Operational Excellence in Effort ReportingConference Call: March 21, 2012

Vision Statement:Implement a compliant, streamlined, electronic effort reporting process by June 2012 that reduces administrative burden.

Agenda

Topic

Phase 1 System Testing Issues Anne Connolly

Campus Feedback: Phase 1 System Testing Campus Team

Extra Service Donna Kiley

IFR/Cost Sharing Department Mark Abbey

Testing Timeline and Objectives Anne Connolly

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Phase 1 System Testing Issues

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Issue Cause SolutionMissing principal investigators (self-certifiers)

There was an issue uploading the certifier file to ecrt and the work around was to create an “Exclusion Department.” The missing people were placed in that department.

There will not be an exclusion department in the upcoming testing phases. All PIs should be listed.

Self-certifiers with effort more than 100 percent

This occurs when rounding effort statements to whole numbers—particularly when a setting is in place to round effort up to 1 percent.

Campus may decide to round to the hundredths instead of whole numbers.

Attachments1.No effort coordinator task created2.Not able to upload Word or Excel file

1. There was an issue with the Attachment functionality.

2. You are not able to upload non-image files to ecrt as a security precaution to prevent malware.

1. The effort coordinator task issue was fixed for the Phase 2 System Testing environment.

2. Training/user help materials will include instructions that attachments must be in gif, jpg, tiff or PDF format.

Payroll Report A software upgrade to the TEST environment causes the Payroll Report to load slowly or not at all.

This issue will be resolved for the Phase 2 System Testing

Payroll suspense items Current RF process Central office is still researching payroll suspense and this will be a discussion item on a future call

Campus Feedback: Phase 1 System Testing

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CNSE University at Albany Binghamton University University at Buffalo Stony Brook University Upstate Medical University SUNY Downstate Medical Center SUNY ESF SUNY New Paltz Buffalo State College

Extra Service: Current Process

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Employee Type Earnings Element Expenditure Type Oracle Effort Statement

RF employee Extra Service RF • SWR Regular Exempt Extra Serv

• SWS Summer Exempt Extra Serv

Not Included

SUNY IFR employee

Period Salary 1 • SWR Regular Exempt Extra Serv

• SWS Summer Exempt Extra Serv

Included *

* Extra service payments are manually removed to correct the Oracle effort reports

Extra Service Discussion

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Discussion item Is incidental work the same as extra service? Is extra service different than individual’s base duties (different job)? Is it incidental when extra service payments can be up to 20 percent

of an individual’s salary?

OMB Circular A-21, Section J.10.a Compensation for incidental work is not required to be included in the system utilized to report effort provided such work is separately identified and documented in the institution's financial

management system.

Extra Service

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If we do not certify extra service: Both employee types would be handled in the same manner The ecrt data feed would be modified to exclude the extra service

expenditure types Effort reporting policy would be updated

If we do certify extra service: Both employee types would be handled in the same manner The ecrt data feed would be modified Effort reporting policy would be updated ecrt offers supplemental effort statement functionality

Extra Service: ecrt Solution

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Base effort statement Statement for an individual’s institutional base salary Extra service charges would not be included for RF or SUNY IFR

employees SWR Regular Exempt Extra Serv SWS Summer Exempt Extra Serv

Non-IBS effort statement Supplemental statement for an RF or SUNY IFR employee’s extra

service SWR Regular Exempt Extra Service SWS Summer Exempt Extra Serv expenditure

Would not include institutional base salary Nonsponsored activity would be auto-processed

For example: Extra service payments from RF-Funded accounts

IFR/Cost Sharing Department

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The issue: SUNY employees are assigned to the “SUNY IFR Cost Sharing”

department in the Oracle people file SUNY employees have a “No Job Required” job title SUNY-monthly employees are included in this department in

ecrt during the academic year when their salary charges are reimbursed to SUNY via the income fund reimbursable process Required Oracle set up for SUNY payroll processing

SUNY-monthly employees that are paid by the RF during the summer will show up in their regular department in ecrt for that period

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Oracle HR Assignment Form/Flexfield

IFR/Cost Sharing Department

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Proposed solution:

Leverage the assignment flexfield to capture department and job title information

Flexfield would be made accessible to all campus locations

Scope of Work

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Estimated Timeline

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Collecting e-mail addresses, department assignments and job titles for SUNY staff

Updated ecrt Timeline

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3/1/2012 6/30/2012

4/1/2012 5/1/2012 6/1/2012

3/26/2012 - 4/9/2012Phase 2 Testing

4/16/2012 - 4/30/2012Phase 3 Testing

5/7/2012 - 5/21/2012User Acceptance Testing

6/1/2012ecrt Production

Environment Live

6/15/2012Pre Review for

Spring 2012 Begins

5/21/2012 - 6/30/2012End User Training

3/5/2012 - 3/19/2012Phase 1 Testing

Phase 2 System Testing

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Phase 2 March 26 – April 9 Anticipate sending testing package

on Friday, March 23 Resolution of Phase 1 issues

There will be NO exclusion department

New test scripts Effort coordinator assignments based

on campus input More user management 3 employee types: SUNY-Monthly,

RF-Biweekly and RF-Non Exempt employees

March 2012

Sun Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat

18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31

April 2012

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Phase 3 System Testing

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Phase 3 April 16 - 30 Resolution of Phase 2 issues Will include:

Committed effort Fall 2011 – March 2012 data Actual department names instead of

SUNY IFR/Cost Sharing Campus-specific changes and

configurations Instructions for retroactive payroll

distributions More refined effort coordinator roles

and assignments

April 2012

Sun Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30

User Acceptance Testing

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UAT May 7 - 21 Resolution of Phase 3 issues Will walk through the entire ecrt

workflow process Refined assignments for Effort

Coordinators, Self-Certifiers, Proxies E-mail testing All data should represent what will

be in the production environment

May 2012

Sun Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat

1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31

Summary

Minutes from this meeting will be posted on the

Operational Excellence in Effort Reporting Web page

Direct questions to:Anne ConnollyProject Manageranne.connolly@rfsuny.org(518) 434-7240

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