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6.1.3 CAS External Integration Corporate Accounting System
By February 2025, SIMS will need to display a student’s T4A to them somehow. The T4A will reflect the sum total of all provincial funding a student has received throughout the previous calendar year.
In order to do this, SIMS has to somehow integrate with the Corporate Accounting Software (CAS), the software accounting tool which keeps a comprehensive log of all provincial funding which have been issued to a student throughout the year.
CAS typically knows about student disbursements in two ways; either it was involved directly in disbursing the money (e.g. our provincially-disbursed grants for Disabilities Services and Equipment), or there was some manual data entry done within CAS regarding disbursements which were made through other systems (e.g. letting CAS know about BC Access Grant amounts disbursed via the Feds).
Student profiles must be kept up to date in CAS in order to successfully identify students between CAS and SIMS/SFAS – this is done through some personal identifiers, as well as a unique identifier called CAS ‘supplier number’. Our SABC systems are responsible for creating processes to update CAS anytime there is a new student needing a new Supplier number, or an existing student has changed their personal information (e.g. Name or Address) to keep CAS up to date.
In summary, SIMS will need to do three things:
- “Supplier Maintenance”: Ensuring each student affiliated with SABC has a supplier number which is aligned between SABC systems and CAS systems, and that CAS is made aware of relevant personal details about the student.
- Account Payable Entry: Ensuring any Provincial funding which is disbursed by NSLSC is inputted into the CAS system for each applicable student ahead of December 31, 2024.
- T4A Distribution: Ensuring SIMS or SABC can efficiently relay T4As which are produced by corporate finance to each individual student, by February 2025.
Supplier maintenance and Account payable entry can both be done via real-time web service calls, and the integration between SIMS and CAS must be fully implemented before December, 2024.
T4A distribution needs to be implemented by February of 2025, and the exact process is to be determined. Previous methods involving SABC legacy systems have involved shuttling pre-made PDF’s to the dashboards of each respective student.
CAS Supplied Documentation
Supplier Web Service RESTful Client Onboarding v02_01.pdf AP Web Service Client Onboarding v02r02.pdf List of Errors SWS Feb 2024.pdf Summary of Changes SWS Feb 2024.pdf
Webservice Availability
Month End: WS is Read-only from 9am on last calendar day of the month until EBS is open on the first day of the month
| Day of the Week | Read-Write | Read-Only | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| SUN | 9am | 6am | Sundays 6am - 9am is a scheduled change window, so any webservice will be Read only until they finish that window, after that it turns back to read-write. Occasionally there are CAS Sunday Change windows from 9am, so read only can extend up to noon. |
| MON | - | 9am | WS becomes read-write somewhere between 12:00am and 2:00am the next day, depending on volumes |
| TUE | 12am to 2am (following CGI Complete) |
9pm | |
| WED | 12am to 2am (following CGI Complete) |
9pm | |
| THU | 12am to 2am (following CGI Complete) |
9pm | |
| FRI | 12am to 2am (following CGI Complete) |
9pm | CGI run on Fridays end up until early morning of Saturday. Once done it will be read-write again, unless there is a change window that day. |
| SAT | 12am to 2am (following CGI Complete) |
9am EBS is offline (WS is still RW) |
Overview of Epic ACs
- [x] Set up technical connection to the CAS API (#3267)
- [x] Store supplier information for students and initial CAS GetSupplier Query (#3255)
- [ ] Display supplier information about students to ministry (#3257)
- [ ] Create Supplier and/or Site if doesn't exist in CAS Search (#3260 / #3729)
- [ ] Update CAS if SIMS Address is Updated (#3602)
- [ ] Error Handling - Errors for Manual Entry, Errors for Technical Retry
- [ ] Display notifications
- [ ] Handle the API availability and schedule/queue calls
- [ ] Error handling and retry options for supplier/address
- [ ] Generate AP records for Finance approval based on disbursements
- [ ] Send AP records to CAS
- [ ] UI for AP Activities
- [ ] Error handling and retry options for AP records
- [ ] Reports
Testing
- [ ] Functional/UI
- [ ] Pre-Live Supplier/Site Read & Write? **to confirm
- [ ] Pre-Live AP Invoicing? **to confirm
