Financial Standards Advisory Committee

Scope & Objectives

The primary role of the Financial Standards Advisory Committee (FSAC) is to provide consultative and collaborative support to the Executive Vice Chancellor for the establishment and implementation of systemwide rules, standards, and best practices in financial accounting and reporting to promote accuracy, consistency, and usefulness of information for all campuses and related entities within the CSU system.

The committee consists of representatives from the Chancellor’s Office and the campuses in various functional areas including accounting, budget management, technical system support, and information management to address issues that may have system-wide importance and require coordinated efforts among the campuses and across the functional areas. Each campus will have a primary and an alternate representative designated by the Vice President. Other individuals are also welcome to participate in FSAC meetings where relevant and appropriate. Decisions at FSAC are normally made by consensus of the group, or majority opinion if there is no consensus. Based on the recommendations of FSAC, the Chancellor’s Office will issue coded memos for formal communication to campuses where necessary.

The responsibilities of the committee will include:

• Review current accounting standards pronouncements, exposure drafts, state requirements, IRS rulings, legislation documents, etc., and recommend the financial rules and standards required of all CSU campuses and reporting entities.
  
  
• Validate the technical feasibility and the operational practicability of these standards, rules, and values.
  
  
• Recommend common values for systemwide attribute tables including the following:
  
     -Chart of Accounts
     -Classification tables
     -Validation tables
     -Application processing tables & uniform derivation methods
  
  
• Communicate the rules, standards and common table values to the respective campus stakeholders.
  
  
• Develop strategies to ensure uniform application of these standards, rules, and values in order to achieve both the completeness and accuracy of these standards, rules, and values.
  
  
• Identify and recommend standardized report format and models for systemwide financial statements and reports.



• Review and recommend changes to existing standards and procedures to bring them up to date.



• Plan and conduct training when necessary in consultation with FOA.



• Review and approve recommendations from Financial User Group (FUG)on systemwide issues where appropriate.

FSAC is advisory to the CSU Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer. The chair of FSAC is Assistant Vice Chancellor for Financial Services or his designee. FSAC is a working committee comprised of individuals with hands-on responsibilities to develop and implement financial standards and rules. Whereas Chief Administrators/Business Officers (CABO) and Financial Officers Associations (FOA) may address a broad range of issues concerning CSU, FSAC is focused on addressing issues related to accounting, budget, and financial reporting especially from an implementation standpoint. Although FSAC consults and communicates with CABO and FOA, it is separate from both. Any policy issues will be referred to FOA and CABO.

FSAC may appoint sub-committees to address various issues. Each of these sub-committees will be charged with conducting research on specific issues within the scope of its responsibilities and developing recommendations for FSAC. The two standing sub-committees are Legal Sub-committee, which addresses issues related to legal-basis accounting and reporting and FIRMS submission, and GAAP Sub-committee, which addresses issues related to GAAP financial statements and reports. Other sub-committees may be created based on the needs.

The committee will meet bimonthly in person or by teleconference.