FAQ-Frequently Asked Questions


Q- How do I report SERS days and hours?

A- When a stretch paid employee compensation is set up with a job calendar defined, with work days, the number of work days that are within the period beginning and ending date of the pay you are processing will be counted toward SERS service days.

If that compensation record is setup with retire hours or hours per day, when the pay is initialized the system takes the number of work days on the job calendar and the hours per day or retire hours and calculates the appropriate retirement hours.

If a regular paid employee is being paid for extra work using a MIS, OT, etc -PAY TYPE in FUTURE or CURRENT Retire Hours need to be manually entered in.

If an employee is paid on a supplemental position once or twice a year a non-contract compensation should be created and tied to the default calendar.

The district can add the payment to FUTURE when the employee is to be paid. OR If desired FUTURE can be used using the Effective Date field. The district can enter the pay information and then add in a date within the pay period they will be getting paid (not the pay date) in the Effective Date field. When that date falls within the period beginning and ending date range for a pay it will be pulled into the payroll.

If an employee is on a default job calendar then attendance days need to be added in Core/Attendance, that fall within that pay period. If multiple days are being added (example-for a coaching position) that is paid once or twice a year these days should be entered using Adjustments. You can add adjustments for SERS Days and SERS Hours. And they will pull in on the pay report as well as the SERS report.

*NOTE*-When entering adjustments for SERS days and Hours you must use a date within the pay period beginning and ending date for that pay.

If retirement days/hours were missed for a prior pay then manual corrections must be made for the days/hours on the eSERS system.

Q- What is the difference between the Audit Trail report and the Auditable Events Report?

A- The Audit Trail report will show every change made in USPS-R to any object. It will require heavy filtering until a better option is created.  The Auditable Events Report would include things like 'Rules Reloaded Event' and 'Modules Installed Event'. Different events in the system will be captured in this report. 


Q- How is a Mid Year Contract Change Calculated?

A- The system looks up how many days are remaining in the old contract (since the stop date makes it possible to determine how many days will be paid at the old rate)   

In New Contract, it takes the number of days left in old compensation times the old rate to come up with the 'future accrued' and add this into the contract obligation.

The pay per period will then use the contract obligation to do its math. 

At payroll posting time, the system checks for an old compensation if the new compensation's pays paid equals 1 (we already do this).  If it is there and it is a mid-year contract change, we create an 'Earnings Only' pay type for the new compensation with the days and earnings.

The only thing the system does differently when posting the payroll, is to credit the old compensation with the days worked (which should bring the days worked equal to days in contract).  The accrued is carried forward and credited to the new compensation. 

Since the pays paid is now greater than 1, it no longer tries to go back to the old compensation for the 'future accrued' and that same amount is posted to the new compensation's total, so the math stays the same.


Q- How is the Employer Share of Retirement Calculated?

A- The employer retirement share no longer looks at USAS MTD figures as Classic did.  In Redesign, this functionality was moved from USAS to USPSR, so we are now able to calculate these amounts based off of the actual withholding amounts, so the result should be more accurate.  

In Redesign, Employer Retire Share can be run anytime for any date range, but presumably they would still run it on a per-month basis.  It does not look at MTD amounts, but it finds the history for payrolls posted within the date range the user selects and looks at all of the amounts posted for each the accounts, which could be for a single day, a month, 6 months, whatever. It depends solely on the Pay Date of the payrolls in question falling within the range the user enters. The accounts it looks at are affected by several factors.  First of all, there is a list of object codes that it looks for are, for certificated positions: "110", "111", "112", "113", "114", "119", "120", "121", "122", "123", "124", "125","126","127","129","130","131","139"and for classified positions "140","141","142","143","144","149","150","151","152","153","154","155","156","157","159","160","161","169","170","171","172","179","190". It also takes into consideration the 'appliesForRetirement' flag on Pay Amounts if a specific pay account is use takes into consideration any Adjustment Journals entered for the date range entered.  It translates account codes using the USPS Account Filters.  It also checks the 'Employer Distribution' flag that can be set on normal payroll accounts and specific pay accounts. 

It then does the calculations the same way as BRDRET (in classic) in terms of non-001 accounts being charged the exact total and all 001 accounts pro-rated over the remaining amount up to the amount the user entered. It will also look at mapping to determine the final account being charged


Q- How does deferred dock process in the system if imported from classic.

AOn import, deferred dock amounts are converted to future pay amounts in Redesign. Also, when deleting a payroll (keeping exceptions) anything in Current (presumably including this future pay amount that was pulled in) plus anything else that may have been created in Current will go back into Future. Then pulled back in again when creating the payroll again. If they recalculate (modify and update)  the pay group for this employee, I think it will recreate any deferred dock that is necessary .


Q- What Role does a user need to be able to run an Audit Report?

A- To run the Audit Trail report a user will need MODULE_AUDIT permission granted.