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Fiscal Year-End Reminder about Payroll Suspense

 

By

To: MOU Financial Leads
University Business Managers
HR Officers and Secondary Contacts
Research Administrators Support Group
Research Information ListServ

From: Brian Simet, Director, Payroll Services
Andy Johns, Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Research

Thank you for your current efforts and diligence in managing payroll suspense. Since February 2016, campus wide suspense balances have been reduced significantly. Even with this work, balances remain at an elevated level, so your continued work to clean up suspense before year end is necessary. The intent of this message is to provide you updated instructions regarding managing current suspense charges.

Payroll Suspense Fiscal Year-End Dates

These dates mirror the dates provided in the annual fiscal year-end memo sent last week with one addition.*

Payroll dates below refer to the lockout dates. Departments should allow for sufficient time for approval routing for personnel actions. Approvers should check their inbox regularly.

June 16 Lockout for Biweekly B25 payroll paid June 24. Date by which ePAR fund swaps should be fully approved and in Executed status for processing for the Biweekly 25 payroll paid June 24.
June 21 Lockout for June Monthly payroll paid June 30. Date by which ePAR fund swaps should be fully approved and in Executed status for processing for the Monthly 12 payroll paid June 30.
Given the abbreviated time frame to process PAAT (Payroll Accounting Adjustment Tool) transactions after June monthly payroll posts, please make every effort to confirm employee funding sources prior to June 21.
June 23, 5 p.m. Deadline for non-June monthly PAAT departmentally-approved transactions
June 26, Noon Deadline for June monthly PAAT departmentally-approved transactions
*This additional date is for fiscal year 2017 in-flight transactions:
June 30, 5 p.m. All ePAR actions fully approved and in Executed status for final transfer into fiscal year 2017. Actions not Executed by this date will need to be resubmitted.

What you should do to prepare for Fiscal Year-End

  • Determine the appropriate funding:
  • Prioritize adjustments on funding sources that are approaching their fiscal year end. Payroll expenses need to be entered into PAAT and approved by departments/schools and MOUs by June 26 to be processed in FY2016.
  • Run the following report in ConnectCarolina to identify outstanding suspense charges: ConnectCarolina >Main Menu >HR/Payroll Menu > Payroll Acct Adj. Tool (PAAT) > Current Suspense Charges. Enter the Funding Department Number and then display the report.
    • If an individual should be paid from continuation funds or a project that has been received but not yet set up in ConnectCarolina, contact your respective OSR Program Administrator to discuss the status of the new funds.
    • If the department, center or institute is confident that anticipated funds will arrive, initiate and route a request to OSR via RAMSeS for financial guarantee. By initiating a financial guarantee, the department is certifying that it will be responsible for costs if the sponsor does not provide funding.
    • If an individual has no current project funding to which his/her time is allowable or allocable, move the expenses to state, F&A or other non-sponsored funds as appropriate.
  • If an employee’s funding grid currently includes suspense, an ePAR Fund Swap must be submitted to remove suspense and adjust to an appropriate funding source or account in order to prevent future payroll from going to suspense. An employee’s funding grid can be viewed via InfoPorte or by initiating an ePAR Fund Swap.

Consequences of using Payroll Suspense

As a reminder, payroll suspense is designed to be a temporary expense account, less than 90 days, and should not be used as a permanent funding source. Expenses left on payroll suspense have several consequences:

  • The University may be foregoing payment for expenses that are allowable and allocable on sponsored projects and may lose sponsor funding for those costs.
  • Current Facilities and Administrative (F&A) funds are being tied up in labor expenses.
  • The University is not collecting F&A funds because the expenses are not on the projects which may reduce future allocations of F&A funds.
  • Charges for Time and Effort Certification (ecrt) will not be captured properly until charges have been moved to the appropriate source.
  • Chartfield string based reports will not accurately reflect Labor expenses.

We encourage you to take action now to remove payroll transactions for FY16 from suspense via PAAT and then to change funding sources through ePARs according to the deadlines above to prevent future suspense activity. We hope this information is useful in managing suspense activity. If you have any questions concerning payroll suspense, please contact Walter Miller, Labor Accounting Manager, at wmiller@unc.edu. Thank you for your invaluable help.

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