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October 2024 - Carve out time for these un-fall-gettable updates!

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October 2024 Newsletter Table of Contents

  • General
    • Autumn 2024: Noontime Workshops Schedule
  • Accounting and Grants
    • Effort Reporting (ECC)
  • Payments and Procurement
    • Card Suspensions for ProCard, Ghost, and/or CTA
    • This Just In: New UW Travel and Field Advance form!
    • Domestic FY2025 Per Diem Rates are now live in Workday!
  • HR/Payroll
    • Costing allocations for temporary pay supplements
    • Winter 2025 Roster Reports
    • Non-faculty teaching restriction (AKA, when staff teach)
    • Autumn I-9s were a success!
  • Foreign National Services
    • Update to J-1 Incident Report Guidance
  • AST Update
    • From Heidi: “What’s New In AST?”

GENERAL

People discussing at a table with a lightblub in the middle depicting a clock at noon. Above the people is text that says "Autumn 2024: Noontime Workshops Schedule"

Autumn 2024: Noontime Workshops Schedule

Tuesday Noontime Staff Workshops have picked up again! We’ve arranged the sessions in series this quarter:

  1. The “Know-How” series focuses on building new skills (or perfecting the skills you already have).
  2. The “Lessons Revisited” series brings us back to topics we’ve seen before but bear a second (or third) look.
  3. The “Grantsters” series returns to Tuesdays after the temporary shift to Wednesdays over the summer.

Check out the schedule either via the calendar invite, or through the schedule excel spreadsheet. If you do not have the calendar invite, please reach out to teamcas@uw.edu and we will forward one.


ACCOUNTING AND GRANTS

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Effort Reporting (ECC)

We have made it to the middle of the first Effort Reporting cycle using the new ECC system! The due date to complete certification is December 6, 2024. As a reminder, this time around we are certifying for the past 12 months.

The system opened last month for pre-review of the effort statements, and it is now open for PI certifications once you complete the pre-review step. If your department does not have an ECC Coordinator, AST is handling that step of the certification process for your records. donna and Marian have already reached out to all departments who needed assistance for the pre-review process.

Have you logged into ECC to see what might be waiting for you? If you need access to the system, visit the ECC System Access page for more details.

The steps for this process are as follows:

  1. Ensure all Payroll Accounting Adjustments are completed for each grant;
  2. ECC Coordinators complete the pre-review in ECC;
  3. Once pre-review is completed, the statement is ready to be certified by the PI.

For this inaugural round of certification, there is a backlog of effort and project statements for the following time periods:

  1. Effort Statements: July 1, 2023 – December 31, 2023
  2. Project Statements: July 1, 2023 – December 31, 2023 AND January 1, 2024 – June 30, 2024 (NOTE: These were not available for us to review until this week. Please check your ECC dashboard again to see your project statements.)

Have questions? Cara Ball and the AST Accounting and Grants team are available to help! Reach out to us via the AST Grant Reporting form or the AST General Inquiry form, and Cara, donna, or Marian will get back to you. You can also contact the Post Award Fiscal Compliance team with questions at effortreporting@uw.edu.

This is all new territory, and we are learning together! We encourage you to get started soon so there is plenty of time to complete the 3-step process and handle any hiccups.


PAYMENTS AND PROCUREMENT

A person holding a card while the word "SUSPEND" is stamped across

Card Suspensions for ProCard, Ghost, and/or CTA

The ProCard Office has recently announced an important policy update regarding card suspensions for aged unverified transactions. The ProCard Office has begun to suspend any card (ProCard, Ghost, and/or CTA) that have unverified transactions more than two billing cycles past their original verification due date. Repeated suspensions for aged, unverified transactions could lead to permanent card closure.

What can your units do?

