Information about authorisations
The distribution of authorisations in the new system may be leaner than before, as you can now issue an authorisation for your entire responsibility centre. In principle, this then applies for all elements within your responsibility centre (cost centres, SAP projects, PSP elements, poss. reserves). It is espe-cially recommended to issue authorisations at responsibility centre level for administrative assistants with overlapping duties.
Best-practice examples for issuing authorisations
Please note: The deputy budget officer role may only be delegated to other budget officers or employ-ees with a function level of 9 or above.
A finance authorisation covers at least read-only access for financial data in ETHIS. Depending on the type of authorisation, the following additional rights may also be included:
- a signing authority for cost approvals and orders up to a certain amount (e.g. up to CHF 1,500, CHF 10,000 or CHF 50,000);
- the authorisation to be actively involved in or approve HR-related processes, e.g. staff recruitment; and
- ETHIS read-only access for HR data (e.g. salaries, functional levels).
The assignment of the “Supervisor” HR authorisation determines whether a person
- has an HR management responsibility; and
- can access HR data and to what extent,
- approve entries in Time Management application (for example, holidays).
The way financial signing authorities are assigned is in line with the financial management principles of ETH Zurich. In principle, an employee is only given financial competencies to the extent required for them to perform their roles – their roles and responsibilities must be consistent with the authorisations they are granted. Regular internal and external controls are carried out to ensure compliance with this principle.
The most important changes in the area of financial authorisations can be found under: Delegation of authorisations.
- Authorisations can be issued for the following financial elements: Responsibility centres (RC), cost centres (CC), SAP projects and PSP elements. In future, the structure of a responsibility centre will appear as follows in ETHIS:
- In principle, a signatory power which is issued for the responsibility centre applies for all financial elements of a responsibility centre (including any SAP projects and PSP elements opened in the future).
If required, authorisations will not be carried over across all financial elements if the same au-thorisation is again issued to an individual financial element. Example: An administrative assis-tant who has “Budget Manager” authorisation for the RC can sign invoices of up to CHF 10,000 for the cost centre and all SAP projects/PSP elements, except for the SNF project, for which the PostDoc has been delegated the “Budget Manager” role. - A signatory power issued for an SAP project applies for all associated PSP elements.
Example for carrying over signatory powers
A budget officer issues the following delegations:
Lüthy receives “Budget Manager including HR” (BM_HR) for the responsibility centre.
Klein receives “Budget Manager” (BM) for the responsibility centre.
Gross receives “Budget Manager” for the SNF SAP project.
Black text: Delegation issued via the ETHIS delegation workflow
Arrows and grey text: Automatic carry-over of authorisations “below”.
- A signatory power issued exclusively for the cost centre or an individual PSP element only ap-plies for this financial element.
- Read-only access for a responsibility centre or an SAP project applies for all financial ele-ments below them. The read-only access will still be carried over if additional employees with read-only access are delegated to individual financial elements.
"DeputaThe following methods are used to grant authorisations:
- Automatic assignment when taking over a function
When taking over a function, functionaries of ETH Zurich are automatically granted the relevant financial authorisation: "Authorisations for functionaries" - Granting an authorisation via the ETHIS delegation workflow
- Members of the Executive Board may delegate "Head of Department". A member of the Executive Board may grant a head of department or the head of a extra-departmental teaching and research facility the authorisation “Head of Department” (“Bereichsverantwortlicher”, collective signatory right up to CHF 250,000) beyond the authorisation “Budget Officer”. The Vice-President for Finance and Controlling is automatically informed.
- "Heads of department” can apply for additional "Budget Officers". A person with the authorisation "Head of Departement " (e.g. head of academic department, member of the Executive Board or, if applicable, a head of a service department) can apply for "Budget Officer" rights for an employee – e.g. for titular professors, workshop, staff unit or section heads who require this authorisation to conduct their business. The request is made via the delegation workflow. The Vice President of Finance and Controlling is responsible for checking and approving the requests.
- Delegation of authorisations by Budget Officers. Budget Officers can delegate the authorisations "Deputy Budget Officer", "Budget Manager", "Budget Assistant", "Supporter", "Internal Shopper" to employees.
Functionaries of ETH Zurich include professors, heads of academic departments, heads of service/administrative departments, heads of non-departmental teaching and research facilities, Executive Board Members as well as coordinators/controllers of academic/service/administrative departments or Executive Board Domains. The following authorisations are available for functionaries:
- Budget officer / Supervisor
- Head of department
- Member of Executive Board
- Department controller
There are no changes to the current structure of financial authorisations (Budget officer, Head of department, Member of Executive Board, Department controller).
There is the new HR authorisation “Supervisor”, which is automatically assigned to every budget officer.
* See link: How are authorisations granted?
