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Hard to Believe but it's STRS Advance Time again!
It's that time of year again-STRS Advance. Here are some facts regarding the STRS Advance program in USPS-R.
The STRS Advance program located under Reports allows you to create reports, create the annual submission file and also Submit the Annual Submission file to STRS. When cleaning up errors, the reports can be processed multiple times until the STRS Advance Tape file is created.
The setup screen allows you to Sort By: Employee Name or Employee SSN.
The Report Format options are: Comma Separated Values, PDF or Excel.
You must enter a Start Date for the Academic Year- If there are multiple start dates for different buildings in the district, use the earliest, first day of school for any building.
You must enter an Ending Date for the Academic Year- If there are multiple ending dates for different buildings in the district, use the latest final day of school for any building.
*Note- The system counts the number of days from the first day school is in session or Hire Date (whichever is later) and the last day that school is in session or the termination date on the BIOSCN/Employee record (whichever is earlier.) The day count is based on days on the Job Calendars and also STRS Retirement Day adjustments that are made in Adjustments.
STRS Advance Report Options:
- Advance Positions Report: Similar to Classic's STRSAD.TXT report; provides a list of all employees with an accrued contribution calculation that will be considered advancing.
- Non-Advanced Positions Report: Similar to Classic's NONADV.TXT report; Lists some of the employees with jobs that are not advancing (not a catch all) must verify for accuracy.
- Advance Fiscal Year to Date Report: Similar to Classic's STRSAD.RPT report. This is the complete fiscal year-end report for all STRS employees, including all advanced employees. This report is normally used for balancing and reconciling.
Criteria Needed for a Job to Advance:
If the district is based on gross and employees with STRS jobs that have:
1- Work days equal to Days Worked
2-Amount remaining to pay is greater than zero
3-Pays are greater than Pays Paid
Employees will have an accrued contribution amount calculated for them. Accrued contribution amount is calculated using the pay per period from the Compensation record for the remaining pays minus 1, then the last pay calculation occurs. The accrued amount will be the amount of earnings not yet paid times the employee’s STRS withholding rate.
Example-
*Note-If the district STRS is based on earnings then there will be no advance.
Rehired Retirees:
A rehired retiree should have the Rehired Retiree box on the 450 Payroll Item checked as well as a rehired date entered in the Rehired Date field.
The Rehired Retiree flag and Rehired Date on the STRS 450 item determine if a similar flag is set in the history. Those are the rehire flags that are used, and the rehire retiree values are stored in the same fields.
If the Rehired Retiree flag was not set at the appropriate time, adjustments must be made to 450/591/691 Payroll Items accordingly-
1-Portion of FTD Board Amount that was earned as a rehired retiree
2-Portion of FTD Amount that was withheld as a rehired retiree
3-Portion of FTD Gross that was earned as a rehired retiree
STRS Submission Tape File:
After the creation of the STRS Advance Submission Tape file, if the district has third party data to be added to the file, they will need to securely send the data in the correct format, along with their STRS Advance Tape File, to their ITC. The ITC will then merge this third party data with the district’s STRS Advance tape file for FY20. The file can then be returned to the district and they can proceed with submitting it to STRS.
Post Advance:
Each payroll the Amount Paid Back in System/Configuration/STRS Advance Configuration will increase.
After all summer pays are complete the Amount Paid Back should equal the STRS Advance Amount.
If the Amount Paid Back is less or greater than the calculated STRS Advance Amount, then the pay back will continue to display on the screen and the district will NOT be out of advance and the Advance Mode will remain checked.
Go to Reports/Report Manager/SSDT Check STRS Advance Report and compare the report with employee totals on the Advanced Positions Report to see which employee(s) amount withheld on accrued earnings do not equal the amount STRSAD Advance Amount Report calculated.
The district will need to file corrections with STRS and also update the FYTD amounts (gross, withholding, etc) using Adjustments on the STRS Payroll Items accordingly for those employee(s).
Unchecking the STRS Advance Mode will then remove the STRS Advance Amount and take the district out of advance.
