BEN Financials Update

The University's updated financial system, BEN Financials, has been in operation for nearly three weeks. Here are some items of note from the first two weeks of activity.

From January 2 through 16, BEN Buys users filled more than 4,000 electronic shopping carts for processing into purchase orders, and there were more than a thousand logins each day. Also during this period, more than 5,000 approved purchase orders were created and 8,500 invoices processed.

While users' feedback and reactions have been generally favorable, we have already done some fine-tuning to make BEN Buys and the Penn Marketplace run more efficiently. And no doubt, we'll have to do more in the weeks ahead as we continually monitor the system's performance and response time levels.

During the first two weeks we experienced several outages, all of which were resolved expediently, with no loss of data. Our apologies for any inconvenience the downtime may have caused. In an upgrade as extensive and complex as this one, it is, however, inevitable that some problems will crop up, no matter how thorough the planning and testing.

To keep users abreast of late-breaking news and important usage tips, particularly during these first weeks after implementation, we've created an "Advisories" web page at www.finance.upenn.edu/ben/benfin/advisories.shtml. It's readily accessible from the BEN Financials login page, and we encourage users to check it frequently for updates.

As BEN Financials settles into routine operation, your continued support and cooperation are greatly appreciated.

-- The BEN Project Team