Commitment Control


As the funding environment in higher education changes there is an increased financial risk to the university, and as such, a need for even greater accountability and oversight over program and account expenditures.  In order to achieve greater accountability and oversight, Auxiliary and Enterprise Development (AED) and Financial Planning (OFP) turned on additional budgetary controls in PantherSoft Financials as of July 3, 2017.

Commitment Control is a feature of PeopleSoft, aka PantherSoft Financials, that enables the university to control expenditures activity against pre-defined authorized budget.  In particular, Commitment Control enables the creation and maintenance of control budgets, budget checking of actual transactions against control budgets, and encumbrances for future financial obligations.  When a transaction exceed the available budget amount, the system either stops the transaction and issues an error notice or passes the transaction with a warning notice.

For auxiliary, contracts and grants, and other activities that are under the purview of AED (“Revenue-Based Funds”), Commitment Control is set to control at the combination of Activity Number, Department ID, and Fund Code.  In order to obtain the available budget for the purpose of processing transactions in PantherSoft, access Budget Overview and enter the Department ID, Fund Code, and Activity Number combination.

If any transaction generates a budget exception for a multitude of reasons, e.g. insufficient funds, data entry error, budget setup, or transaction source errors, the responsible Budget Approver will be contacted via an automated e-mail with instructions.

The majority of budget errors can be resolved by completing a Budget Authority Amendment, which routes for approval and will increase or decrease both revenue and expense budgets in PantherSoft.  AED processes these requests every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday excluding holidays.

If you should have any questions or concerns regarding Commitment Control, budget exceptions, or Budget Authority Amendments, please contact AED at auxiliaries@fiu.edu.

Commitment Control Resources

Budgetary Control Guide

Budget Authority Amendment