Frequently Asked Questions

See the Cal Answers Planned Data Refresh Schedule for the data sources of the reports.

The Cal Answers Planned Data Refresh Schedule provides an overview of the planned timing for when new data is to be added to each subject area within Cal Answers on a recurring basis. 

The Overview tab of each dashboard has links to wiki documentation that explains the dashboard reports and a data dictionary that explains the columns used in the prompts and reports.

The Cal Answers Help Desk is available Monday through Friday from 8 AM - 5 PM, except university holidays.

You can also make an Office Hours appointment to meet with a Cal Answers expert to get your specific data questions answered. Check out the Office Hours section on the Cal Answers website for more information.

Cal Answers is available every day from 8 am to midnight. Check the Cal Answers website home page for details on when Cal Answers is available with and without Help Desk support.

The Summer term leads in the UC Berkeley academic calendar. Note that the Financial Aid Year treats Summer as a trailing term, however.

Summer-Fall-Spring

Most of the student dashboards include Graduate student data. These dashboards in the Student Demographics & Outcomes subject area do not include Graduate Student data:

• Graduation, Retention and Time to Degree
• Multiple Majors

Check out the Cal Answers Student Data Subject Areas, Dashboards & Filters Map job aid. Reports with an * include undergraduate data only. All other reports include both Graduate or Undergraduate student data.

The tool ...

• Helps us make better decisions as we assess new opportunities, set priorities, and deal with resource constraints. 
• Allows us to communicate more clearly as we have one set of facts and definitions. We have worked extensively with data providers to ensure that these are the best answers to use in the topics addressed.
• Provides metrics that are critical to managing and monitoring progress towards meeting our goals.
• Helps fulfill the goal of the Institutional Data Management and Governance initiative (IDMG) to make campus data easily accessible, reliable, consistent, and secure to support informed planning, decision-making, and communication.

Cal Answers provides interactive dashboards and reports, allowing you to see information about the entire campus and drill down to specific departments or other subsets of data. You can rearrange or delete data columns, sort by different parameters, and filter the data in different ways so the tool meets your needs. If you want to go further, you can develop your own reports and dashboards within the Student Demographics and Outcomes subject area.

Faculty have automatic access to data for the funds they manage and can log in using their CalNet login ID. If you are not a faculty member, you can request access. See Getting Access to Cal Answers for details on requesting access to PI Portfolio.

Log in to Cal Answers. Once on the home page, go to the Financial Dashboards section. Expand the PI Portfolio subject area by clicking on PI Portfolio or the + on the right. Then click PI Portfolio.

Yes, you can open two PI Portfolio reports in two tabs within the same browser window, but it works more consistently if you open each in their separate browser window.

You can input projections for Anticipated Funding, Compensation and Non-Compensation expenses using the CF2 of the selected faculty member.

Use the Portfolio report to identify the funds as Sponsored or Non-Sponsored. There is no indication in the other reports.

March 14, 2016

You can either deselect the fund you’ve chosen so that none are selected, or select all, then Apply. Either will make all the funds show up.

March 14, 2016

They show gross pay only. Net pay is not available in PI Portfolio.

March 14, 2016

Not at this time. It shows the person being paid. If it’s a reimbursement, you would see the person’s name. We’ve logged this as a future phase request.

March 14, 2016

The last closed period is the last month that has been officially closed on the ledger in BFS. A closed month may be considered completed for reporting purposes. A month that is not closed may still have unposted activity, often including payroll. Payroll typically posts 7-10 days after the pay period end date, so a typical fiscal month will close about ten days to two weeks after the end of the month on the calendar. Projections are replaced by Actuals after the month closes.

March 14, 2016

The CF2 is part of the chartstring that identifies the Principal Investigator (PI) or faculty lead for the fund. The chartstring is the who/what/where/when/why – it includes Fund, DeptID, Account, CF1, CF2, Program. Total award actuals will show the whole fund. The lead PI sees all the transactions, an individual PI only sees transactions related to their CF2. See the chartstring page on the PI Portfolio website for more information.

March 14, 2016

The CF2 is used to uniquely identify activities that "belong" to you. A CF2 is unique to a PI, and is issued as a control point for PIs in approving expenditures, and as a "handle" for effort reporting. You can find out more about what a CF2 is, chartstrings, and Chart of Accounts (COA) on the PI Portfolio website.

A projection is an anticipated expense or funding you indicate to get a more accurate ending balance for the fund. This helps you plan out spending. A projection is a single row in the Input Form, which is given an ID# once you Apply Changes. The same ID# will be used for corresponding auto-projections such as Overhead, CBR and GAEL.

