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and DHHS
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LOGIN
TO BEACON
Wednesday, April 30, 2008:
- PAYROLL TECHNICIANS:
Please check all your separations that
were paid PRE SAP vacation, bonus and/or partial
longevity pay outs. We have some that
were paid out their terminal leave by BEACON
as well as US. These will be a salary overpayment
that will need to be collected. A message has
been sent to BEACON; an answer on handling these
cases is forthcoming.
Monday, April 28, 2008:
- Payroll Update! Wednesday is
the largest wave 2 BEACON payroll to date, and
we want DHHS division/facility/school HR offices
to be prepared for any issues that may arise.
Hard copy Remittance Advices
(pay stubs) will be sent as usual to each location.
They are being printed at the DHHS Ruggles facility
as we speak. They will be sent by courier in
time for distribution on the 30th. The advices
are sorted by employee name and org unit number
which appears in the address window of the envelope.
That process is being handled by DIRM in conjunction
with the Controller's office.
BEACON will run an off-cycle payroll
on the afternoon of April 30th to cover problem
areas, but requests for this process must come
from Central HR. Please send an e-mail to your
central office analyst with the specific information
on your situation. Please copy me (paula.woodhouse@ncmail.net)
on that e-mail. We will batch the request list
and forward that to BEACON. If the off cycle
payroll does not cover the issues, the next
step will be for you to follow the DHHS agency
check request process.
We are considering the following to
be the highest priority requests:
-- Employees who are not paid.
-- Employees who do not receive their correct
base salary.
-- Short term disability payment issues.
-- New hires not put in the system in time for
payroll.
Any issue related to on-call, shift
premium and other incentive pay programs
will be corrected for May payroll.
We appreciate everyone's cooperation as we move
toward Wednesday. Thanks for all you do!
P.S. BEACON is still working on the
March longevity with multiple funding
sources. It should be resolved in the off cycle
payroll on Wednesday.
Friday, April 25, 2008:
- In preparation for the final April monthly payroll
processing, no time or payroll transactions
will be allowed to be conducted in the system
from 6 p.m. April 24, through close of business
April 25. Full functionality will be available
beginning at 7 a.m. on Monday, April 28.
- The payroll
calendar is on the BEST Shared Services site.
Print it; understand it; plan your staffing around
key dates. Do not wait until the last minute to
submit forms.
- Please attach notes for OM and PA actions;
OSP is looking for these notes. If it is a pay
issue, attach your notes to the Basic Pay Infotype
(0008).
- When you are typing in free text notes
on a record, use sentence case with proper capitalization.
Do not use ALL CAPS or all lower case.
- Remember; in workflow, if you
click on the "Workflow Item Complete" button,
you are simply closing out workflow and removing
this item from your workflow folder. It is a good
practice to complete the PA or OM action first
and then return to the workflow folder to mark
that item completed.
Thursday, April 24, 2008:
- This is a clarification from the Time
Team at BEACON. Some of our agencies
opted to send only premium time for March through
the end of their work week prior to April 1st.
For some this was the 25th of March and others
another workday. Time worked after this date was
entered into the SAP timekeeping system so that
overtime worked would be calculated through the
April days ending the workweek.
The problem is that the period that is used
to calculate OT extends into March and the Go-Live
date is 1 April. ALL PAY associated
with March will have to be entered as Pre-SAP
wage types. In order to calculate OT
at the end of the OT calculation period (as
identified on the Planned Working Time record
for the employee in the "Working Week"
field) the time worked in March must be captured.
This time will NOT be paid in BEACON. ONLY OT
calculated will be paid in BEACON. (example:
Your workweek is March 26th through April 1st.
The employee worked: 26th-15 hrs, 27th-15 hrs,
28th-15hrs, 31sdt-8 hrs, April 1st 8 hours.
The employee will be paid for 8 hours of overtime
by BEACON since the system calculates 53 hours
worked as of March 31st, April 1st making it
61 hours worked (with the time worked entries
made in March). If the employee earned any shift,
on-call, extended duty, etc. for those days,
this will need to be submitted to the DHHS Payroll
Tech along with any OT payable as of March 31st.
