September 8, 2020
Cal Answers Finance and Payroll Communities,
When we transitioned from the legacy PPS system to UCPath, the term Payroll Period End Date (or Pay Period End Date) took on a new meaning. The Payroll Period End Date is now the last date of the UCPath payroll period in which pay was processed, corresponding to the old PPS term Pay Cycle End Date. The equivalent of the old Pay Period End Date field is now the Earnings Period End Date field.
To clarify this, we are planning to rename the Payroll Period End date prompts, columns, and report filters to Earnings Period End Date. This update will affect the Finance and Legacy Payroll dashboards as well as their corresponding ad hoc areas. The Payroll dashboard with UCPath data will not be impacted because it already reflects the new name. We’ll be finished with these changes in mid-October, and will send another communication when they are complete and available in the Finance and Legacy Payroll dashboards.
If you have bookmark links and saved customizations in the impacted dashboards, and/or XMLs and saved analyses in their corresponding ad hoc areas, these may be impacted by the rename. We recommend that you document your bookmark links and saved customizations by Wednesday, October 14. You can view a list of the dashboards and ad hoc areas affected in this linked spreadsheet
If you have links and customizations that have a customized column layout involving the Payroll Period End Date column or are filtered on the Payroll Period End Date prompt, you’ll need to document these links and customizations. After we go live with the rename, you can recreate the impacted links and customizations with the new Earnings Period End Date column or prompt. If you did not do anything with the column or prompt, you do not need to take any further actions. Review instructions on how to print and export the results once you load your bookmark links and saved customizations.
Resolve error message that may appear in Ad hoc XMLs and saved analyses
You do not need to document your XMLs and saved analyses. However, you will see an error message upon running them if any of them have Payroll Period End Date as a column or filter. To resolve the error, you will just need to replace it with the new Earnings Period End Date column or filter. Review the linked job aid for instructions.
The Reference column in Finance transaction detail reports had been showing only hours for UCPath compensation transactions with Document ID starting with “UCP” since July 2019. An update was recently implemented in August to reflect Effort percentages when applicable, and Hours when not, which is consistent with what you were seeing pre-UCPath. The update applies to all compensation transactions posted to the general ledger going forward and retroactively to transactions posted starting April 2019. Generally, monthly employees will show percentages, and biweekly employees can show either percentages or hours. The distinction between percentage and hours is largely relevant only for grants administration. Review the wiki data dictionary entries for the column “Reference” for instructions on how to reconcile percentages to hours for biweekly employees.
Questions
If you have questions, please contact the Cal Answers Help Desk at 664-9000 (option 1, then option 2) or calanswers-help@berkeley.edu
Thank you,
Cal Answers Team
Office of the Vice Chancellor of Finance