March 14, 2016

You can view all the past actuals in the transactions tab, which shows you the full chartstring if you select "full chartstring" as an option in the view selector. In the projections input form, predictive type can help you choose the appropriate value for each chartfield. If you choose an expense type first, it will limit the accounts in the dropdown list to those that roll up to that expense type.

March 14, 2016

You can view all the past actuals in the transactions tab, which shows you the full chartstring if you select "full chartstring" as an option in the view selector.

March 14, 2016

For actuals you can view the full chartstring in the Transactions tab. You can view all chartfields except the Project Costing (PC) fields for projections. This includes data from across Berkeley -- multiple departments and schools as well as multiple CF2's if the Principal Investigator (PI) has them.

March 14, 2016

CSS RA's will review and update projections as necessary as part of the monthly reporting and reconciliation process.

March 14, 2016

Projected expenses should be filled out by a faculty member's Research Administrator (RA) or designated support staff.

March 14, 2016

Yes, you can make projections for Non-Sponsored Funds if they use a faculty-attributed CF2.

March 14, 2016

You can use Excel to scenario plan by downloading the data and manipulating it in Excel on your own.

March 14, 2016

You can look by fund since the inception to date but you cannot see a whole portfolio back in time; such as “Where was I five years ago”. This is logged as a future request.

March 14, 2016

The system only saves complete projections, so each line must be completed in order to "Apply Changes." You can then leave and return later to add additional projections. If you add blank rows, they will be automatically deleted when you apply changes as long as you have not started to fill in the fields. Once you start to complete a row, you must finish and Apply Changes or cancel. You can always delete a projection after you have Applied Changes.

March 14, 2016

No, this is considered scenario planning and is not included in this phase of the project. Actuals will replace projections over time. You can archive a set of projections to be viewed at a later date, but you cannot revert back to using these saved sets of projections in the dashboard reports. You can download the data to Excel or PDF but you cannot "reapply" an old set of projections. Only the active projections are used to calculate fund balances.

Yes. The burn rate report was created for this purpose. You can view the average monthly rate, see how much of that is made up of supply costs and use that to project future supply costs.

Note the burn rate applies only to the activity for the PI, as defined by all the transactions posted to their CF2(s). If a fund has multiple PIs, the other PI's transactions aren't calculated into the burn rate.

March 14, 2016

Burn rate means the average monthly expense rate. For the purposes of PI Portfolio, it means the average monthly actuals amount for each chartstring used by the faculty member.

You can right click the Department column header and select "Move" then "To Prompts" which will move the column above the table as a drop down filter. Use this drop down to filter the results by Dept ID. This feature only allows you to look at one department at a time. We have logged a flexible department filter as a future enhancement request.

March 14, 2016

Yes, you can do this by right clicking the column header and choosing sort. This is the case for most columns in Cal Answers.

March 14, 2016

In the enhanced dashboard, Principal Investigators (PIs) and Research Administrators (RAs) will see projections added to the existing Portfolio, Personnel, and Fund Summary tabs. There are also three new tabs; Projections, HR Lookup, and Burn Rate. You can find out more about the enhanced dashboard on the PI Portfolio website at: calanswers.berkeley.edu/pi-portfolio/about-pi-portfolio.

No but you can export projections to Excel. You can then aggregate the amounts and enter them in CalPlanning.

As soon as a fund number has been assigned and budget is uploaded and approved by Contracts and Grants Accounting (CGA) in BFS. You can check the status of an award in Phoebe

March 14, 2016

Not at this point. We’ve added this as a suggestion for the next phase.

Funds are shared across faculty and departments so only the BFS official fund name is shown. It is not possible to change the name in PI Portfolio but this can be done through BFS. 

PI Portfolio is a reflection of BFS. When the funds are fully closed in BFS, they will no longer appear in PI Portfolio. Please ensure all transactions have posted and all Purchase Orders have been closed, and then work with your RA and Contracts and Grants Accounting (CGA) to close these funds. How can the closed funds Q- replace last sentence with Find more information on how to close an inactive fund.

March 14, 2016

Encumbrances represents the remaining balance of a Purchase Order (PO). When a PO is created, the full amount is "encumbered" meaning it is subtracted from the current fund balance to show that this amount has been earmarked for this specific purpose. Once the actual posts, the encumbrance amount is reduced to zero (if the purchase is complete) or to the remaining amount on the PO for outstanding purchases not yet posted to actuals but still expected to occur.

March 14, 2016

They are displayed in all views and are subtracted from the fund balance.

Yes, the data in PI Portfolio comes from the EDW (Enterprise Data Warehouse). The EDW is updated nightly with data from BFS. If you see an error, it needs to be fixed in BFS to reflect correctly in PI Portfolio.