This will be paid as PRE SAP wages on the May
30 payroll. In the example listed above, BEACON
would pay the employee for 8 hours of OT and
the additional 13 hours of OT would need to
be submitted to the DHHS Payroll Tech to be
paid on the May 30 payroll.
- Process the workflow as of 4/1/08,
and once it has been completely approved and processed,
use transaction code [PA41] to change the date
of the action to the previous date in March as
appropriate. This will not be a normal process,
but can be used to change the date of an action
after it has been processed (you can't change
the date of an action in PA40). This must be done
prior to the cutoff tomorrow night for payroll,
or it won't make it in the system in time. Also,
if there are any PCR's which were approved but
not processed with a date prior to 3/8/08 or 4/1/08,
they must be cancelled by the Initiator, and re-created
with a date of 4/1/08.
- If back payments for the months of January,
February, or March have to be made now
in April for WAVE 2 agencies, they must be manually
calculated and a special Pre-SAP wagetype must
be created by agency Payroll in order to be paid.
My misunderstanding was in thinking Payroll processing
#2 meant that BEST Payroll had to process it,
but they've told me it's the Agency payroll team
who has to process it. I'm very sorry I gave the
team incorrect information. I'll also be sending
this information to our trainers so they can provide
the updated information in the transition centers.
BEACON is the system of record as of April 1
and PMIS is the system of record for March. The
last payroll from Central Payroll went out March
31. It now important to keep BEACON up to date.
Time and Payroll walls have been put in place
so that nothing is automatically processed for
WAVE 2 prior to April 1.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008:
- New reports were recently added to the
Manager Self Service portion of the BEACON
portal. These reports act as a supplement to MSS
Time Approval by allowing managers to, among other
things, monitor all working times entered into
ESS by direct reports, reconcile previously approved
times and identify time that has been saved, but
not yet submitted for approval. For more information
on these reports and how to use them, visit the
BEACON Help site at
http://help.mybeacon.nc.gov/beaconhelp/MSS%20User.html
- HR Master Data Maintainers, Time Administrators
and Leave Administrators
Part of the transition to BEACON included adding
Group Two agency employees’ total months
of state service into the system. To do this,
Infotype 0552 records were created in BEACON to
identify the number of months of total state service
that employees had worked as of February 29, 2008.
The time evaluation process used by BEACON credited
all Group Two agency employees with their March
service credit, with the exception of those employees
who had been marked as inactive or who had “leave
without pay” time records in March.
Since Infotype 0552 records were only meant to
capture Group Two agency employees’ service
credit through the end of February, these records
will not be updated moving forward. However, this
infotype will remain available to verify an employee’s
length of service record through February 2008
as calculated in PMIS.
Now that we are live in BEACON, HR Master Data
Maintainers, Time Administrators and Leave Administrators
will use transaction PT_BAL00 with selection variant
LENGTH OF SERVICE to create a report that displays
an employee’s total months of state service.
This transaction pulls from Time Type 9000 (Length
of Service), which, on the last day of each month,
captures the total number of months of state service
credited to an employee.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008:
In an effort to address department recruitment
needs, local HR offices may continue using PMJobs
to post vacancies which cannot be accommodated
by SAP (i.e continuous recruitment classes and
pending budget approval positions). However, all
HR offices are being asked to begin posting your
vacancy announcements in SAP (as your internal
operational needs allow) with the goal of fully
transitioning to the SAP posting process by July
1, 2008.
Position Vacancy Posting Updates:
- SAP has been fixed so all jobs display
under the appropriate division/facility/school.
Job seekers can search for openings under all
categories.
- BEST is unable to accommodate
the request for data integration of contact address
information. HR staff will be responsible for
populating the "mailing address" fields
using PO13 transaction code. This address must
be entered for each position posted in order for
contact address to appear within the announcement.
3. SAP will not capture fax number. For offices
who accept faxed applications, the fax number
can be entered as text within the body of the
posting.
- Incorrect County names has been fixed.
(as fyi: county name pulls from the county assigned
to the position; and the city name pulls from
the HR contact mailing address)
5. RIF priority registry will not be tracked in
SAP system, except for date of written RIF notice
to employee and date of RIF separation action.
Current PMIS Priority Registry process is under
review by OSP. Henceforth, HR offices shall continue
to give priority consideration to any RIF applicants
with proper certification who apply for a posted
position. However, you may discontinue checking
the PMREG for each posted position.
