System Information

Issue
Beginning in the January 2021 accounting period, vacation and other leave taken for some members of the Health Sciences Compensation Plan (HSCP) were charged to the default distribution established using the blank/catch-all chartstring (often times indicated using Project ID 2222222) instead of to the distributions established for HSR/HSP/HSN components of pay.

In addition, salary offsets for the leave earnings were applied only against HSR earnings and not distributed across funding for all components of pay.

Root Cause
Several defects have been identified in the Prior Period Leave Redistribution program since it was implemented in January 2021. Although it works well for most employees (single position and funding source), these defects are exacerbated when an employee has multiple positions or components of pay.

For Health Sciences Compensation Plan (HSCP) faculty whose funding was entered using the Salary Cap/MCOP Funding Worksheet:

• Their positions were skipped during the prior period leave redistribution process and leave transactions on the paycheck were charged to the blank/catch-all chartstring established on the MCOP Funding Worksheet.
• In addition, salary offsets for “REG-like” earnings were applied only against HSR earnings and were not distributed across funding for all components (HSN and HSP) of pay.

It is important to note that these issues affect the financial recording of pay and leave but not the amount of pay or leave for the employee.

Issue Status
Update November 9, 2022
The Enhanced MLC development was moved to production at the end of October 2022, and the UCPath Center immediately began running the program. Below is a schedule of when the MLC will run to correct transactions skipped by the Paid Leave Redistribution program between January 2021 and February 2022. These transactions are identified on the Distribution of Payroll Expense (DPE) Report with a Direct Retro ID value beginning with “MLC”.

Update October 13, 2022
The development on the Enhanced MLC is on target to complete October 2022.  Locations are reviewing the fixes for the identified defects and will provide sign-off by the end of the month.The participating locations will then be scheduled for MLC runs between November 2022 and January 2023. We will provide additional updates once we know where UCSF has been placed in the schedule.

In July of 2021, the UCPath Center ran a Mass Leave Correction (MLC) to correct the way that leave was distributed across funding for pay end dates between March and June 2021. March corrections posted to the July 2021 UCSF General Ledger, and April through June corrections posted to the August 2021 UCSF General Ledger. These transactions are identified on the Distribution of Payroll Expense (DPE) Report with a Direct Retro ID value beginning with “MLC”. In some cases, the MLC corrections resulted in incorrect adjustments moving salary across earning dates and incorrect effort percentage calculations. We anticipate this month that we will receive corrections to this MLC run. The transaction with the incorrect Earnings End Date will be reversed an will be replaced with a transaction containing the correct Earnings End Date. This correction may still result in incorrect hours or effort percentages when summarizing by Earnings End Date.

Update August 11, 2022
Development is underway to fix the last identified defect which impacts the effort percentage on the Mass Leave Correction (MLC) transaction lines. We expect the UCPath Center to complete development by mid-August, after which location user acceptance testing can continue.

Update July 12, 2022
The Mass Leave Correction (MLC) continues to be delayed in order to resolve the identified defects.  The UCPath Center has developed corrections for 4 of 5 identified defects. As a next step, UCSF and other participating UC locations will revalidate the results. Once campus locations agree to the new results, the MLC processing will be scheduled and a timeline communicated.  It is our best estimate that the MLC will run no sooner than mid-August.

Update June 6, 2022
The UCPath Center delayed the timeline for running the Mass Leave Correction (MLC) process originally scheduled to be completed before fiscal year-end.  Testing of the improved MLC process with campus locations in May 2022 identified unresolved defects that require correction, including:

• The processing of checks that do not require any correction to the leave distribution and offset lines
• The assignment of incorrect earnings period end dates to distribution lines resulting in total earnings for an earnings period to become inflated (over 100% effort) or deflated (less than 100% effort) on the Distribution of Payroll Expense (DPE) reports

Campus locations agreed to delay the MLC process until these defects are resolved by the UCPath Center. A timeline will be communicated once available.