1. Budget officer / Supervisor
- In financial terms, budget officers have the following rights and obligations:
- Individual signing authority up to CHF 50,000
- Individual signing authority for expenses up to CHF 5,000
- Access to and responsibility for all financial data in their responsibility centre
- Approval and correction of staff appointments via ETHIS workflows (as per financial rules)
Budget officers can
- appoint deputies to ensure day-to-day business can be carried out; and
- delegate financial authorisations (budget manager, budget assistant, supporter, internal shopper);
However, overall responsibility remains with the budget officer.
Each budget officer (financial authorisation) is also the supervisor (HR authorisation) for all employees in their responsibility centre.* Supervisors have the following rights and obligations:
- Access to HR data (functional level, contract duration, salary, contract, application documents)
- Holding performance reviews with subordinate employees
- Viewing, correcting and approving employee entries in the ETHIS time management system (working time, absences, holidays)
A budget officer who is responsible for multiple responsibility centres (e.g. head of a service/administrative department with several sections) can delegate their HR “Supervisor” authorisation for a responsibility centre under them (see below: Delegation of authorisations).
* Special rules with regard to the supervisor function: The President is the supervisor of all professors (DownloadProfessorenverordnung ETH (PDF, 169 KB)); the Head of Vocational Education and Training is the supervisor of all apprentices and trainees.
Deputy budget officers: see link: Delegation of authorisations.
2. Head of department
The “Head of department” authorisation includes the authorisations of a budget officer/supervisor; a head of department also has a collective signing authority of up to CHF 250,000.
Heads of academic departments are automatically assigned the “Head of department” authorisation. Heads of service/administrative departments receive this authorisation at the request of the Executive Board Member to whom they report. This also applies for the “Deputy head of department” authorisation.
3. Member of Executive Board
Executive Board Members have the “Member of Executive Board” authorisation. This includes the authorisations of a budget officer/supervisor, but the individual signing authority extends up to CHF 250,000.
4. Department controller
Academic and service/administrative department controllers as well as budget coordinators for Executive Board Domains have a special “Department controller” authorisation, which grants extensive read-only access, but no signing authorities. The authorisation is automatically assigned to employees with the relevant function.
The budget officer can delegate authorisations to employees via ETHIS workflows. Financial authorisations with signing authorities are granted as needed (who requires which spending authority?); the budget officer ensures that staff are chosen carefully and briefed accordingly.
The following authorisations can be delegated:
Appointing a deputy budget officer
To ensure that business can continue seamlessly, the budget officer can appoint a deputy. In principle, this person has the same rights as the budget officer, but they are not automatically supervisors, they cannot sign for their own expenses and they cannot delegate authorisations. Overall responsibility remains with the budget officer.
The wide-ranging “Deputy budget officer” authorisation can only be given to employees with a functional level of 9 or higher. If there are no such staff available in an academic unit, it is recommended that a reciprocal deputy system is agreed with another professor or that a budget manager is appointed for the whole responsibility centre. For audit reasons, one person should not be appointed as deputy for a large number of people ; this is because they would have excessive signing authorities.
Delegation of “Supervisor” authorisation
A budget officer is always also the supervisor of the responsibility centre(s) under them. If they preside over more than one responsibility centre, they can delegate the “Supervisor” authorisation without simultaneously delegating budget responsibility. Example: The head of a service/administrative department with multiple sections can delegate the “Supervisor” authorisation for Section X to the Head of Section X. The section head is thus the supervisor for all employees in Section X, but does not have budget responsibility for their section.
Setting the scope of the delegation
In each case of delegation, it is necessary to determine for which financial element it applies:
- Responsibility centre as a whole (expense level and all SAP projects with their PSP elements) - NEW
- Cost centre
- SAP projects incl. all its PSP elements
- Individual PSP element.
The option to grant an authorisation for the entire responsibility centre facilitates the process for assigning authorisations. In this way, for example, the administrative assistant for a unit can receive the same authorisation for all the financial elements in the responsibility centre by means of a single delegation. Further advantage: The delegation also applies automatically to all elements that are newly opened (e.g. for SAP-projects).
The following authorisations can only be granted for entire responsibility centres:
- Deputy budget officer
- Supervisor
- Budgetmanager with "HR"
- Budgetassistant with "HR"
- Supporter with "HR"
- Shopper
Persons with on of the following authorisations:
have HR reading rights for the entire responsibility centres. In other words, they see:
- the salary details of all persons who are employed on the cost centre of the responsibility centre, and
- the salary details for all PSP-elements in the responsibility centre, including salary details for persons who are employed on an "external" cost centre, but who are financed by a PSP-element in their "own" responsibility centre.
Persons with authorisation over several responsibility centres (authorization for T responsibility centre or "nodes") have correspondingly broader HR reading rights.