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Employee Self Service

The SSDT team is in the process of creating an employee self-service application, which will serve as a replacement for the existing Kiosk product.

The first production release of the employee self-service application (ESS) will include all existing Kiosk features with the exception of storing performance reviews and Individual Professional Development Plan (IPDP) functionality. The performance review feature, which allows sharing a document between a supervisor and staff member, has little adoption. Based on its very-limited utilization and a plethora of alternatives, it is not being carried forward in the first production version of the employee self-service application. Since IPDP functionality is not directly being replaced in the employee self-service application, access to the existing Kiosk IPDP features will continue until July 2025, providing additional time to explore alternatives.

Key dates related to the release of the new employee self-service application and the sunset of the existing Kiosk product include:

• May 2024: Employee self-service will be released in “early access” form.

• July 2024: Employee self-service will see its first official production release.

• May – September 2024: Existing Kiosk users will be converted to the new employee self-service application.

• September 30, 2024: The existing Kiosk application will reach end of life for all features excluding IPDP (as detailed above).

The early access stage running from May to July will allow those interested in converting before the application is in production. NOTE: Districts currently using Timesheets in Kiosk or Frontline’s Absence Management software will not be eligible for early adoption. SSDT is currently working on a Timesheet replacement in ESS which will be made available in July for our initial production release. We are currently discussing the integration piece with Frontline’s Absence Management software team, and we plan to have that in place before our initial production release.

This early access stage will provide SSDT with an approximate two-month window to gather feedback and correct deficiencies in ESS not detected in internal QA. If you are eligible and interested in adopting early, please contact your ITC. All existing Kiosk users will need to be migrated before September 30, 2024, but how this occurs, and the scheduling of conversions will be at the discretion of the ITCs and their districts.

To help expedite the conversion process, workflow configuration, leave sub categories, user configuration data (including roles) and custom links from the existing Kiosk application will be extracted and imported directly into the employee self-service application, alleviating the need to re-create this data. The user interface will be similar to the existing Kiosk to help mitigate the training burden associated with migrating users to the new application.

SSDT is also focused on making this new application mobile friendly, particularly in the areas of the user interface for creating and approving leave requests. This will allow users and supervisors to interact with leave requests from cell phones, tablets, etc.

Interested in seeing a demo of the ESS application? This month’s video spotlight contains a brief demonstration of the options available to a standard user. You will see that the functionality is consistent with the existing Kiosk application but like with all other state software applications, it delivers an improved user experience!

Refund of Payroll items in USPS

Refund a Payroll Item during a regular Payroll (Employee being paid during payroll)

• For Employees being refunded during Payroll, add a negative Error adjustment and/or Employer Error Adjustment.

Refunding a Payroll Item in USPS-R Without Processing a Payroll- (Employee no longer being paid)

• If an Employee not being paid during regular Payroll, add a negative Error adjustment and/or Employer Error Adjustment. Use Processing/Payroll Item Refund to select the employee for refund.

Adjusting Employer Paid Amount Without Refund Processing

• If only refunding Employer Amount, use Core>Adjustments and select Type of ‘Board Amount of Payroll Item’ and enter a negative ‘Amount’.

• If a refund Adjustment for the board is not processed through a pay, you will need to manually update USAS as there is not a file that is created when processing using Adjustments.  This amount will not show in Employer Distribution.

Refund of a Prior Year Annuity and processing as current year wages

• If wanting to process refund of a Prior Year Annuity as current year wages, add negative error adjustment, run through Payroll or Payroll Item Refund. Adjustments will need to be made to remove negatives from the Annuity accumulator and increase the Total Gross on the Federal, Ohio, OSDI, Medicare and City Tax records (if honored).

Refund of a Prior Year Annuity and processing as prior year wages

• If wanting to process a Refund of an Annuity as prior year wages, enter negative Employee Error Adjustment and process the refund. Then to remove the Prior Year Refund from the current year, use Core/Adjustments, add negative Total Gross, Applicable Gross, Amount Withheld and Board's Amount of payroll item withheld and/or Medicare Pickup, use Board's Pickup Amount of Payroll Item, to the Payroll Items that were affected by the refund. (Use the grid adjustments created, for the Refund, to back out the prior year refund amounts).

For further detail instructions, please click on each refund option.

USAS Refunds

In USAS, a refund transaction tracks the process of returning money that was receipted in the system. When a refund is issued, the received amount on the selected revenue account will be reduced by the amount of the refund. Optionally, check ‘Create a Check’ to issue a check with the refund transaction as a means to return that money to a vendor. When the vendor number is entered it will associate that check with the vendor and automatically populate the 'Refunded To' field with the vendor name. Either a physical check or electronic payment will be posted to the system depending on the default payment type of the vendor at the time that refund is created. After the refund is saved, navigate to the USAS Disbursements grid to print the refund check.