Personal Property Tips of the Month

06/09/08	Recent Sunflower Enhancements Instructions for Acquiring new and found Personal Property. How to Add SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION to the Sunflower CD50 Add Requests (Web Forms). Click here: http://www.pps.noaa.gov/New_menu/acquire.htm#acq

05/28/08	Sunflower - Site/Location Form/People and Catalog Forms dated 5/28/08 For all Sunflower Catalog entries, changes or deletions, please complete this form: Sunflower PPMS Maintain Catalog Entry Form For all People updates, please use this Sunflower form: Sunflower Person Management Form If you are requesting that a person is added in Sunflower, the request must come from the PAO. For all site location additions and updates, please use this form: Sunflower Location Management Form Please email these forms to the DOC Sunflower Help Desk at this email address: SunflowerHelpDesk@doc.gov along with a carbon copy or cc to your servicing Personal Property Office. Once your request has been processed, they will notify you via email when it is completed.

05/27/08	Changing Site Locations, Buildings and Room Number Changes: If you have a role in Sunflower which gives you the necessary authority, please use the HTML Transaction Pages (Update Asset Information) to change the site location, building and room numbers. If the site location and building are not in the (drop down) pull down list to select from, please contact the Personal Property Office that you are supported by. If you are only updating the building, you must also have the site location filled in. The change will not be made, unless both are entered, otherwise Sunflower will not know the location of the building, and the change will not be made even though the program will report that the change was "completed". If you are only updating the room number (which is a free text typing box) you must also enter the site location and the building, as Sunflower will not know the location of the room and the change will not be made even if it appears to have been changed and you see the results, OK page. Using the HTML Transaction Pages (when you have the necessary authority) are changed directly without the need for assistance from the Personal Property Management Branch staff. Note: Change Asset Detail Requests (CADs) are required to perform this action, if you are not assigned the appropriate authority to make this direct change in the HTML Transaction Pages.

05/27/08	CD50 Add Request (Creation of a New Asset) and the CD52 Retirement of an Asset - Upload Documents: It is now possible in the CD50 form- Add Request and the CD52 form- Request a Retirement Request area of Sunflower, to upload attachments of supporting documentation that can be viewed by the NOAA Personal Property Management Branch. You will need to scan and save the supporting documentation as a PDF on your desktop or hard drive. You can only add one PDF to your request, so you will need to insert all pages into one PDF file. You need to have the document(s) saved on your hard drive for uploading. When you go to Request a Creation of a New Asset, under the drop down box that says "Inventory Asset", that is labeled as ATTACHMENT, you would click that box, and follow the steps for uploading your supporting documentation. For the Request a Retirement of an Asset, where it says, Maintain Pictures/Attachments, you would browse your hard drive and follow the steps for uploading the supporting documents. You can upload Pictures or Attachments. Please continue to complete the Detailed Circumstance and Justification block. Do not leave this field blank. The PPMB staff member will see the supporting documentation file for both requests when they look at your new ADD record in the Edit Interface and when they go to accept/deny your Retirement Request, they will also see your documents. You will not be required to send additional supporting documentation by hard copy, if you upload your documents in your ADD request. The ADD page, is no longer required, as you cannot save this until after you have pressed SAVE, so you can't save it, prior to uploading. Uploading these documents, will speed the processing time for PPMB. NOTE: All Capitalized or Financial Assets, will need to have a hard copy CD509 and CD52, with the required signatures, and should not be entered into Sunflower as requests.

12/07/07	The NOAA Finance Handbook Object Class Codes were recently revised. Please remind your clients to ensure that the correct object class codes are being used. For the list of current Object Class Codes, see: http://www.ofa.noaa.gov/~finance/OCC%20Revision%2010-30-06.pdf

09/11/07	To add a Current User or a New Steward Contact for which you are either the Property Custodian or the Steward Contact, or a New Steward Contact or a new Current User for which you are either the Property Custodian or the Steward Contact, please go to HTML Transaction Pages, to update asset information. Based, on your login, your assets will populate on the screen. Please de-select all or all the assets will be updated with the information that you type or the New Current User or Steward Contact assignment. Your name must be tied to the record as either the Property Custodian, or Current User of the assets in order to update and record Current User or Steward Contact assignments. This is instantaneous and does not require approval by the Property Office. Please use the Task Matrix to determine where in Sunflower to make requests http://www.pps.noaa.gov/matrix.html

04/07/07	If you are unsure of what your NEW property custodian number is, please contact your servicing Personal Property Office Representative. Some Property Custodian numbers had to be changed to facilitate the migration of data in Sunflower for the realignment.

