We are preparing for the rollout of the university’s new HR, Finance and Procurement system (UniCore) which will take place during mid-May 2024.

This system plays a vital role in helping us to simplify and standardise our many varied processes across the university.

It enables us to offer our staff and suppliers an improved experience of using HR, Finance and Procurement services. Many of our current IT systems will be replaced with UniCore; a single, modern, reliable and secure system.

So that UniCore can be rolled out, from mid-April to mid-May 2024 we will need to temporarily pause some processes and stop using the systems that we will be replacing. This is known as the ‘cutover period’ and is a common part of any system replacement.

Through working closely with our implementation partners and our HR, Finance, Procurement, DTS and Research and Innovation teams, we have developed a detailed cutover plan that minimises downtime and ensures up-to-date data can be transferred to UniCore.

Some of the HR, Finance and Procurement processes that will be affected in different ways during the cutover period include:

• Payments of student scholarships, bursary payments and stipends
• Managing finance for Research projects
• Raising a sales invoice, requesting and sending invoices to customers
• Submitting and approving expense claims
• Raising or approving a requisition
• Purchasing items in SciQuest
• Goods receipting
• Processing invoices from suppliers, paying suppliers and recording payments
• Adding new suppliers or updating supplier details in Agresso
• Changes to staff contracts, new starters and leavers
• Recording absences that are not annual leave
• Department and cost centre changes (note that these cannot be put into Resourcelink/Agresso between 29 February 2024 and 1 June 2024)
• Viewing payslips, submitting timesheets and additional hours/overtime
• Nottingham Reward Scheme

The ‘Preparing for UniCore’ webpage provides an understanding of the processes that will be affected during the cutover period, how processes will be impacted and the likely durations. Please take the time to review this webpage and save it to your browser favourites – specific dates and further details will be added to it in January 2024.

Planning should be undertaken in your areas as soon as possible, so that relevant requests are made to HR, Finance and Procurement teams in advance of the cutover period. This will help to ensure impacts to your school, faculty or department are minimised during this time.

We recognise that some members of staff spend a significant proportion of their time using systems which will be unavailable during the cutover. Managers should make local arrangements to agree with staff how time over that period should be utilised to support an optimised transition to UniCore.

Your commitment and support for this vital system rollout for the university continues to be greatly appreciated. Should you have any questions or concerns regarding the cutover period please email digitalcore@nottingham.ac.uk so that we can assist you.