About CMS

What Is CMS?

The Commitment Management System (CMS) is a financial planning and forecasting tool for school and department staff. CMS electronically pulls official, up-to-date budget, expenditure, and commitment data from multiple Stanford financial systems. Using CMS, you can forecast and manage available funds by tracking actual expenditures, accounting for anticipated expenditures and running "what if" scenarios.

Why Use CMS?

• Time Savings

  Watch "The Experience CMS" video to learn about the efficiencies realized by staff in schools and departments after incorporating CMS into their work processes. These experienced CMS users rely on CMS for all their financial analysis and planning.

• Up-to-Date and Accurate Data

  CMS data is electronically refreshed nightly with current budget, expenditure and commitment data pulled through Oracle Financial systems, reducing the potential for errors introduced by manual data entry.

• Support for Analysis and Decision-Making

  Integrating data from PeopleSoft and Hyperion, CMS provides easy access to actual and forecasted financial views. Department academic and financial staff can use these views to collaboratively plan financial outcomes to best meet goals and grant commitments and to confidently predict "end of fiscal period" outcomes.

How Do I Get Started in CMS?

Visit the Training section to see how to acquire basic CMS competencies and how to benefit from available on-going support to best meet your department needs through CMS.