Pending Issues:
- Text Limitations in "How to Apply"
- Identification of Division Name for job seekers
(current codification is not understandable)
Special Note: For critical recruitment
situations only, and with approval from Class/Comp
and Recruitment Section Chiefs, you may establish
dummy numbers and use PMJobs to post positions
"pending reallocation /funding approval".
Please use following 15-digit numbering format
to establish your dummy position numbers: Agency
identifier [44-XX], followed by zeros, and ending
with the 5-digit schematic code (ex. Physician
Extender II at Dix Hospital would be #4462-0000-0000-4890]
Monday, April 21, 2008:
- Employee access to enter time:
If the employee in your division/facility/school
is not able to access ESS to enter their time,
or to access MSS to approve time for employees,
please have the employee contact Marilyn Ragan
or Judith Rounds. BEST Shared Services (BSS) will
be forwarding any employee from DHHS with time
access issues to Marilyn or Judith who in turn
will complete the role change form for BSS. Turnaround
time for access is about 5 days. This will be
the process for the next two months. We will then
delegate this function to your office. We have
requested that the new hire process accommodate
the ESS/MSS designation through the PA 30 function,
but that will require a programming change.
- As of April 17th, DHHS had started
940 actions in the BEACON system. 570
were complete, 84 were in budget (funding approver)
inboxes and 140 were waiting for further action
by the initiator/approver using the PA 40 function.
It appears that many of our staff are not going
in at the back end of workflow to finalize the
action through the PA 40 function. This is just
a reminder to complete that step.
- The funding approver role is
no longer required on actions which separate an
employee. We specifically requested this and BEACON
has accommodated this request for our agency.
- We have requested that the division/facility/
school name be a new field in the BEACON system.
The HHS SO etc. string of characters used currently
is not understood except in the OM function (and
even then it's tricky). We have asked for this
program change, but it may take some time before
it's available.
- We have discovered that only the division
approver can set the priority level for actions,
so please use ask your division approvers to change
the priority level of the action in workflow to
the designated numbers given to you in our last
meeting/e-mail to indicate which central office
analyst needs to open the item in workflow.
- We have asked BEACON to add the division/facility/school
name field to the inbox feature.
- PMJobs will be available until
SAP can accommodate the posting of a position
that has not been created yet in workflow. We
have requested that feature be added to SAP.
- PMJobs has been fixed and
should now be showing your postings in all appropriate
locations on the web site.
Friday, April 18, 2008:
- The BEACON portal will be unavailable beginning
7 p.m. today, April 18, through Monday, April
21, at 6 a.m. This information will also be posted
on the BEACON portal home page.
- The deadline for submitting March time entries
to the BEACON HR/Payroll project team is this
Friday, April 18. Agencies that do not submit
this data by the deadline will be responsible
for calculating any differentials and doing a
pre-SAP wage type entry.
- Some Group Two agency employee's Community Service
Leave balances are still being loaded into the
system and should be finalized early next week.
- See Thursday, April 17, 2008 announcements
for information on quota balances and workflow.
Thursday, April 17, 2008:
- Personnel Actions in BEACON for WAVE 2 agencies
cannot be dated any earlier than March 8 for bi-weeklies
and April 1 for monthlies. If your agency has
actions effective earlier than those two dates,
they should be entered effective March 8 or April
1 with appropriate comments providing the actual
date of action. A transport has been released
to stop any PA Workflow from being created prior
to 3/8/08 for bi-weekly and 4/1/08 for monthly
WAVE 2 agencies.
If you have PCR's in process that have not been
approved with effective dates prior to those above,
the initiator should ask that they be returned
so that the date can be changed and re-initiated.
Approved PCR's can also be canceled and new ones
created. This decision has been carefully weighed;
but in the final analysis, it is important to
protect the current payroll and time functions
of the system.
This applies if you have PCR's with effective
dates prior to March 8 or April 1. If any of these
outstanding actions create salary payments prior
to April 1, they will have to be calculated and
added as a pre-SAP payment. A general announcement
will also be going out from the project team communications
staff, but we wanted to get this information to
you as quickly as possible to meet the payroll
deadline.
