.
For more information on how to use Authority Manager, refer to the University IT Authority Manager website.
Authority Manager uses privileges to define a specific task or set of tasks that can be granted to an individual.
There are three primary types of financial authority privileges granted to employees:
- Create financial transactions
- Financial transaction systems include Labor Distribution, iBudgets, iJournals, Expense Requests, iProcurement, Gift Transmittals, PTA Manager, and more.
- To learn the purpose of each system, how privileges are granted, and specific requirements prior to receiving access, refer to Authority to Create Financial Transactions.
- Approve financial transactions
- Approval authority is based on the types of financial transactions a user will be required to review and approve (e.g., labor distribution adjustments, requisitions, and iJournals transactions).
- To learn about the different types of approval authority, how they are granted, and specific requirements prior to receiving access, refer to Authority to Approve Financial Transactions.
- Approval authority can be delegated or shared. Refer to Delegate or Share Oracle Approval Worklist for more information.
- View or access financial data
- Authority to view financial data provides access to tools such as OBI Reporting, FFIT, CMS, and others.
- For more information, refer to Authority to View or Access Financial Data.
It is critical that staff responsible for granting authority to others update those authority privileges when an employee's responsibilities change. Authority Manager automatically revokes an employee’s assigned authorities upon termination or when an employee transfers to a new budget unit (i.e., level 2 orgs in the hierarchy). Other changes (e.g., organization or department changes, position changes, or a status of “on leave”) require manual revocation and re-granting of authority, as necessary.
To understand how to grant and manage authority assignment and learn more about how automatic revocation works, refer to Grant or Update Financial Authority Assignments.