Update May 10, 2022
At the end of March 2022, the UCPath Center implemented the last in a series of improvements to the Prior Period Leave Redistribution program aimed at eliminating the programmatic defects we have experienced with leave redistribution since January 2021. As a result of these improvements, there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of skipped positions. March 2022 monthly payroll processing resulted in only 16 faculty positions skipped. While some circumstances will always result in skipped positions, we consider this defect to be resolved for future payroll processing.

In order to determine how to correct leave transactions already recorded in the General Ledger, department finance managers and UCPath transactors need to review positions skipped by the leave redistribution process and identify transactions to be corrected. Paychecks with incorrect leave distribution and salary offsets can be corrected in two ways:

• Manual correction using a salary cost transfer (Direct Retro)
• Automated correction by the UCPath Center using the Mass Leave Correction (MLC) process

A subcommittee of the UCSF UCPath Customer Advisory Board has developed guidance and reports to help UCPath transactors and department finance managers identify leave transactions that require correction and determine whether to make a manual correction or wait for the Mass Leave Correction process. This guidance was emailed to current UCPath salary cost transactors on May 10, 2022 and reviewed during the May 11 office hours session.

• Review the guidance document (MyAccess login required)
• Watch a recording of the May 11, 2022 office hours session (MyAccess login required)

If you need further assistance, contact the Controller’s Office Solution Center  .

Issue
Transactors receive the following warning message when entering the Direct Retro MCOP worksheet from within the Direct Retro online page:

Incorrect Annual & Prorated Annual CAP RATE for Cap_Type:     (32008,575)
To correct “prorated annual & monthly” cap rates, please updated “annual cap rate” in new “Data Section”.

This warning message notifies transactors to reset the cap rate values within the Direct Retro MCOP worksheet “New Data” section because the system is unable to calculate the correct values.

Mitigation Plan
Manually reset the cap rate value for each distribution line in the “New Data” section:

1. Clear out the existing annual cap rate value.  The value may appear as an inflated dollar amount.
2. Update the annual cap rate value based on the employee’s compensation and pay group:

• If the employee’s annualized salary at 1.0 FTE is below the annual cap rate OR the employee is an hourly employee, leave the annual cap rate field blank.
• If the employee’s annualized salary at 1.0 FTE is over the annual cap rate, reenter the correct annualized cap rate by selecting from the drop down list.

3. Confirm that the prorated monthly cap rate field recalculates a monthly capped dollar amount based on the employee’s reduced FTE.

After completing the steps above, continue to enter effort percent changes to individual distribution lines. If you need further assistance, contact the Controller’s Office Solution Center.

Issue Status
This defect will be corrected during the UCPath project to Rewrite Salary Cost Transfer (SCT) Transaction Pages, scheduled for release in November 2022.

Issue
A new defect appeared in the October 2021 monthly labor ledger where vacation (or other leave earnings) distribution lines and corresponding “Reg-like” offsetting lines do not have equal and opposite hours and effort percent, as expected.

As an example, the distribution of 8 hours of VAC earnings to a chartstring are expected to result in -8 hours of REG earnings to the same chartstring.  The debit and credit for effort percent should also be equal and opposite. This defect is causing the “Reg-like” offset hours and effort percent to be slightly different. In this example, when reporting 8 hours of VAC earnings, the offsetting hours for REG are not equal to -8.

When running the Distribution of Payroll Expense Report (DPE) by earnings end date, the effort percent and hours will be slightly off, and totals are not accurate. Paycheck amounts are not impacted.

Update December 15, 2021
This defect is also impacting the on-cycle total hours and effort percentages for the same population of checks that have the paid leave reported and incorrect offsetting lines.

If an MCOP employee was skipped by the prior period leave redistribution process you will not encounter this defect.  If an employee’s leave was distributed correctly by the prior period leave redistribution process you will see the incorrect hours and effort percentages on the DPE.

