Calendar Year 2011/2012 Tax Information

The following calendar year (CY) 2011 and 2012 tax information is provided by University Financial Services:

Employees may inquire locally after they have received their first paycheck(s) for CY 2012 with questions about tax withholding fluctuations versus 2011.

Social Security and Medicare taxes (wage base changed from $106,800 in CY11 to $110,100 for CY12).

Individuals who met the Social Security max in 2011 ($106,800) may see an increase in Social Security withholding effective 1/1/12. For the new calendar year, they are now subject to the Social Security Tax (4.2%) until they reach the maximum for CY 2012.

• Effective 1/1/11 a temporary two percentage payroll tax cut for employees, reducing their Social Security tax withholding rate from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent of taxable wages paid was put in place for CY11. The IRS announced on Dec 23 that the Social Security employee withholding tax rate will continue at the reduced rate of 4.2% until Feb 29, 2012. This means in March the tax rate will revert back to the 2010 rate of 6.2% unless the IRS advises otherwise.

Massachusetts State Taxes

Massachusetts allows a deduction for Social Security tax and Medicare tax withholding. This exemption is automatically honored until an individual pays $2,000 in social security (FICA and Medicare) taxes. When $2,000 in social security taxes have been withheld, the exemption is turned off - usually in the spring.

Individuals will see a slight decrease in their MA State tax withholding effective 1/1/12.

The Massachusetts Department of Revenue has reduced the state withholding tax rate from 5.3% to 5.25%, effective Jan 1, 2012.

2012 Supplemental Tax Rate:

Federal - 25%, MA state 5.25%, Social Security and Medicare 5.65% until 3/1/12 then 7.65% Total = 35.90% until 3/1/12 then 37.90%

For more information, please see the 2011 tax reporting documents issued by UFS

Reminder Alert: Oracle Interactive Reporting Tool Bug

There is an Oracle bug with the Interactive Reporting (IR) tool that may impact users without their knowledge. Currently IR only allows XLS as an Excel output option, which has an output limit of 65,536 rows. Any report saved as XLS output in excess of 65K rows will truncate results without users being fully aware they are losing data.

At this time, Oracle IR does not support XLSX as an output option.

Reporting tools impacted: CREW, Interactive Reporting Portal (IRP), and IR desktop users

NOTE: Due to various report designs, not all reports are capable of producing output in excess of 65K rows; however, broad criteria such as university-wide and school-wide selections may exceed the 65K limit.

Workaround: To accommodate a full export of rows in excess of 65K to Excel, users must have Excel 2007 or greater and follow the instructions below:

CREW:

• Report Output Type
• Choose report output option Comma Separated Values (.csv)
• Once the report has completed, click on the results file and choose Save
• Locate the .csv file, right-click and select "Open with" Excel (2007 or greater)
• To save the file in an Excel .xlsx format, from the menu bar, choose "Save As" Excel Workbook (*.xlsx)

IRP and IR desktop

• Save your results: File > Export > Section
• Save as type Text (Comma Delimited) (*.csv)
• Locate the .csv file, right-click and select "Open with" Excel (2007 or greater)
• To save the file in an Excel .xlsx format, from the menu bar, choose "Save As" Excel Workbook (*.xlsx)

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the HUIT Helpdesk at 496-2001 or dls@harvard.edu. Ask the attendant to log a Remedy support ticket and assign it to the appropriate group and a member of the team will get back to you to assist:

• Alumni Affairs: CAADS-Func
• Human Resources: HHR-Reporting
• Financial: HDW-Finfunc

Human Resources Reporting News

HR Analytics QlikView

The HR Analytics QlikView application has been recently updated, including new subjects, dashboards and enhancements!

Demographics Costing

New! The Demographics Costing dashboard now includes the following ORG attributes: Super, Mega, Giga, and Tera in a chart and they are also available as filters. This dashboard presents costing trends, such as positions funded by restricted, unrestricted, and sponsored funds since 2003.

Absence Management

Enhanced! Now includes data through fiscal year 2011. The Absence Management dashboard provides data on paid time off usage, accrual, balances, and utilization rates across the University. Paid time off includes vacation days, sick days, personal days, longer service days, and excess vacation days.

Historical Recruitment (HIRES)

New!The Historical Recruitment dashboard provides detailed information on requisitions, applicants and new hires for calendar years 2004 through 2009.

2011 Year End Reminder

New! Calendar Year-End for 2011 is now available!

TRAINING

Please contact Ana Bard at 496-0166 or via email if you need QlikView training, and if so, what type:

• New Users training
• Advanced Users training to address specific reporting scenarios
• Web-based training

CREW Report Spotlight

HRJOBEE058: Individual-University Job Profile

This report allows users to view basic job information such as business title, empl class, department, hours as well as service information for any active employee at the university.

Users can run 2 reports:

• Current Jobs Only: This report shows all current, active jobs (empl status A, L, P, S) when the "Show Current Jobs Only" checkbox is checked.
• All Jobs Report: This report shows all job rows (previous, current and future) when the "Show Current Jobs Only" checkbox is not checked.

Suggested Run Times:

• When hiring an employee who may have another job at Harvard.
• To view previous jobs an employee held at Harvard.

If you have unmet reporting needs please contact Ana Bard at 496-0166 or via email.

For other questions or concerns please contact the HUIT Helpdesk at 496-2001 or dls@harvard.edu.

