Chart of Accounts: Readiness Initiative
A Chart of Accounts serves as the backbone of financial operations—it’s the systematic way Cornell categorizes and tracks every financial transaction across the university. Currently, each campus has developed its own way of classifying revenues, expenses, assets, and liabilities, making it difficult to compare and consolidate financial information. By creating a common structure, we’ll enable consistent financial reporting across the university, simplify cross-campus operations, and gain clearer insights into our overall financial picture.
This initiative is a crucial foundation for CEMI’s broader goal of integrating financial, human resource, and student systems across all campuses. Just as you can’t build a house without a blueprint, Cornell can’t effectively implement a new enterprise system without first establishing a common financial language.
Approach
A dedicated team of financial experts from across Cornell is carefully mapping our current systems (Workday, Kuali, and SAP) to document how each campus structures its financial information, including the chart of accounts, reporting, organization hierarchy, and other attributes. This analysis will help:
- Identify the best practices from each system
- Create guiding principles for the future structure
- Ensure the needs of all campuses are met
Next Steps
Once the university selects the future enterprise system, the team will refine this foundation to create and configure a unified financial structure (general ledger) that serves the entire university. This careful groundwork will ensure our new system starts with a solid financial framework that supports Cornell’s complex operations.
As common as possible, as different as necessary.
“As common as possible, as different as necessary” is the guiding principle to reflect the CEMI vision for administrative and financial systems across our campuses in Ithaca, New York City, and Doha. Common solutions will allow information to flow seamlessly among campuses, enabling everyone to easily get the answers they need. We’ll maintain unique solutions only where truly necessary.
Shaped by the Cornell Community: Get Involved
Contribute your skills and experience to CEMI (“See Me”). Community members know the current processes and systems best—and what it’s going to take to change how we do things. Please submit the form for your campus to be added to the contributors list and receive quarterly updates:
- Get Involved –Ithaca-supported campuses (Cornell NetID login)
- Get Involved –Weill Cornell Medicine-NYC (CWID-NYC login)
- Get Involved –Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar(CWID-Qatar login)
Visit the Program Teams page to meet more of the Cornell community members shaping the CEMI program.