The Common Chart of Accounts (CCOA) fulfills a vital role for capturing operational, managerial, and external financial activity to meet campus and UC wide financial reporting. It organizes this financial activity by a series of segments that, put together, are meaningful for appropriately categorizing revenue and expenses. The combination of these segments is called a chartstring. When designed thoughtfully and used consistently, the chartstrings inform us of where money comes from and where it goes, enabling reporting and analysis at all levels across campus (and the UC system, thanks to the “common” elements of the new chart.)

Why are we changing our Chart of Accounts?

In order to improve the quality and consistency of the reporting of financial data, the University of California, Office of the President (UCOP) coordinated a collaborative project with all of its campuses and medical centers to design a Common Chart of Accounts (CCOA). UCSB will be adopting the CCOA by July 2024. Many of the UC campuses, including UC Santa Barbara, decided to adopt the CCOA while transitioning to a modern financial system with the implementation of Oracle Financials Cloud.  

Benefits of the new CCOA

  • Simple, intuitive, and able to adapt to growth and change
  • Supports consistent campus-wide reporting
  • Captures sufficient transactional detail to support project, departmental, college, institution-wide and UCOP financial and budgetary analysis, management and reporting needs
  • Chartfields have a single use with a clear and consistent definition
     

Common Chart of Account Segments

The following is a summary of the UCOP Common Chart of Accounts (CCOA) segments and descriptions.

View our CCOA Segment Design reference sheet for expanded definitions, use requirements, and examples.

Future state CCOA segments visual

# CCOA Segment Description
1 Entity Represents a major operational unit within the university system
2 Fund High-level classification of the source of funds for a transaction and tracks spending restrictions and designations
3 Financial Reporting Unit Represents an academic or operating unit identified with an ongoing business objective, aligned with the UCSB’s organization structure
4 Account Classifies nature of transaction, e.g., asset, liability, expense, revenue, fund balance
5 Purpose Designates the purpose of the expenditure transaction. This is the functional classification of the expenditure
6 Program Represents formalized system-wide or cross-campus formal initiatives
7 Project Tracks financial activity related to a sponsored award, a capital project or "body of work" that has a start and end date often spanning fiscal years.  
8 Activity Classifies transactions by activity – Campus defined
9 Flex 2 Reserved for local campus  
10 InterEntity Identifies other UC campus entity in the transaction
11 Future 1 Reserved for future use
12 Future 2 Reserved for future use

 

Implementing a New CCOA

Completed

  • Define segments, purpose and usage
    • Refine how UCSB will use segment
    • Determine UCSB segment name and definition
    • Confirm the field length and type
    • Determine sequential order
    • Identify high-level hierarchy
  • Map current-state segments to future-state segments

What's Next

  • Define the future-state values and map current-state to future-state
  • Determine the need to refine values and hierarchies
  • Finalize mapping to begin data conversion and integrations
  • Define chart of accounts governance