No employee is permitted to begin work without completing the proper paperwork and notifying the Dean’s Business Office.  The Business Office cannot back-pay individuals who did not receive prior approval to begin work.

In order for a new monthly employee to receive a paycheck in time for the 1st of the following month, payroll paperwork should be processed before approximately the 14th of each month.

All additional compensation requests must be preapproved by the Dean and Provost’s Office before commitments are made to the employee and before the employee provides the service.

BCB discourages over-time pay for our non-exempt (biweekly paid) employees because of budgetary constraints.  Compensatory time is allowed and should be documented on the timesheet.  Comp time must be used within one year after the time was accrued.  In the majority of the cases, it is best to handle extra hours worked by non-exempt staff by allowing the employee to leave early or arrive late on a different day in the same Wednesday-Tuesday work week.

Employees who do not set up direct deposit of their paychecks will receive their earnings via a paycard.  Paycards are similar to gift cards, which carry cash value and can be used to make purchases, pay bills or retrieve cash from ATM machines.  *Note:  Some employees have questioned the legality of UH discontinuing the option of physical payroll checks.  The following is a statement from UH’s Vice President/Vice Chancellor of Legal Affairs, Dona Cornell, regarding this practice:

I have reviewed the statute, Texas Government Code Section 403.016 and conclude that it does not apply to the University of Houston System as our employees do not receive credit entries initiated by the comptroller.  In other words, our employees are not paid through the state treasury and the restrictions on when electronic funds transfer can be initiated do not apply...  It is my conclusion that the UH System has the authority to mandate payroll initiated by direct deposit or another method of electronic funds transfer such as by paycard.  In my review of other university systems and in discussion with the comptroller's office we will be creating a new standard for distribution of payroll but I believe it is within our statutory authority to do so under Chapter 111 of the Texas Education Code.  It is clear that all institutions of higher education, though not mandating payroll in this fashion, are encouraging all employees to be paid in this fashion.

Training and Resource Links

How to Read Paycheck Stubs [pdf]

Time and Labor Training [pdf]

Tips for Running Trial & Final Payroll Reports [doc]

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Non-Standard Paychecks

Off-Cycle Checks

When a paycheck is either short-paid or not paid on time, an off-cycle check request will be necessary. Off-cycle requests that are made by Tuesday of any week will be paid on Friday of the same week.  Off-cycle requests made after Tuesday will be paid on the Friday of the following week.

Partial Month Checks for Exempt Employees

PeopleSoft recognizes the 1st through 16th as exactly half of a month and the 15th through last calendar day (28th, 30th or 31st) as exactly half of a month.  In cases where an exempt employee's assignment begins on the 15th, ends on the 16th or ends on the last calendar day of the month, PeopleSoft will caluclate the payroll checks as exactly half of their normal monthly wages. 

Any other combination of start or end date will calculate the partial month's earnings according to the following process:

• Count the total number of working days in the partial month.  For example, March 2009 had 22 working days.
• Divide the normal full monthly salary by the number of total working days.  For example, $3000 salary / 22 working days = $136.36 per day.
• Multiply the daily rate by the number of working days included in the active assignment date for the partial month.  For example, if this was an assignment that began on March 9, 2009, the active working days left in the month would be 17 days x $136.36 = $2,318.18 earned. 

In this example, the gross paycheck amount for the partial month would be $2,318.18.

Terminating Vacation Checks for Exempt Employees

In order to calculate the correct vacation earnings owed to a terminating employee, please follow the procedure below. (This only affects monthly employees. Hourly employees vacation earnings are determined by multiplying the vacation balance by the hourly rate.)

• Determine how many vacation hours are owed to employee as of last day of termination. For monthly employees, since leave hours are typically recorded at the end of the month you may have to coordinate with the DBA to identify if hours were taken during the month.
• Depending on the vacation hours balance, your calculations will be determined by how many actual work hours are in that month. For example, If the employee has 200hrs as a vacation balance, but there are only 168hrs in the month as potential work hours, then only 168hrs can be calculated at that hourly rate and the remaining have to be carried over to the next month.
• To determine the hourly rate for a monthly employee, you will need the employee’s monthly rate, divided by the total amount of working days. For example, Dec. 2006 had 21days. Divide that by 8hrs per day that will give you the hourly rate for that month only.
• Once you have the hourly rate and you know how many vacation hrs can be paid off at this hourly rate for this month just multiply: hourly rate * vacation hours. Whatever hours are left over will have to be paid at the next month’s hourly rate following the same instructions above to find out the new hourly rate.