03/01/07	The Region field must be entered on the CD-50 form when creating a new asset. It indicates the regional property office that will be assisting to manage the property and is tied to the sixth character of the Property Accountability Office (e.g., 54020E). That is, if the sixth character is an E, the region is NOAA-Norfolk, if it is an M, the region is NOAA-Boulder, if it is a W, the region is NOAA-Seattle, and if itl r is an N, the region is NOAA-Headquarter/Silver Spring. Conducting a physical inventory means that you not just know what happened to a missing piece of property, but that you have taken steps to take it off of your inventory listing.

03/01/07	To complete your inventory, please go to HTML Transaction pages. Then go to Record a Resolution Next go to: Record a Declarative Resolution (if no location changes are needed). If location changes are required, please record a Physical Resolution. Please remember to click the button that says: De-Select All. If you don't, all records will post a resolution. You CANNOT add a Current User to assigned assets when performing your resolutions. Remember: The terms: Resolution and Review signify inventory.

02/01/07	Only enter the data you need to change when changing data on an existing asset.

02/01/07	How to see if a request went through by looking at the Summary and History Timeline.

02/01/07	For help with Sunflower problems, first call the Property staff member that takes care of the region where the Property Custodian is located. The name of this person can be found by clicking on the Contacts button at the top of this page.

02/01/07	When entering Change to Asset Detail information, if you hit "Continue", the same data that was on your previous change request will still be there. If this is not what you want, you need to hit the "Reset" button at the bottom of the page to clear all the previously entered field and start with a clean page.

02/01/07	Do not put in commas (,) or dollar ($) signs when entering dollar values on the CD50 web forms. Enter the value using only numbers and a period for the decimal point.

01/25/07	When completing a request for a retirement of an asset (CD52 web form) it is extremely important that the Details and Justification field be filled in completely, especially in the case of lost, missing or stolen property. It must be clear to any reviewer that the removal of the record from Sunflower is justified and that all rules, regulations and policies have been followed.

12/18/06	Items entered via the CD50 Create a New Asset form must be approved and cleared by your Property Account Manager before it gets into Sunflower and can come off of the UPR.

12/08/06	When entering the organization code and the object class code in the accounting area on the CD50 web forms for Creating a New Asset or for Changing Asset Detail, it is very important that the codes are formatted correctly. If they are not, you will get a strange error message about a UDF. It is best to select the codes from the list obtained by first clicking on the down arrow next to the field.

12/05/06	When defining the criteria for the items you want to appear on a report, you can use the '%' symbol as a wild card. For example, if you don't know if a laptop computer is described in Sunflower as a “computer, laptop” or as a “laptop computer”, just enter %laptop% in the Description field and your report will include anything with the word “laptop” in the description.

11/01/06	In order for a person to be able to log in from this web page and use Sunflower, they must be a NOAA employee and have a complete locator entry and an NOAA email account and password.
10/30/06	When an acquisition is made to procure spare parts to build a computer, the computer is still sensitive, accountable property. Please select your line office (i.e. NWS, OMAO, etc.) as the manufacturer. Use the model of the CPU as the model number. If your Line Office is not there, please contact your servicing Personal Property Office to have it added.

10/11/06	When an acquisition is made to procure spare parts to build a computer, the computer is still sensitive, accountable property. Please select your line office (i.e. NWS, OMAO, etc.) as the manufacturer. Use the model of the CPU as the model number. If your Line Office is not there, please contact your servicing Personal Property Office to have it added.

10/09/06	PDA's defined as sensitive and accountable. NOAA's policy regarding sensitive property (property that must be tracked regardless of cost) has been modified to specifically include Personal Data Assistants (PDA's). Whereas the Department has always classified hand-held computers as sensitive property, NOAA's policy has been clarified to ensure that property managers know that this includes PDA's. For a complete list of sensitive property click here.