Mitigation Plan
If the defect is present, use the amounts shown on the Salary Cap/MCOP Worksheet to determine the transfer amounts, rather than the DPE.

Resolution
Update March 31, 2022
The defect was partially resolved with the posting of the February labor ledger, reducing by 80% the number of incorrect leave offset transaction lines. This issue is expected to be fully resolved with the posting of the March labor ledger. The effort to clean up historical transactions on the October 2021 through February 2022 labor ledgers is still under analysis by the UCPath Center and is not yet scheduled for release.

Issue
Funding Entry Initiators and Salary Cost Transfer Initiators receive an error when creating funding distribution lines using Funds 4300 and 4301 in the following cases:

Case 1. When setting up Z-payments to fund flat dollar amounts, users receive the error message: Z payments can only be distributed to compensation plan funds.

Root Cause
UCPath has been configured with an error message that will prevent Funding Entry Initiators and Salary Cost Transfer Initiators from entering funding distributions for Z payments using a sponsored Fund or Project. The configuration is in compliance with UCOP Policy AM-P196-37: Payroll: Health Sciences Compensation. See Section VII of the policy, Charges to Extramural Funds.

Resolution
The error configuration is working as designed. Read more about this announcement on the Controller's Office website.

Case 2. When setting up over the cap (OTC-Y) funding, users receive the error message: Over The Cap cannot be distributed to capped federal or federal flow through funds.

Root Cause
UCPath restricts the use of sponsored projects as a funding source for over-the-cap salary.  In order for a cost to be directly charged to a project, it must be identified as benefiting the project that is paying for that cost. Over-the-cap salary cannot be charged to any other contract or grant fund because it is not benefiting any other sponsored project but the project where the salary cap is imposed. It will not pass the “benefit test” referenced in the UCOP Contract and Grant Manual for 6-500 Allowability of Costs or 6-532 Allocable Costs.

Resolution
UCPath will return the error for both funding entry and salary cost transfer transactions. If you feel that a private sponsored fund does allow for the charging of over-the-cap salary from a federally sponsored award, please submit support from the award that specifically confirms the allowability of these costs to CGA Compliance to [email protected].

Issue
During funding entry, Funding Entry Initiators receive a message indicating that "the position entered is not eligible for budget definition within the specified begin date." Initiators are unable to save and submit funding.

Root Cause
Errors during budget data loads may result in missing budget data for specific positions. Funding cannot be entered when corresponding budget year data are missing.

Resolution
If Funding Entry Initiators experience this issue in the future, log a ticket with the Controller's Office Solution Center for further assistance with this issue.

Issue
In some cases when a salary cost transfer is performed on a biweekly paycheck, the effort percent and percent of pay for the transaction are miscalculated or not calculated. As a result, the total effort percent and percent of pay are also incorrect on the Distribution of Payroll Expense (DPE) report. Note that in these cases, the dollar amount and hours are correct.

Root Cause
This issue is under investigation by the UCPath Center.

Issue
The Percent of Effort displayed in the Distribution of Payroll Expense (DPE) Report does not accurately reflect the percent of effort for some earnings distribution lines resulting from salary cost transfers onto capped funding sources. Earnings Amounts and Percent of Pay are accurately reflected in the DPE.

Root Cause
The incorrect calculations are being generated in UCPath and are due to an upstream defect in the General Ledger data. This issue is under investigation by the UCPath Center.

Mitigation Plan
To manually calculate the correct effort percent for each capped funding source, sum the N-OTC Percent of Pay and the Y-OTC Percent of Pay on the earnings distribution lines for the funding source. For example, adding the Percent of Pay from the N-OTC001 up to the cap distribution line to the Percent of Pay from the corresponding Y-OTC001 over the cap distribution line will equal the Percent of Effort for the capped funding source indicated on the N-OTC001 distribution line.

If you need further assistance, contact the Controller’s Office Solution Center.