On the Compensation/Contract Compensations screen, add STRS Advance field (under Advance Query) to the grid and look for any value equaling “true” These will need to be updated to false to take that Compensation out of advance. There is a Mass Change definition STRS Advance=FALSE that can be used if there are multiple records that need to be updated.
I no longer need to use an account in USAS-R.. what are my options?
Inactivate
If there are transactions/amounts against the account, the account may be inactivated. If a cash account is updated to inactive, the cash account and all associated accounts (appropriation, expenditure and revenue) will not be available to use when processing transactions. The cash account will not appear on reports when active is set to true. PLEASE NOTE: This doesn't change the active flag on the associated accounts so they will display as active and will be included on reports when active is set to true. If you would prefer to make the associated accounts inactive, you may update them individually or a mass change can be used to update accounts associated with cash accounts that have been made inactive. If you are interested in using the mass change option to update the status of associated accounts, please contact your ITC for further assistance.
Stop Date
When a stop date is entered on an account, it does not change the status of the account to inactive. It's intention is to prevent processing of transactions against that account on or after the date entered. When a stop date is entered on a cash account, all associated accounts will not allow processing against those accounts.
Deletion
If there is no activity against an account (the associated transactions were purged prior to the data being imported to Redesign, or the account has not been used) then the account can be deleted via the delete icon 
on the grid.
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Useful links:
There are two questions to consider when you are closing a Purchase Order:
- Has anything been invoiced against the PO?
- Is the PO date in an open posting period?
Click here to access the USAS-R FAQs which contains a section on purchase orders that can assist you in closing your purchase orders for the fiscal year.
If you wish to setup an Annuity or Regular Payroll Item that should have a Maximum Amount withheld for Employee, Employer or both you can do that!! Here is what you need to know...
In the Employee Deduct Max Type, choose when the Annuity or Regular Payroll Item should start. The Max Amount will start over based on the period selected. For the max amount field to be checked when the payroll is being processed, a Deduct Max Type must be set:
- Annual (Processing from 1/1/YY to 12/31/XX)
- Fiscal (Processing 7/1/XX to 6/30/XX)
- Specific Date
If a Deduct Max Amount is desired then a Max Amount greater than 0.00 needs to be entered for proper withholding to occur.
When the Max Amount feature is used, the Payroll Item will be withheld until the maximum amount has been reached. Once the maximum amount has been reached the Payroll Item becomes dormant and will not be withheld until the Max Type option that was selected begins again.
*IMPORTANT*- If using Specific Date Deduct Max Type, there must be a Specific Date (Pay Date) entered in the Specific Date field. This will determine when the Max Amount starts being withheld.
NOTE-The same options are available for Employer Max Amount as well. The same rules apply as far as Max Deduct Type, Amount and Specific Date (if applicable)
Mass Load can be used to update Max field data. Here is a Sample CSV file with Max Deduct header information.
REDESIGN STATUS | |
|---|---|
206 Sites Live on Redesign | 115 Total Wave 5 Sites |
17 Participating ITCs | 236 Total Districts Participating |
Please view the Current List of Districts & Status to see a comprehensive list of school districts along with their ITC, implementation status and the wave they are scheduled to migrate from Classic to Redesign.
The following terminology is used to determine where in the implementation process the entity is currently at:
Implementing: The ITC is running test imports and balancing reports on the entity. The district and ITC are working to schedule dates to begin dual processing and go live.
Paralleling: The entity is inputting all production transactions into both Classic and Redesign.
Live: The entity is using Redesign for production processing; no parallel processing is being performed; Classic is available in 'read-only' mode.
Archiving Compensation's and Employee's
Archiving an employee's Compensation will hide this from other components:
- New Contract
- Attendance
- EMIS Entry
- Current/Future
- Payroll Processing/Pay Report
- SIFF Data Collector - If Individual compensation is marked as archived, but the employee is not archived, then the compensation will not be included because it is archived, but the employee will be included, provided the report to EMIS flag is true.
Archiving an Employee will hide ALL Core options from view
- If an Employee is archived, the employee's position/compensations will NOT be included in the SIFF Data Collector