Updates to Cal Answers Payroll dashboard

July 30, 2020

Updates to Cal Answers Payroll dashboard and legacy Payroll Leave Accrual report is retired

Cal Answers Payroll Community,
We’re pleased to announce that in response to user feedback we’ve made a number of enhancements to the Cal Answers Payroll dashboard. These enhancements are now available in the UCPath Payroll Expense Detail and Absence Management Summary reports.
UCPath Expense Detail report
  • Paycheck Number and Journal Date are now available as includable columns. Please note that the Paycheck Number field will only contain data for transactions with a journal date on or after 5/1/2020 until we finish adding the historical data. We anticipate the historical data will all be available by mid-August.
  • Each individual transaction is now displayed in a separate row, we are no longer combining similar transactions. You can still view the combined rows if you exclude columns (in particular the Journal ID and Journal Source Line Number columns).
Absence Management Summary report
  • This report now contains summarized balance, accrual, and usage information on Additional Vacation, Postdoc Sick Leave, and Service Credits.
Retiring the Legacy Payroll Leave Accrual report
All of the leave balance, usage, and accrual information from the Legacy Payroll Leave Accrual report is now available in the new Absence Management Summary report in the new Payroll dashboard. Because of this, we will be retiring the Legacy Payroll Leave Accrual report on Thursday, August 13. If you have any bookmarks or saved customizations in the old report you will need to document them/recreate them in the new report. Visit the Cal Answers website for instructions on how to recreate them. The Legacy Expense Detail report is still available and will remain so.
Access to the Payroll dashboards
With the release of the Payroll dashboard, we transitioned to a global-only access model for payroll reporting, the same as we have for finance data. If you do not already have access and would like to request it, please follow the instructions in the “Payroll dashboard and Ad Hoc Access” section on the Access page
Cal Answers Payroll dashboard training
The Cal Answers team is offering an overview of the Payroll dashboard on Thursday, August 6 from 2 pm - 3 pm. You can register for the webinar by following the link posted to the Cal Answers training page. The training overview will take place during the first half-hour and there will be a questions and answers session for the second half-hour. If you have questions about the training, please contact the Cal Answers team at calanswers-help@berkeley.edu
Training resources
  • Wiki: The wiki page for the Payroll dashboard contains information on these two reports, including report documentation and data dictionaries.
  • Job aids: The job aid for the Payroll dashboard, including the absence management summary report, is available on the Cal Answers Payroll page.
Release timeline for dashboards affected by UCPath
We’re working to re-release the Cal Answers reports with data from UCPath and have posted the working draft of our timeline on the Cal Answers website. 
Questions and feedback
If you have questions about using Cal Answers, 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