State Agencies Bulletin No. 411

Subject
Changes to Contract Pay for CUNY Adjuncts
Automatic Insertion of Contract Pay Dates onto the Contract Pay Panel
Automatic Calculation for Retroactive Transactions
Date Issued
July 1, 2003

Purpose

To provide an overview of Adjunct Contract Pay and highlight the changes resulting from the Payroll System upgrade.

Affected Employees

CUNY Employees in Pay Basis Code AJT

Overview

Contract Pay is the process used by the Payroll System for adjunct employees whose pay basis code is AJT to equally distribute the employee’s wages over a predetermined period of time. The dates of the contracts for the Fall, Spring and Summer semesters are determined by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Faculty and Staff Relations and stored in the Payroll System. The biweekly contract amount is determined by dividing the total contract amount by the number of payroll periods in the contract.

The Contract Pay page is an effective-dated record that stores the contract dates for the employee. Each semester that the employee is in an AJT position, a new set of contract dates must be entered.

The payments for Contract Pay are recorded on the Additional Pay page using the Earnings Code CON. The Earnings Code is system-generated and system-updated with a new effective- dated row, effective the beginning of the pay period any time a change is made to the contract that results in a new biweekly amount. These changes can be for new contract amounts that are either current or retroactive, late appointment, etc. When the Goal Balance (the amount paid to the employee) is equal to the Goal Amount (the amount of the contract), the payments end. At the end of the contract, the payments will end, but the employee remains active.

Path

Administer Workforce>Administer Workforce (GBL)>Use>Contract Pay (Agency)

New Fields

  • Monthly Frequency: Defaults to M
  • Review Contract Automatically?: Not used
  • Actual Start Date: Not used
  • Termination Date: Not used

System Processing Changes-Insertion of Contract Dates

OSC CHANGES:

The Contract Pay page will automatically be filled in by the Payroll System when an active employee whose pay basis code is AJT has a pay change, position change, or transfer that is effective on the Contract Begin Date stored in the Payroll System, and the employee has no current active contract. The contract dates will reflect 9 full pay periods.

No Contract Dates will be entered on the Contract Pay page if the effective date of the transaction is not equal to the beginning dates of the Contract period in the Payroll System. The dates of the contract must be the beginning of a pay period and the end of a pay period. Warning and error messages have been established to inform the agency of several potential problems.

Agency Changes-Insertion of Contract Dates

AGENCY CHANGES:

The agency will no longer need to enter contract dates for those employees in AJT positions for the Fall and Spring semesters if the Pay Change, Position Change or Transfer occurs on the begin date of the contract stored in the Payroll System.

If the contract begin date is the same as the semester begin date on the Department page but the end date is earlier than the end date of the semester, the agency must enter a new row with a different contract on the Contract Pay Page AFTER the automatic insertion.

The agency will still be required to enter the contract dates for the summer semesters. The agency will also be required to enter contract dates on the Contract Pay page for all Fall and Spring semesters when the employee’s contract is not the same as the begin and end dates on the Department page. Warning and error messages have been established to inform the agency of certain incorrect entries.

System Processing Changes-Automatic Retroactive Calculation

Automatic Calculation for retroactive transactions
OSC Changes:

The Payroll System will now calculate any retroactive payment due an employee for late appointments or retroactive contract amount changes.

For a late appointment, the new calculation divides the contract amount by the number of pay periods, determines how many pay periods late within the contract dates the transaction is, multiplies the number of late pay periods times the biweekly amount and then adds the retroactive amount to the current payment.

  • Example #1:
  • An appointment for a contract amount of $4500 (biweekly earnings are $500) is submitted 2 Pay periods after the beginning of the semester. The Payroll System will pay 2 retroactive pay periods (2 X $500 =$1000) and one current ($500). The paycheck for this pay period will be $1500. The remaining 6 pay periods will be $500 each.

For a retroactive contract amount change, the Payroll System will determine how many retroactive pay periods there are from the date of the pay change, how much the new payment should be, what was paid, and pay the difference in the next paycheck in addition to the new biweekly payment.

  • Example #2:
    The above employee receives a contract amount change to $5400 retroactive to the beginning of the contract submitted in the next pay period. The biweekly should have been $600. The Payroll System will pay 3 retroactive pay periods, the difference between the $500 paid and $600 that should have been paid plus one current. The paycheck for this pay period will be $900. The remaining 5 pay periods will be $600 each.
  • Example #3:
    An employee had a contract for $8100. A transaction was submitted in the fourth pay period to reduce the contract to $6300 effective the beginning of the contract. The employee should have been paid $700 per biweekly. He was originally paid $900 and therefore is overpaid $200 for each of the first three periods ($600). The system will calculate the overpayment and reduce his current biweekly from the normal $700 to $100. He will be paid $700 for the remaining 5 pay periods.

NOTE: When the employee is overpaid and there is enough money in the current pay period to recover the overpayment, the overpayment will be recovered from the current paycheck.

Agency Actions: Automatic - Retroactive Calculation

Agency Actions:
  1. The agency should NOT submit AJT transactions on the Time Entry page to “catch-up ”an employee who is appointed late.
  2. The agency should ALWAYS submit the actual effective date on which the contract begins if the employee starts on that date, regardless of the pay period in which the appointment is processed.
  3. Only employees who start after the date on which the contract begins should be appointed with an effective date after the beginning of the contract. A Contract Pay page will need to be filled in by the agency in this instance.
  4. The agency should ALWAYS submit a retroactive pay change with the actual effective date on which the contract amount changes. The system will calculate any retroactive money due to the employee or recover any overpayments to the employee.
  5. Appointments and Changes to AJT contracts should only occur at the beginning of a pay period.

Note: When an employee is overpaid and there is not enough money in the current pay period or remaining contract to recover the money, the agency must document how the overpayment will be recovered on the General Comments page.

Questions

Questions that relate to changes in Contact Pay processing resulting from the Payroll System 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