09/09/06	It is now possible to search for assets based on the comments or attachments attached to the assets right from the main menu when you first log in to Sunflower. Just click on the “Search Attachments and Comments” link.

08/19/06	If an item is not in Sunflower with a bar code number, then when you excess the item, you must choose "Non-barcoded" as the manufacturer.

06/21/06	If you make a mistake when entering a new piece of property on the CD50 web form for requesting the creation of a new asset, and you have saved your mistake, just IMMEDIATELY reenter the whole thing and save it again. Your new entry will overwrite (replace) the previous one. (Otherwise you have to wait until it is all the way in Sunflower before correcting errors using the CD50 web form to request a change of asset detail.)

06/12/06	To see if the change you requested was actually made, log in to Sunflower and then go to the Sunflower Reports area and select the Inventory Asset History report under Management Reports. There you would enter the Barcode Identifier number. This report will display the history of the asset with the most recent change shown at the top of the report along with information about who made the change.

06/11/06	When entering a location, if the property is not in a building, don't enter a building name. That field should be left blank. If you know the GPS coordinates, these can be entered instead. Just send the coordinates in terms of degrees, minutes and seconds and feet for elevation to your Property Office Assistant.

06/01/06	If you are having problems, don't continue to struggle. Call or email your Property Account Manager for help. Click the “Contact Us” link at the top of this page for names and phone numbers.

05/31/06	In those instances when the address where property is located is only identified by a Post Office box rather than a building name or address, choose “P.O. Box“ rather than ”Building“ and choose the number of the Post Office box from the list.

05/06/06	The only reason to wait for a new property item to hit the UPR before entering them as new assets in the Sunflower system would be if you are not sure what the document number is going to be. If the document number entered into Sunflower does not match what appears on the UPR, it will not automatically reconcile. The first document number used is the one that is matched to the UPR. If the document number is corrected later, it still doesn't matter because the corrected document number is not the first document number used. So, if you know what the document number is going to be, then you should go ahead and enter the new asset.

04/27/06	Are you sure you aren’t requesting a change that has already been recorded? It is recommended that you go to the Reports Menu -> Management Reports ->Inventory Asset History to check the barcode numbers before you process new actions (e.g. transfers, deletions, changes) in the system. The inventory asset history report will give you the most current record of what has already been processed in Sunflower.

04/19/06	When creating an excess receival request, if the pick-up location is the same as the location currently shown in Sunflower for all the assets being reported, the pick-up location does not need to be entered. The pick-up location only needs to be entered if it is different than the location currently recorded for any one of the items.

03/14/06	To request that a new person be assigned as a Property Custodian, highlight the “Aides / Tools” link in the navigation pane on the left of the Personal Property home page and then “Property Custodian listing”. Or click on this link. Complete the form in the bottom part of the window that opens and then click on the “Submit Selections” button.

02/14/06	When transferring property between two Custodial areas, you need to use the CD50 - Request Change of Asset Detail web form, not the HTML Transaction Pages. The Request Change of Asset Detail web form allows you to enter all of the new information required by the transfer such as the new Custodial area, the new location (Site, Building, and Room), and, if applicable, the new Property Accountability Office and the new Region. The HTML Transaction Pages do not provide the ability to make all of these changes to the record. After entering the request, notify the new Property Custodian and your Property Office Assistant (POA) by email. Once the new Property Custodian acknowledges receipt of the property, the POA can accept the request so Sunflower will be updated with the new information.

02/04/06	When entering the acquisition date, you must enter all four digits for the year. If you just enter “06”, Sunflower will think you mean six years after Jesus was born.

01/31/06	New property items that are entered through the CD50 web form to Create a New Asset do not go directly into Sunflower. These items must be reviewed by the property staff first and a catalog description assigned.

12/23/05	To see everything that has happened to a piece of property in the form of an historical timeline, including every time it was recorded as being inventoried, run the report called “Inventory Asset Timeline” under Management Reports. This report will also tell you if your CD50 / 52 or HTML Transaction pages request went through and whether or not the request was accepted.

