Inventory Services

The 2023-2024 Fiscal Year is Officially Open for Inventory Services!

The Inventory Services unit of Accounting and Financial Management is responsible for the overall accounting management of capital and controlled assets for the University of Texas at Austin.  The primary mission of Inventory Services is:

  • to ensure that correct procedures are followed,
  • assist departments in accounting for their inventory by tracking assets from acquisition to disposal; and
  • to accurately report required asset data to the State of Texas Comptroller, federal, and non-federal sponsors

Annual Physical Inventory

Institutional policy and Federal law requires a physical accounting of inventoried property.

HELPFUL HINTS:

  • Start early, track your equipment year round
  • Submit removal paperwork before equipment leaves and before you turn in your certification
  • For more information, please click Annual Physical Inventory FAQ

 

FRMS Departmental Inventory Portal

The Departmental Inventory Portal, which is a subsystem of the Financial Resource Management System (FRMS), is available for departments to easily update inventory items: https://utdirect.utexas.edu/apps/frms/inventory/.

The Departmental Inventory Portal will provide a Web-based inventory item management system for departments, thus allowing departments to perform the following tasks:

  • Mark items as found, missing, or unfound
  • Easily update location, comments, responsible person, and other data fields
  • View inventory information about units, items, and number of items in a unit
  • Perform mass updates of multiple inventory items for various fields, including status, location, and responsible person
  • Download report data

Information About CCART

The CCART (OnlineNT1document) is a Web-based system operational year-round that allows the electronic transfer of inventory equipment to another UT department while enforcing current business rules. Transfers include obsolete equipment going to Surplus Properties 4500999. For more information on surplus requirements for pickup or drop off visit Surplus Properties web page.

The CCART NT1 system has a limit of 50-items and includes the number of elements a record has in *DEFINE towards that limit. The item entry page does not give any warning when this has occurred. Because of this glitch the CCART NT1 system currently has a caution error message in red warning of duplicate records that may autogenerate if the 50-item limit is met or exceeded.

You will need to update your fiscal year within your authorizations in order to avoid the “Fiscal year not open” error message as the CCART system does not automatically update the year. See Working with CCART for a step by step guide.

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

 

Contact Information

Email box system allows incoming communication to be clearly categorized and sent to the correct people for faster service.  We hope you will join us in in our quest for a more efficient inventory experience by using these boxes for your communications going forward. 

Information about Scanning Inventory Items

Please start scanning your inventory as soon as possible.

Your options for scanning inventory:

  • Free “Scan to Spreadsheet” app
  • Checkout an iPad from Inventory Services equipped with the scanning app, “UTrack”
    • If you wish to use an iPad from Inventory Services, your department will first have to complete the iPad Checkout Agreement and send it to Inventory Services.
  • Departments are also welcome to submit timestamped photos of their inventory to Inventory Services in lieu of scanning their equipment. Please contact inventory services before availing this option to make sure all the requirements are met.

 

Tag Information

Equipment with a Capital (5Kor more) value and equipment categorized as Controlled Class Codes between 500-4999.99 in value should be affixed with a barcode tag and reported within 30 days of purchase.

Equipment acquired with Federal funds and is U.S. Government-owned property needs to be tagged and reported within 10 days.

The Self Tagging Template allows you to include both new purchases and updates to existing items.

For updates to existing items include the previous tag or virtual number in "Comments" column Q of the template. The process to update existing tag information is different and this allows us to handle it separately.

The “Self-Tag Pending Transactions” tab feature in FRMS will allow authorized users to submit a report for their pending NU1 purchase transactions directly from the FRMS departmental web portal at any time. The FRMS report also contains the same columns as the self-tag template so users can report their tag data using the FRMS report in lieu of the self-tag template.

Retagging of worn, damaged or tags that cannot be scanned, will also assist with the scan process and later on when sending equipment to surplus via CCART (online NT1 document).

Using UT blanks tags for items that are below the capital thresholds and are not categorized as Controlled Class Codes or fall below the 500-4999.99 value is not required but can help identify equipment as UT property. The blank tag also helps avoid confusion as to whether an item was missed during the initial tag process and is also accepted by surplus properties.

Inventory Training and Access Information

If you are a new inventory contact, please make sure you are listed as the inventory contact for your unit in the Organizational Hierarchy System to ensure that Inventory Services directs their communications to the right person. Please also make sure that you have access to DEFINE, FRMS, and CCARTs.

CCART access is tied to a user’s *DEFINE mainframe logon. Users must be authorized for NT1 command in EOM: https://utdirect.utexas.edu/ew/. Electronic office managers or delegates can grant authorizations.

Inventory Services does not grant authorizations. If you would like to schedule inventory training, please contact Chris Ochoa at c.ochoa@austin.utexas.edu.

Information about Inventory Removal Request

Inventory Removal Request (IRR) is a request to remove/inactivate equipment from your listing that is entered in error, stolen, cannibalized, abandoned, traded-in, sold, returned to the vendor, damaged, or held in trust. A cleanup of equipment that is no longer in your possession can assist with the Annual Inventory Certification process and may minimize unfound equipment that has left the university from being designated as missing.

Submit removal paperwork before equipment leaves and before you turn in your certification. Prior approval for physical removal of item(s) should be obtained from Inventory Services before equipment can be relinquished.