State Agencies Bulletin No. 408

Subject
Changes to Time Entry Pages and the Miscellaneous File
Date Issued
July 1, 2003

Purpose

To provide an overview of Time Entry and highlight the changes resulting from the Payroll System upgrade.

Affected Employees

All Employees

Overview

The Time Entry page is used to submit a one time or non-recurring payment for an employee. Earnings may include Overtime, Holiday Pay, Lost Time, Extra Time, Uniform Allowances and regular hours for hourly employees, etc. An employee’s earnings eligibility is determined by the Earnings Program assigned to the employee’s position and eligible earnings may be found in the Earns Code Search List on the Time Entry page.

Earnings are submitted either by direct entry into the Time Entry page or via a Miscellaneous File transfer from an agency system.

The Payroll System has been changed to provide more edits and warnings for the agency user.

Error messages prevent the user from saving or submitting a transaction if information is in error or incomplete.

Warning messages advise the user to review a transaction for accuracy.

If an error message is received when entering directly, the user must correct the transaction in order to save the transaction. If the transaction is submitted via a Miscellaneous File, the transaction will be rejected and appear on the Warning/Reject Report. The error must be corrected and entered directly online.

If a warning message is received when entering directly, and if the transaction is inaccurate, the user must correct the data in question and save. If the warning message is generated from a Miscellaneous File, the transaction will be entered into Time Entry and the warning message will appear on the Warning/Reject File. Corrections, if necessary, must be made online.

Path

Compensate Employees> Maintain Payroll Data (US)> Use >Time Entry

New Fields

None

System Processing Changes

The new edits and warnings will greatly assist the agencies in transaction submittal.

Important changes include:

  • For most Time Entry Earn Codes employees must now be active in the submitting agency as of the effective date of transactions. An error message will be received if the agency submits a transaction using effective dates when the employee is inactive. There are a few Earn Codes that are exceptions to this rule and can be submitted for inactive employees. No error message will be received for these Earn Codes.
  • HPA, HPB, and other holiday Earns Codes must be submitted as a single day, with the date of the holiday as both the begin and end date. If the agency must submit 2 holidays in the same pay period, 2 rows must be entered. An error message will appear if the Earn Code is not entered correctly. Earnings that are calculated by the Payroll System, such as Overtime, Lost Time, etc., must be broken down in accordance with any Pay or Position Change on the Job Data page. An error message will appear if the dates for these Earns Codes are not consistent with the dates on Job Data.
  • Earnings that are calculated by the Payroll System, Overtime, Lost Time, etc., must be broken down by any change in the amount of Annual Additional Earnings on the Additional Pay page. An error message will appear if the dates for these Earns Codes are not consistent with the dates on Additional Pay.
  • If Overtime is submitted in the same week as Lost Time, a warning message will appear. The system reads the historical data to determine if Lost Time or Overtime had been submitted in the same week as the code entered. The user must verify that Overtime at Straight Time has been submitted to replace the Lost Time and that the transaction is correct.

In some instances, the agency will receive a warning message that the submission is over a limit determined by OSC. The agency will be warned that the transaction will come under review and the agency may be required to provide documentation for the payment. The agency must review the transaction for accuracy. OSC may contact the agency for documentation to substantiate the transaction.

Agency Changes

The agency must carefully review all error and warning messages and change or confirm all transactions accordingly.

Questions

Questions that relate to changes to Time Entry processing resulting from the Payroll System (PayServ) upgrade may be directed to the Payroll Audit mailbox.

Prior to August 4, questions will be answered within two business days. After August 4, questions will be answered within 24 hours.