BFT - Glossary





Term Stands for (abbreviation) Example Meaning
BFT Budgeting and Forecasting Tool   Software system for building the University's financial budgets and forecasts. The BFT includes Payroll and Income and Expenditure (I&E) modules.
CCC Cost Code Combination   Unique code for an Employee, consists of Employee number, Cost Centre, Natural Account and Source of Funds codes. Every Employee must have at least one CCC. Multiple CCCs are required when an Employee's costs are split between more than one cost centre or SoF. Also known as "Employee ID Split" 
Chore     BFT process, scheduled to run in the background. Chores are run nightly to (among other tasks) update user security and maintain BFT data.
COA     Chart of Accounts - for BFT this is the Oracle Financials COA
Commit     To commit is to save locally-created BFT Payroll or I&E inputs to the central BFT model. Fresh inputs are initially shown in green text which turns black once data is committed/saved.
Context   Version, Financial Year, Cost Centre In a BFT cube, context dimensions are shown at the top right of the data display and determine what data are shown in the display grid.
Cube     Highly flexible collection of dimensions grouped for reviewing and or inputting data. BFT uses default views to display data. Cubes are multidimensional.
Cubeview     see view
CY (see PY, NY) Current Year   The current Financial Year (Year 0)
Dimension     A set of related data items (elements
Element   Cost centre code e.g. "ZB0000", Employee e.g. "BLOGGS J 1234567"  A single item in a data dimension
Employee ID Split     See Cost Code Combination (CCC)
ERC Employee Record Card   BFT Page for reviewing and amending the payroll details for an individual employee. The ERC is a websheet
Icon     Pictorial toolbar (or landing page) control to launch a BFT feature. BFT shows a ribbon display of TM1 icons at the top of each screen.
Landing Page     Initial BFT page seen when users log into the BFT. Contains buttons for access to BFT screens
Leaf   Employee ID split, posting level cost centre, financial period The "child" or lowest level of a data hierarchy.
NY (see CY, PY) Next Year   Next Financial Year (Year 1)
Private View     User-defined view of a BFT cube, saved for later use.
PY (see CY, NY) Prior Year   The previous Financial Year (Year -1)
Rebuild     Refreshing a websheet with the most recent BFT model data. Typically done after changing websheet parameters, or applying a data filter. 
Ribbon     The area at the top of the BFT display containing icons and navigation controls
Snapshot (to Excel)     Actions Menu option for downloading BFT page data to Excel (PDF download also available)
SoE Summary of Employees   Websheet to display payroll details for a cost centre, including FTEs and pay costs by employee.  The SoE can be exported as an Excel sheet, and can also be filtered to refine/query larger data sets. It is the start point from which the Employee Record Card can be opened to review fine details for an employee.
SoF Source of Funds   5-character Oracle Financials code, showing where income and corresponding expenditure come from. SoF codes are grouped by prefixes, including:  A - Outside body, such as Research Councils, the NHS, HEFCE (latterly OfS); B - Trust Funds;  C - Donations; S - for Departmental use
Split ID     aka Cost Code Combination (CCC)
SSO Single Sign-On   System to authenticate IT users and provide access to specific systems
Subset     A selection of dimensional data elements, used to help define a view in the BFT
TM1     IBM software package used for BFT
Version   Budget, Q1 Forecast, Q2 Forecast, Q3 Forecast, Divisional Planning BFT Dimension, determining which Budget or Forecast is displayed in page
View (or Cubeview)   payroll Planning, Payroll Analysis, I&E Planning A pre-defined screen, displaying selected data from a BFT cube. Views can be re-configured by users, and the resulting private views can be saved for re-use by the user.
Websheet   SoE, ERC, Payroll update Fixed - format Excel- based screens in BFT, used for review and input. Some websheets are simple forms for triggering processes; others provide reports or detailed input pages.