The e-News is a semimonthly electronic newsletter sent to users of Harvard's financial, human resources, and reporting systems. In this issue, we provide more information to help you start using the University's new PeopleSoft systems.

Click on the links below to learn more about . . .

AWS3 Go-Live Delayed    top

Due to performance problems, the go-live of the Administrator's WorkStation 3 is delayed, with a new target date expected later this week. When the new date is known, much more information about how to use the system and related training opportunities will be made available. In the meantime, here are the recently issued desktop standards:

Entering Time This Week    top

Overtime-eligible employees paid semimonthly (clerical and technical workers) will begin to use the time entry system tomorrow. They should enter time worked and paid time off taken for the full week of September 29 - October 5, despite the fact that regular pay for September 29 and 30 was paid from the old system.

Here are the steps:

Overtime worked during the week of September 29 - October 5 will be paid out of PeopleSoft, even if the OT was worked on the 29th or 30th. Overtime for this week should be reflected in the October 26 paycheck, if all entry and approval deadlines were met.

Which Forms to Use: Initiating Personnel
Actions in PeopleSoft    top

For staff working in units other than FAS, SPH, and HMS/HSDM, personnel actions (new hires, job changes, terminations, etc.) are now initiated by online forms in PeopleSoft. The forms are completed online, printed, and sent to FAD Payroll with appropriate signatures and backup documentation.

In the next article we will discuss common errors we are seeing and questions that have arisen when using forms. Here, we are reviewing a list of which form to use for which purpose.

Common Mistakes When Using PeopleSoft Forms    top

Here are some of the most common mistakes, problems, misconceptions, and questions about forms we are seeing.

Temporary Employees 101    top

When we went live last week, all of Harvard's weekly paid "casuals" were converted into PeopleSoft as either Temporary Staff members with a termination date of 12/31/2002 or as Temporary Student workers. To recap, there is a three-month limit for temporary staff, but no time limit on employment of enrolled Harvard students.

Between go-live and the end of the year, departments should review the people on their temporary payrolls. Those "temporary" staff positions may actually be ones in which there is a continuing employment relationship between the person and Harvard, but at a very low level of effort. If you wish to continue employing such a person, you will need to reclassify them, using a Job Data Change form.

These less-than-half-time employees (now called LTHTs, or "lights" for short):

• can have only one job at a time
• can work for an unlimited duration
• are not eligible for health and welfare benefits unless they earn over $15,000 per year (based on the annualized projection of what they might earn, which is in turn based on their standard hours and rate of pay, not actual earnings)
• may be eligible for pension if they meet the ERISA 1,000-hour rule
• may be eligible for "EPE" status and associated benefits in the following year, if they qualify
• are in the same Empl Classes as regular employees
• have special job codes set up for them as follows:
  
             710010      LTHT OT-eligible Support Staff
             710020      LTHT not OT-eligible Admin & Professional
             710030      LTHT Services/trades Support Staff
  
  
• are fringed at the same rate as others in their job category, i.e., support staff, administrative/professional, or service/trades. The FY03 fringe rates are online at http://able.harvard.edu/rates/fringe/index.shtml.

For more comprehensive information on policy and practice surrounding temporary employees, please consult: http://www.hrproject.harvard.edu/documents/Briefing on Temporary_ Employees.pdf. We'll return to this topic in future issues.

Clarifications, Corrections, and Updates    top

This will probably be a regular feature during stabilization. Here are the items for this week:

How to Get PeopleSoft or AWS3 Access    top

Each major department has designated an "HR authorized requestor" (or local security administrator) who will submit requests for PeopleSoft or AWS3 user access to Central Administration (specifically, the FAD "Apps Admin" department). The HR authorized requestors can also ask that a new HR department or Time and Labor group be set up. These requestors are listed at http://able.harvard.edu/other/hr_auth_requestors.pdf.

The network of financial authorized requestors will continue to submit requests for user access to Harvard's core financial systems (Oracle, AWS2, etc.) and well as requests for new Chart of Accounts values. These requestors are listed at: http://able.harvard.edu/other/fin_auth_ requestors.pdf.

If you believe that you have not been assigned to the appropriate security roles, contact your authorized requestor.

