We are excited to announce the highly anticipated changes to payroll encumbrances are live today. Payroll encumbrances can now be projected through future years on research projects, and will be updated daily to reflect mid-pay period changes to employee distributions. These enhancements are part of the Project Administration & Management (PAM) initiative underway at the U. Here are the details…

Encumbering Future Years On Fund 5000 Projects…

To take advantage of future year encumbering on research projects, you must set up the Employee Distribution with additional project rows specifying future fiscal year begin and end dates. You do not need to do this right away, you may update them whenever you are ready, and your changes will be reflected within a business day of making the change.

The Encumbrance Calculation…

Encumbrances are calculated for date ranges specified on the Employee Distribution during which the employee job is active, on paid leave, or retired with pay, and the distribution chartfield includes an encumbered GL account. The encumbrance calculation will take into account future events such as changes to FTE, employment status (hire, termination, work break, etc.), changes to distribution, compensation rate, etc.

• For Exempt (both Annual and Contract): distribution factor * (annual salary * 1/24) * number of pay periods left in the calculation period. When a distribution date does not begin or end on the boundaries of a pay period, the following calculation is used for that pay period: distribution factor *((annual salary * 1/24) * (number of work days in partial pay period/total number of work days in pay period))
• For Hourly: distribution factor * hourly rate * (standard hours/5) * number of work days in the calculation period. Standard hours is equivalent to FTE*40.

Payroll Encumbrance Reports…

The Managements Reports and Human Resource Information Library (HRIL) Payroll Encumbrance reports have been enhanced as part of these changes. Both applications provide separate summary level and detail reports. The detail reports show encumbrances broken out by the changes in variables that go into the encumbrance calculation, including:

• Calculation period (driven by both job and employee distribution dates) 
• Pay Status
• Distribution Chartfields
• Distribution Factor/Percentage
• Compensation Rate

Management Reports navigation – select a hyperlinked encumbrance value to drill into the Payroll Encumbrance detail report from either of these summary reports:

• Summary of Revenue & Expenses
• Encumbrance Report

Human Resources Information Library (HRIL) navigation – select the PAYROLL REPTS folder.

• Encumb Summary by…
• Encumb Detail by…  

Please ASK US if you have any questions.

Ever wish you could project payroll commitments through the end of a multi-year research grant? Tired of updating employee distributions only to wait (patiently) for the next payroll cycle before the changes are reflected on encumbrance reports? Then your time has come!

Beginning Friday, January 6th, payroll encumbrances will be updated daily and include future years on research projects. These enhancements are part of the Project Administration & Management (PAM) initiative underway at the U.

Is there anything I need to do to prepare for these changes?

Glad you asked!

First, in order to take advantage of future year encumbering on research projects, you must set up payroll distributions with future fiscal year begin and end dates…encumbrances will only be calculated for dates specified on the Employee Distribution. Note that a single payroll distribution row cannot cross a fiscal year, you must insert a new distribution row for each fiscal year you wish to encumber. Payroll distributions do not need to be updated right away, you may update them whenever you are ready. Your changes will be reflected in payroll encumbrance reports within a business day of making the change.

Second, the format of the Payroll Encumbrance Reports in Management Reports and the Human Resources Information Library (HRIL) will change. If you have set up any automated processing on payroll encumbrance report downloads, your process may be impacted. 

Look for more information about the payroll encumbrance enhancements in Friday’s official announcement via FS News!

Please ASK US if you have any questions.