- Initial quota balances received from the Wave
2 agencies were loaded into BEACON on 4/14/08
and 4/15/08. Time Evaluation processing for April
should be up-to-date by 4/17/08. Agencies should
review their employees' balances for missing or
incorrect values. BEACON loaded what was sent
by the agencies, but in some cases these numbers
may not have been correct or balances were missing
for some employees. Some values sent by the agencies
could not be loaded and BEACON personnel will
be contacting the agencies about these situations.
Employees affected by these situations will not
see correct quota balances until corrections are
processed.
Any quota corrections required for comp time quotas
(OT, Holiday, or On-Call Comp) should be sent
to BEST for processing. Although Leave Administrators
can select the comp time quota types when creating
an infotype 2013 Quota Correction record, this
will not create the appropriate agency records
needed for comp time. The BEACON Production Support
Team will have to process these corrections. Quota
corrections for other quotas can be processed
by Leave Administrators. Balances sent to BEACON
for Vacation, Sick, Bonus and etc quotas were
loaded effective 4/1/08. Leave Administrators
can change these records if necessary.
Missing quota balances can be added by creating
an infotype 2013 record for the appropriate quota
type, dated 4/1/08. Remember not to create more
than one 2013 with the same start date for the
same quota type. Quota balances will be updated
when Time Evaluation runs again - usually overnight.
Any Community Service Leave balances sent by the
agencies were not loaded as part of conversion.
CSL quotas of 24 hours were given to employees
instead. If Leave Administrators know that an
employee has already used some of their CSL this
year, a quota correction record can be entered
to reduce the balance. This quota correction record
should be dated 4/1/08.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008:
- We have been informed by Beacon this morning
that leave balances for comp time and community
service hours did not upload appropriately and
they are still working on them. Please do not
make any transactional changes to leave balances
for comp time or community service hours unless
you have been specifically asked by Phil Harker
to correct actions. As we receive more information
from Beacon, we will pass it on to you.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008:
- The BEACON security team is still receiving
a high number of security role change requests
every day. The security request backlog is currently
at approximately three days but the team is working
diligently to try to process all of your requests
within 48 hours. However, since they are already
backlogged and about 25 to 35 requests come in
every day, it may take up to five days for your
request to be completed.
- Organizational changes after 6pm on March 20th
cannot be put into the new BEACON-SAP system until
May 1. Central Human Resources is reconciling
organizational changes with Best Shared Services
that were put into the PMIS system before and
on March 20th which either were not uploaded by
the new BEACON-SAP system or were not uploaded
appropriately.
An "organizational change" for the
purpose of this communication is the change of
a position's supervisor from one supervisory position
to another. As you are aware, the new BEACON-SAP
system allocates leave requests and time approval
based on supervisory relationships.
Monday, April 14, 2008:
- When doing the cross agency verification report,
the user needs to enter the employee's last name
in CAPS.
Friday, April 11, 2008:
- For those who did not meet yesterday's temporary
payroll deadline, please enter your time by 4:00
pm today. If you are unable to meet this deadline,
please e-mail your central office analyst.
- Monthly payroll cut-off is Friday, April 18th.
- Central HR will send a letter to division directors
requesting a temporary delay in organizational
changes until we are stabilized in our current
structure for April payroll.
- Effective immediately, please do not process
any more supervisory changes using ZOMA 069 action
type 124. Beacon will be returning (rejecting)
all of these actions back to you. Please use ZOMA
069 action type 113 - Position Transfer instead
when changing an employee from one supervisor
to another.
- Employees who are eligible for extended duty
should use code 9510 to record their extended
duty hours. If a regular exempt employee works
over his/her normal schedule, he/she should use
9500 for the hours in excess of normal hours.
- Definition of Attendance/Absence codes:
9510 is 'Restricted to use by certain medical
classes to record hours worked beyond regularly
scheduled hours.'
- 9500 is 'Used to record hours worked including
regular hours, additional hours and time worked
on a holiday.'
- When sending actions through workflow, please
place the number assigned to your central office
analyst in the priority column for all actions.
- Harker - 2
- Spinelli - 3
- Barnes - 4
- Zeinstra - 6
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DHHS
Division of Human Resources
2001 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-2001
Phone: 919.733.2940
Dix Campus Map
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