Short-term Disability, Long-term Disability,
and Workers' Compensation     top

The Disability Claims Unit (DCU) of Central OHR is still working to refine new processes for disability claims. In the meantime, here is a high-level overview of how things will work:

The process for short-term disability and workers' compensation claims has not changed. You should continue to use the accident reports, claim forms, and STD summary sheets to report disability claims to the DCU as soon as a disability issue is known about. No leave forms are required. Do not submit any personnel forms directly to FAD Payroll for STD or workers' comp.

The DCU will process the personnel actions required for putting employees onto the disability plans, processing the payroll for people on disability, and completing the work in PeopleSoft to return employees on leave back to their home departments.

Departments should provide DCU with all disability documentation for each payroll by the paperwork deadlines indicated in the payroll closings calendar.

In cases of disability onset between the paperwork deadline and the start of the actual payroll process, DCU will try to be flexible. The payroll processing start date on the payroll schedule is a firm deadline for submission of employees for payment under any disability plan. DCU must receive the information by 11 a.m. that day in order for the employee to get disability benefit payments.

For weekly-paid employees, the deadline for submission is 11 a.m. on Mondays. DCU will adhere strictly to that deadline. If the department misses that deadline, the employee will remain on the department's payroll and will need to be approved at the department level. A journal entry will be done in DCU to correct the coding of the payment.

Help Us Help You    top

If you call the UIS Helpdesk (6-2001) with a problem relating to accessing the new systems or some other kind of performance problem, you may be asked the questions below. This helps us identify root causes, spot trends, and solve your problem more quickly. Here's what a Helpdesk analyst might ask:

• What tub are you calling from?
• What is your operating system (e.g., Windows 98, Mac OS 7.5) and browser version? (Browser version can be found by going to the Help menu in IE and selecting "About Internet Explorer.")
• What is your IP address?
• What form, page, and field you are on?
• Have you already tried rebooting your computer, relaunching your browser, and/or clearing your browser's cache? (You can clear your cache by selecting Tools > Internet Options > Clear History in IE.)
• Is there any evidence that your transaction has been saved?

To find your IP address on a machine running Windows 98, click the Start button and select Settings > Control Panel. Double-click Network, then double-click on TCP/IP. The IP address will be in the form of xxx . xxx . xx . xx .

In Windows 2000, select Network and Dial-up Connections from the Control Panel. Go to Local Area Connection, click "Properties," and scroll down to Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).

Help Desk Contacts for FAS, HMS, and SPH  top

Contacts for FAS, HMS/HMDS, and SPH have their own local HR systems for initiating personnel actions. If you are a user at one of these schools and are having problems with forms, do not call the UIS Helpdesk. Rather, you should call one of the following.

FAS: For help with Asperin forms call the Asperin Helpdesk at 617-495-7983, or the ASAP team at 617-496-7136.

HMS/HSDM: For help with the eTAD, call 617-432-0781.

SPH: For help with Wasabi forms, call Emily Jeep at Wasabi Support, 617-432-7237.

Why a Time Reporter May Not Appear in
Your Time and Labor Group    top

When clerical and technical workers begin to report time this week, we anticipate that the Helpdesk will receive calls from approvers wondering why a reporter they expected to see in their Time and Labor group is not there. This can happen for several reasons:

• the reporter is not there due to their misassignment into the wrong group, or
• they have no group assigned to them (they are in a special group called "NOSEC" which stands for "no security." We have sent a list of reporters with "NOSEC" to local HR offices for coding).

  In both cases, this problem can be rectified by your local time administrator. Please bring it to their attention.

But there is another situation we've encountered that is a little more complex to troubleshoot.

Jobs in grades 54 to 56 may be either overtime-eligible or exempt, and may have similar job titles. Only overtime-eligible staff report time; thus, if an employee is exempt, they will not appear as a time reporter.

If you have an employee in grades 54-56 who does not appear in your Time Approval group, you may need to work with your local HR office to look up the employee's job code and see if they are, in fact, overtime-eligible. All the job codes are listed at: http://atwork.harvard.edu/hradmin/ related_docs/PS_Job Codes as of August, 2002.pdf.

The third column from the right is "FLSA Status" and will read either "Nonexempt," in which case the person should report time, or "No FLSA Required," in which case they should not.