Example

An exempt employee terminates with 200hrs remaining in vacation balance.

The employee’s monthly rate is $3,000.

The employee terminated Dec. 10th, 2006.

Hourly rate: $3000 / 21 working days / 8hrs per day = $17.857142 per hr

In the month of Dec. 2006, there are only 21 working days * 8hrs per day = 168hrs (that can only be paid at the above hourly rate)

So vacation earnings are 15 working days * 8hrs =120hrs * $17.86 = $2,143.20

The remaining 80hrs would have to be paid using January 2007 hourly rate.

January 2007 has 23 work days

So $3000 per month / 23 days / 8hrs per day = $16.304347 per hr

And 80hrs of vacation left * 16.30 = $1,304 vacation earning for January

Total owed vacation is $2,143.20 + $1,304.00 = $3447.20

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Miscellaneous Paycheck Additions

Insurance Stipends

Insurance stipends of $150 are paid to eligible employees (typically graduate assistants) that are active in the system on the 1st of the month. Employees that began their employment later in the month (for example Jan 16 for our spring hires) are not eligible for the stipend until the first of the following month.  If employees terminate in the middle of the month, the insurance stipend is NOT pro-rated for the ½ month. They will receive the entire amount in that case.

Please review the distribution of the stipends to make sure that if they are paid by a state fund, the additional pay for the insurance stipend is directed to the pool account. If they are paid by a local fund, the local fund should also pay for the stipend amount every month. If you find that they are not distributing correctly, please contact your payroll administrator for a manual correction going forward on the additional pay panel.

Communications Allowances

UH departments may no longer pay employees a monthly allowance for cell phones or PDA service devices, including voice\data\internet combination.

UH departments may no longer purchase or upgrade cell phones, pagers, or personal digital assistants (also known as PDAs, such as BlackBerry, Treo, iPhone, Smart Phone, Pocket PC phone and similar hand-held devices that can store data and/or send/receive email)  through UH Information Technology, an outside vendor, or reimburse an employee for these devices.  Air cards, which are used in laptops to provide internet service, are not included in this policy and may be purchased by departments or reimbursed to employees, but employees may not receive a communication allowance for an air card.

The allowance for home internet installation and service has also been discontinued.

UH departments may no longer directly pay or reimburse monthly cell phone, pager, PDA, or home internet service charges.

Exceptions to Policy

Requests for exception to this policy must be approved by the appropriate vice president and submitted like other MAPP exception requests to Carl Carlucci, Associate Vice President/Associate Vice Chancellor, Finance for consideration.

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Payroll Overpayment Errors

(What To Do When an Employee is Overpaid Through Payroll)

If it is still within 5 days of the direct deposit, the deposit can be reversed.  The whole amount must be reversed, since partial reversals aren’t possible.   It will take about 10 days to redeposit the check in the correct amount, if part of the money was legitimately owed.

Beyond 5 days or if the reversal option is not deemed to be the best solution, the employee has two options: 

• Write a check back to the university for the overage.  Renee Chang in the Payroll Office at x37883 can provide a pay-back worksheet with the exact net amount owed back.
• Dock future payroll checks to recoup the overage.  For small amounts, this is done on the next pay cycle.  For large amounts that would cause hardship, it may be split between the following concurrent 2 or 3 checks.  The dock should be requested through the Bauer payroll coordinator, currently Tenisha Cobos-Knox at x33598

If Option #1 is selected (writing a check back to the university), the following steps should be taken when the payback check is received from the employee.  

• Prepare a Deposit Bag (extras are kept in the financial auditors' office)
• To: McElhinney Hall, Room 347/Renee Chang
• From: person preparing the bag
• Location: Melcher Hall/ room: 350
• Date & Signature
• Deposit List
• Inside include check(s) & the pay-back worksheet provided from Payroll office (Renee Chang). Keep a copy of both.
• Prepare a Money Transmittal
• Include the bag # & Date
• From: Person preparing the transmittal /Melcher Hall 350
• To: McElhinney Hall, Room 347/Renee Chang
• No. of items: (just add 1)
• Amount & Signed
• Call the police station x3-0600, & ask them to pick it up to make the delivery to Payroll.