In March, The LaSallian revealed unresolved transactions from the 2023 and 2024 iterations of the Lasallian Enrichment Alternative Program (LEAP). Since then, Asterisko Coffee’s dues were resolved as it received its P24,000 revenue this April—nearly ten months after LEAP 2024—while its P5,000 compensation fee was handled separately, according to an employee.
Although the payment was finally settled, the circumstances behind the delays remain contested. The Council of Student Organizations (CSO) has offered a different account of events. Meanwhile, the Finance and Accounting Office (FAO), the Information Technology Services Office (ITS), and the Office of Student Leadership Involvement, Formation, and Empowerment (SLIFE) have also stepped in to explain their role in the financial process.
Conflicting timelines
CSO chairperson for AY 2024-2025 Jilliane Sy explains that the council’s executive vice chairperson for finance was only contacted last February by “someone from the partner’s end.”
This contradicts Asterisko Coffee proprietor Paulo Cabildo’s account in the first article, where he provided emails showing that he had followed up with CSO as early as September 13, 2024. Additionally, his staff maintained that they submitted all payment details on time.
FAO disbursement head Lapurisima Paras appears to support Cabildo’s statement, noting that CSO’s request for payment (RFP) “was not forwarded in BPMS (Business Processing Management Software) for encoding for almost one year.”
Paras’ records also indicate that CSO only completed the RFP on February 9. Once filed, it entered the BPMS on March 4 and was approved by SLIFE that same day. It was then reviewed by the Office of Student Affairs on March 10 before being forwarded to FAO’s disbursement department on March 20. The check was processed on March 21.
“Ganoon po kabilis [ang sistema],” Paras remarks.
(The system’s that fast.)
The LaSallian did not seek further comment from CSO on this matter, as the council has since declined interviews with the publication due to supervisory limitations.
System responsibilities
On paper, the financial process seems straightforward. First, the students must collect the payment details of their external partner and submit these to their supervising office, such as from CSO to SLIFE. That office then inputs the RFP ticket into the BPMS, where it is approved by necessary administrators depending on the amount. Once cleared, the request is transferred to Oracle Fusion, a separate system for FAO to finalize and release the check.
In practice, however, delays often accumulate before the request even reaches FAO. In the case of Asterisko Coffee, Paras emphasizes that FAO cannot begin processing any transaction unless an RFP ticket has been uploaded into the BPMS, which is overseen by ITS.
This arrangement can be challenging for student organizations like CSO, which must depend on SLIFE to review and endorse transactions. Sy also clarifies that CSO cannot access the BPMS directly: “Hence, we rely on SLIFE’s updates for any concerns from FAO.”
The lack of transparency makes it easy for requests to languish between offices. SLIFE Director James Laxa concedes that his team has only acted on some cases after issues were flagged externally. “This case of [Asterisko Coffee] was just brought up. I do not properly recall…who [it was] that prompted me to check the status…[but] that was the only time we moved to resolve it immediately,” he admits.
Complications can also stem from how payments are filed. Paras says that payments must be made under the registered name and bank account of an establishment. But when these are unavailable, some requests end up under a personal name, such as Cabildo’s instead of Asterisko Coffee’s. This can make transactions difficult to track. “Baka nabayaran na natin itong mga hinahanap nila, pero [since] it is under the name of the owner, hindi natin mahanap,” she cautions.
(We might have paid them already, but since it is under the name of the owner, we can’t find it.)
Other problems lie in the encoding stage itself. According to BPMS Application Support Developer and Team Lead Keanu Dominado, errors such as incorrect General Ledger codes or incomplete supplier information often cause requests to stall. “Either a request was never made…or a request was never approved,” Dominado conveys. “Or…it may have been submitted, but when we emailed the requester and didn’t get any reply to solve it, we just left it as it is.”
Dominado points out that the BPMS is further strained by the sheer volume of submissions. Even on holidays, his team handles the tickets. On rare occasions, a legitimate request is flagged as invalid by the system, forcing FAO to recheck entries manually. “These are the factors that the University doesn’t see because we’re the ones who deal with this firsthand,” he shares.
Moving forward
To address these problems, CSO, SLIFE, and relevant offices vow system improvements in their respective areas. CSO has proposed creating an ad hoc committee to track unresolved expenses and has tasked its finance executives to monitor transactions more closely. The council, Sy adds, has held dialogues with the concerned administrative offices to “ease the system for its organizations.”
These measures still have inherent limits on the students. “No amount of organizational efforts can sustainably fix the problem that isn’t controlled by CSO in the first place,” Sy comments. “An internal [organizational] system in place can only work optimally with the help of a more systematic administrative process.”
In a similar light, SLIFE has formed teams to address backlogged requests, as promised in the first article. Laxa will continue requiring completion reports at the end of every LEAP, a longstanding protocol, though he stated that he could not locate those from LEAP 2023 and 2024 as of press time. Through these safeguards, Laxa reiterates his commitment in clearing all delayed payments from past LEAP operations within the year.
Dominado confirms that an upgraded version of the RFP, particularly on the immediate module users interact with, will be implemented during the third quarter of the year. “We’re implementing a new module along with all the [feedback] given to us,” he shares, promising faster processing as the upgrade gives real-time updates for requesters and approvers.
Paras and Laxa both stress that once transactions are properly encoded and routed, their offices can act within expected timelines. The challenge, they maintain, lies in ensuring every stage of the process is initiated and monitored without delays.
The LaSallian reached out to USG Coordinator Zaldy Dueñas for a statement on the outcome of Jolly Baltazar’s case, which was mentioned in the first article. SLIFE Director James Laxa spoke on his behalf and declined to comment further. The publication also contacted former SLIFE Director Christopher Villanueva regarding these issues that occurred during his tenure, but he has not responded as of press time.