Searching in PeopleSoft    top

When a particular field in PeopleSoft has many possible values, a magnifying glass icon will appear next to it, rather than a down arrow , which indicates a short picklist.

Clicking on the magnifying glass brings you to a Lookup (or search) screen. Your search can be narrowed by using part of the desired value and the wildcard symbol (%).

Let's say you are on the Job Data Change form, and you need to change a time reporter's default schedule (called the "Schedule ID" in PeopleSoft). If you want to see Schedule IDs (or default schedules) for various 35 hour/week combinations, enter "%35%" in the Schedule ID field and click Lookup. All the 35 hour/week choices will appear, and their descriptions will tell you what they contain. If you don't narrow your search in this way, the search will simply bring back the first 300 values it finds.

When you use the magnifying glass to search for a value, PeopleSoft will return all the values that match what you entered, even if you do not have access to these values. This does not represent a security breach. PeopleSoft will only allow you to choose those values that you have access to from the list.

For example, if you are searching for an employee by name and enter "SMI%" and click on the magnifying glass, you will see all the Smiths, Smithsons, etc. at the University. However, you will only be able to select the Smith for whom you have access. If you select an employee outside your security range, you will receive a message saying that there is no match.

Great Question of the Week    top

We received this great question from FAS.

Question

Our situation is that some of our temporaries and students have entered their time this week. Some of them received confirmation screens with session numbers and some did not when they saved their work. We don't know which of our temps and students have tried to enter time this week and of that group, which received session #'s and which didn't. We know that some gave up and did not enter their time at all, or were not able to get a PIN and couldn't enter time. Most of them won't work again this week and probably won't be available to come in to work tomorrow because they have other jobs or classes.

We kept hard copy time sheets as a backup this week in case there were problems with online entering, so the timekeepers do have the data on what hours our temps and students worked this week.

My question is, if a timekeeper goes in and enters time for a temp or student that already reported their hours successfully, what happens? Is it possible for a timekeeper's entry to overwrite a reporter's entry? Or, will the timekeeper's entry double the reporter's entry and the reporter will be double-paid?

Is it possible for the timekeeper to overwrite the time reporter? If it is not possible for a timekeeper to overwrite a time reporter, any suggestions you have about reports we can run to show who has and has not entered time would be much appreciated.

Answer

Let's break your great question down into parts.

First, the PeopleSoft Unsubmitted Time report can be used to monitor who has and who has not reported time for the week.

Second, it is not possible for the timekeeper to overwrite the time reporter. Timekeepers can only overwrite entries they've made previously.

Third, if there isn't good coordination, it is entirely possible for a timekeeper's entry to double the reporter's entry, and for the reporter to be double-paid…but others can help identify and correct this kind of error.

• It could be caught during the payroll validation (or "TAD Replacement") process.
• Another person who can catch double entry is the approver. When the approver reviews the hours entered, she should be able to see all hours entered for this employee. The approver can request an adjustment if they've been doubled.
• The reporter herself could find this mistake. For example, if a timekeeper has already reported time for an employee and has hit the submit button for their rapid time entry session, the time reporter will see the timekeeper's entry on the weekly elapsed time page.

The table below shows the result of different duplicate entry scenarios.

All of this is why local communication and coordination is crucial for managing the time entry and approval process successfully. It must be made abundantly clear at the local level whether time reporters are expected to enter their time or whether timekeepers are expected to do it for them. If a department uses a mixture of both processes, the potential for confusion and double entry (or no entry at all) is much greater, at least while everyone is getting used to the new procedures.

About the e-News   top

The Financial Administration publishes this semi-monthly electronic newsletter for users of Harvard University's financial, HR, and reporting systems, policies, and procedures. Generally, the e-News is published on or around the 12th and 26th of each month.

It contains:

• updates on projects underway to build or improve University administrative systems;
• information about new University policies, procedures, and forms;
• reminders about upcoming deadlines and cut-over dates;
• tips and tricks for working more easily or productively.

We welcome questions and suggestions for improvement from readers. If your questions are of general interest, we will answer them in future issues.

Please send comments, questions, or suggestions for improvement by email to us at: fad_communications@harvard.edu