12/23/05	If, for whatever reason, you must replace the barcode tag number recorded in Sunflower with a different number, you can not do this using the web forms. You must request the change either using the paper CD-509 form or email.

12/01/05	A Property Custodian and a Steward Contact can change the location of an asset in the Sunflower records themselves, directly, without assistance from the Property staff by using the HTML Transaction Pages.

11/01/05	If the manufacturer does not appear when attempting to complete the CD-50 web form, STOP, and call your local Property Office Assistant to have the manufacturer added to Sunflower. The manufacturer must be available on the drop-down list before you can complete your CD-50.

10/16/05	If, for whatever reason, one piece of equipment is being exchanged for another identical piece of equipment (for example, under a warranty exchange), it is not necessary to create a whole new record in Sunflower. Rather, the old barcode number and serial number can simply be replaced with the new barcode number and serial number. However, this transaction can not be done using the CD-50 web form. The exchange of equipment must be reported to your Property Office Assistant via phone or email. The required supporting documentation will depend on the circumstances of the exchange.

09/24/05	When filling in the criteria for a report, you should use the minimum criteria necessary to get just the information you are looking for. So to get a listing of all the property in your Custodial area, just put the code for the Custodial area in that field (such as 54226N000) and don't try to restrict the criteria any further. Leave the rest of the criteria fields blank and submit your report.

09/16/05	If you want to find out what property is recorded as being located in a particular building or room and who that property is assigned to, run the Global Information report. Go to the Reports, Management reports, the Global report, enter the location on the report criteria screen and run the report. You will get a listing of all the property at that location, and you will be able to tell what Custodial organization those assets belong to. When entering the location on the report criteria screen, start with identifying the city first, and then the building. Use the '%' wildcard if you are not sure.

08/20/05	When you are trying to search for something in the database, you can throw your net over more or fewer items with the use of the wildcard characters. In Sunflower, the percent character (%) is used to designate an unknown number of unknown characters, the underscore (_) is used to designate a single unknown character. So, for example, if you enter in your query 54___C% (that is 3 underscore characters), your query will give you anything that has 3 characters between the '4' and the 'C' and any number of characters after the 'C'. Thus your results will include, for example, 54002C and 54022C100, but it will not include 5430CN100.

08/13/05	When filling out a CD50 to enter a new piece of property, in the acquisition cost, record the unit price for an individual item and not the total of the order.

07/24/05	The Region field must be entered on the CD-50 form when creating a new asset. It indicates the regional property office that will be assisting to manage the property and is tied to the final character of the Property Accountability Office (e.g., 54020E). That is, if the final character is an E, the region is NOAA-Norfolk, if it is an M, the region is NOAA-Boulder, if it is a W, the region is NOAA-Seattle, and if the final character is an N, the region is NOAA-Headquarters.

07/16/05	In the CD50 area, in the field that is marked fiscal year, you must enter all four digits of the year, not just the last two. If you enter 05, for example, Sunflower will interpret this to be the year 0005.

07/09/05	Never choose an entry in any field whether it be from a Pull down menu or a selection that has the word “END” at the beginning or at the end. These are not valid selections. They appear even though they are not valid because they had been valid for some purpose in the past and therefore are still in use.

06/25/05	The Identifier field in the Document area is for the document number, not for the property's barcode number.

06/05/05	When using the web CD50 form to request a change of asset detail, complete only those fields that you want to change before entering the barcode number at the bottom of the form. However, if you want to change a room number, you have to enter the complete location including the site and the building.

05/21/05	After clicking on the “Save” button at the bottom of the CD50 web form, you may enter an additional 10 identical items being purchased at the same time using the same source document. If you are entering items that are not identical, after clicking on the “Save” button, you will need to change the information at the top of the Create New Asset form.

05/14/05	When creating a new asset, the initial event is always a “PURCHASE”, unless you acquired it through some other means. Never use “Purchase card” or “purchase order (reoccurring)”.

05/01/05	When using the CD50 web form to change the value of an asset, enter the DIFFERENCE between the old value and the new value in the Value field.