HUBS: New Business Rules Enhance the Budget Submission Process

With the budgeting season in full swing, we are mindful that the budget submission times are not too far away. To facilitate the submission process the HUBS Team has created four new business rules for the Tub Finance Office (TFO). The TFO no longer needs to contact hubs@harvard.edu to request HUBS Administrators to make the submission copies - the new rules allow the TFO to make the copies themselves. The TFO should note, however, that they will still need to contact hubs@harvard.edu, as usual, to schedule the copy of the data to Oracle Financials and Harvard's Data Warehouse.

The new business rules submit the data in HUBS by copying the following scenario-versions:

1. Business Rule BRBC185: Copies current year Plan-Working to current year Plan-Q2 Forecast
2. Business Rule BRBC186: Copies next year Plan-Working to next year Budget-Tub Submission
3. Business Rule BRBC187: Copies next year Plan-Working to next year Budget-Final
4. Business Rule BRBC188: Copies next year Plan-Working to next year Budget-Corporation

The TFO may execute each rule whenever they are ready. Each rule has only one prompt: Tub-Org, and a child or parent Tub-Org may be selected. Although typically department submissions are done at the same time, in which case the TFO selects the parent Tub-Org, the child level selection is helpful for adjustments. For example, once all Budget-Tub Submissions are copied in HUBS, the TFO often reviews the submissions and this can result in changes for some departments. In this case the departments can make the changes in Plan-Working and the TFO can then run the business rule again, but by selecting the child Tub-Orgs they can run the rule only for departments with changes.

Finally, each rule not only copies the data, but it first clears the scenario-version to which to the copy is being made - known as the target - and then aggregates the data in the target after the data is copied. A submission that was previously accomplished by HUBS Administrators in three rules - clear, copy and aggregate - is now accomplished by the TFO in one business rule.

The rules will be released in HUBS by the end of the month. Please send any questions to hubs@harvard.edu.

HCOM Training Now Available in Cambridge and Longwood Campuses

December 2011 saw the successful completion of the Harvard Crimson Online Marketplace (HCOM) application across the University. The Center for Workplace Development is pleased to announce that, beginning in February, 2012, two training classes per month will be offered for the HCOM procurement application. One class will be held at the CWD office located at 124 Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge, third floor, and another will be offered in the Longwood Medical Area, in either SPH's Kresge building, Room 209 or at the Countway Library at the Harvard Medical School.

As an HCOM Shopper, you will learn how to shop in our online Marketplace, place an order outside of the Marketplace, process invoice payments and how to create payments for honoria, bank and wire drafts, etc. Shoppers will also learn how to receive items in HCOM and handle returns, as well as finding out the status of HCOM payments to vendors, invoice holds and using HCOM reports. If you are an HCOM Approver, you will learn how to approve, edit, reject, request more information about and forward requisitions, as well as how to set up vacation rules, shared worklists, and how to run HCOM audit reports.

Staff can sign up using PeopleSoft's self-service registration. Please contact training@harvard.edu if you have any questions or concerns.

Upcoming Releases

FINDINI Release Schedule

A software release to the Oracle Financial Applications, known as a "FINDINI release", is done every two to four months. Each upgrade introduces needed bug fixes, enhancements, and technical upgrades into Harvard's financial systems. Generally, releases are performed on weekends to assure maximum availability during the business week. Most outages occur from 6 pm Friday evening-6 am Monday morning.

The next FINDINI release, 3.2.17, is tentatively scheduled for the March 2012. Details will be provided in an upcoming issue of e-News.

The Oracle Financial Applications are:

CREW FIN Releases

The Common Reporting Environment for the Warehouse (CREW) is a reporting system that draws data from a variety of sources which are updated on a nightly basis. Users can submit report requests for immediate processing or schedule reports to automatically run on a recurring basis. Types of CREW reports include financial, budget, receivables, HR management, benefits, costing, payroll, pension, security, grants management, and sponsored reports.

The next CREW FIN release, 3.2.17, is tentatively scheduled for March 2012. Details will be provided in an upcoming issue of e-News.

HR (PeopleSoft)

PeopleSoft will be upgrading to Version 9.1 in April 2012. Details will be provided in an upcoming issue of e-News.

CREW HR Release 32

The next PeopleSoft Release (HR 32) is tentatively scheduled for May 2012. Please see article 1 for outage information.

The CREW HR 32.0 Release is tentatively scheduled for December 2011. Details will be provided in an upcoming issue of e-News.

CREW Reports

In addition to the CREW Financial and CREW HR releases which correspond with the FINDINI and HR releases listed above, changes and enhancements to new and existing CREW reports are also released the 3rd weekend of each month.

Release Number	Dates	Notes
7.13	1/20/2012

Sponsored Systems Releases

• GMAS release (1_30) was deployed over the weekend of November 19, 2011. Please see the Release Notes for more information.
• The HIRBERT release was deployed on September 30, 2011. Please see the October 2011 e-News for more information.

HUBS Releases

The Harvard University Budgeting Sytems (HUBS) is a set of web-based Oracle Hyperion Planning applications used for budget data entry, estimates, annotations, reporting, and submission associated with the annual budget and planning cycles.

HUBS has been upgraded from Version 9.3.1 to Version 11.1.2.1 on Wednesday, November 16, 2011. Please see the November 2011 e-News for more information.