2017-2019 Biennium Close

Important: Please check calendar below for revised biennium dates in the coming months.

Topics on this page:

What is Biennium Close?                                                             

What does this mean to the UW?

System Availability

Things to Know

Payment Information During Biennium Close

Cut-Off Dates Calendar

What is Biennium Close?

Many governmental organizations, including the University of Washington (UW), divide their accounting records into two-year periods. Each two-year period is called a “biennium”.  During a biennium revenue and expenses are recorded. 

At the conclusion of the biennium the records are closed and a new set of records is opened and a “new” biennium is created.  At the UW a biennium begins in July of an odd year and concludes at the end of June two years later.

For a month or so after the day a given biennium ends (which is usually June 30), we continue to record revenues and expenses that pertain to the old biennium in the old biennium.  This allows UW to record its financial transactions to the appropriate time period. For a short period of time, two separate sets of records are open, one for the new biennium and one for the old. Biennium crossover is the period of time when the old and new biennias are both open.  Biennium close occurs when transactions can no longer be put into the old biennium. There are a series of steps leading up to this cutoff.

What does this mean to the University of Washington?

To comply with Washington State accounting procedures for closing out the current Biennium, the University's books of account will be held open for a limited time during the month of July to record transactions processed after June 30 relating to business of the expiring fiscal period.

The Biennium Cut-Off Dates are the final dates on which various transactions must be received, and or processed, to ensure recording for biennium business. 

System Availability

It is important to note that various systems may be unavailable, for the processing of transactions.  You can learn more about any planned system downtime, or unavailability on the System Availability page.

Things to Know: 

Ariba will be unavailable from 6am (TBD) while biennium crossover activities take place. These biennium crossover activities are:

• 2017-2019 Biennium budgets will be available in Ariba through (TBD)
• 2019-2021 Biennium budgets will be available in Ariba on (TBD)
• Budgets that expire in the 2017-2019 biennium will be removed from Ariba default budget Preferences. Re-set your Preferences with a new 2019-2021 biennium on (TBD) (training on Ariba Preferences can be found on our Tutorials webpage).
• During (TBD):
  • If you are creating a CR, Req or Non-PO with a budget that will continue into the new 2019-2021 biennium, proceed as normal.
  • If you are creating a CR, Req or Non-PO with a budget that will expire at the end of the 2017-2019 biennium (6/30/2019), we recommend that these be held until (TBD) when the new budgets are available to use (budgets that expired on 6/30/19 can no longer be used to make payments, therefore the use of expired budgets on new transactions will delay payment).

Payment Information for the 2017-2019 Biennium

The payment system processes select payment types every night except for (TBD).  Below, is the payment schedule:

Biennium 2017-2019 Cut-Off Date Calendar

Keep checking this calendar for updates