Harvard's new financial management system, Project ADAPT, is plagued with across-the-board implementation problems at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, according to an update presented to the Faculty Council yesterday.

Academic departments, which must use ADAPT to submit and report on income and expenses, are with few exceptions struggling to do even those tasks they could before the system's July 1 launch.

"Of over 100 departments, I would be very surprised if there are 10 that are having an easy time," said Geoffrey M. Peters, FAS associate dean of administrative resources, who gave the presentation.

The current phase of ADAPT is intended to provide a wide range of financial services--including invoice submission, travel reembursement and grant management--all on a computerized system uniform across the University.

But the implementation problems have resulted in a variety of accounting snarls--not to mention frustrated and perplexed Faculty members.

For instance, American Express has canceled at least one Harvard expense account credit card because of the problems.

According to Peters, professors who deal with large amounts of grant money are having particular trouble using ADAPT, although the program was designed with just such professors in mind. Were it to work as planned, the program would allow researchers to calculate instantly how much of their grant money has been spent.

"If they have a hard time tracking their grant account, they run the risk of overspending them, and that's a problem," Peters said. "They either have to go back to the funding agency and ask for more, or the deptartment has to make up the difference, or ultimately FAS would have to make that up. This is a problem we had hoped ADAPT would cure."