  • Card holders: Reconcile your transactions in Workday. To get started, type “Verify Procurement Card Transactions” in the Workday search bar.
  • Procurement Data Entry Specialists AND Expense Data Entry Specialists: Check your Workday inbox and approve card transactions daily, or on a weekly basis at minimum. If you are having difficulties navigating your Workday inbox, please check out our ProCard Approvals in Workday guide.
  • Card holders, Procurement Data Entry Specialists AND Expense Data Entry Specialists: At month end, ensure all transactions have been entered and approved. The “two-billing cycles” are counted by month; therefore, all transactions from this September and earlier must be reconciled by October 31, 2024.

In addition, we advise your units to run to following reports to be on top of transactions:

  • R0552: For identifying all transactions in flight by a cardholder (and can only be run if you are a cardholder and only for your transactions)
  • R1354: Procurement Card Transaction Lines by Department
  • R1438: Run to find the transactions you need to verify by cardholder
  • R1439: Run to find transactions in any status, or you can run it for a specific status (e.g., Paid, Pending, etc.)
  • R1523: Run to identify where in the business process a transaction is pending (In Progress). This report is helpful if you know you have reconciled the transactions, but they are still pending approval.

Cartoon news anchor on television with Dubs, saying "This Just In: New UW Travel and Field Advance form now available!"

This Just In: New UW Travel and Field Advance form!

Requesting and reconciling advances can be confusing. To help with this, we have separated advances and advance reconciliation requests into a dedicated intake form!

Check out our new UW Travel and Field Advance form, which contains more information and guidance on creating and reconciling an advance. Our goal is to help departments better track their advances and make it easier to find the Spend Authorization (SA) number when reconciling the advance.

Remember to monitor your department’s advances!

  • Travel advance reconciliation deadline: 60 days
  • Field advance reconciliation deadline: 30 days

Domestic FY2025 Per Diem Rates are live in Workday!

For FY2025 (October 2024 – September 2025), the meal breakdown has been updated to the following: 26% Breakfast, 29% Lunch, and 45% Dinner.

The Daily Rate table under Determining Per Diem Rate (Per Diem) has been updated to include the new Domestic Rates established by GSA. Reimbursement Rates for lodging, meals, and privately-owned vehicle mileage have also been updated in Workday.


HR/PAYROLL

Costing allocations for temporary pay supplements

We would like to highlight some critical information that was released in the October 10, 2024, Employee Workday Help weekly digest regarding costing allocations for temporary pay supplements.

If you are paying faculty Temporary Pay Supplements, the costing overrides should indicate the TPP earn type. If the TPS earn type is entered, the costing override will not be effective. If you would like to audit this for your unit, run the “All Workers Costing Allocations – With Prompts” report and use the Earnings column to filter the report by TPS-Temporary Supplement and/or TPP-Temporary Pay Supplement.

Winter 2025 Roster Reports

A person holding a laptop while standing next to a monitor with a "ROSTERS" document next to themThe 2025 Winter Roster Report was sent out on October 15 to departments using AST HR/Payroll services. Completed reports are due back to AST on November 15, 2024.

We sent out invites to AST HR/Payroll-supposed units for an online information session on the 2025 Winter Roster Report. Please drop by with any questions you have about your department’s roster report.

Contact Jim Ballew (jballew@uw.edu) for more information.

Non-faculty teaching restriction (AKA, when staff teach)

!DecorationOnly!As part of the changes in the additional compensation policies and procedures for academics, there was a small but significant change to the regulations regarding staff teaching. The Academic Personnel guidelines now clearly state that, “the assigned course must be outside the school/college/campus where the individual holds their staff position.” This means that it is no longer allowable for your unit staff to teach within your unit.

Autumn I-9s were a success!

Thank you to everyone who helped spread the word about our autumn I-9 drop-in hours or partnered with AST to facilitate I-9 verification sessions during orientations. With your help, our I-9 team was able to verify over 200 Form I-9s – that’s a whole lot of hires!

Stay tuned for our winter quarter I-9 drop-in schedule. In the meantime, we encourage you to continue sharing the following resources with your newly hired employees:

  • I-9 Journey Map: This resource helps guide new-to-the-university employees through the process of filling out Section 1, Employee Information and Attestation, of their Form I-9 in Workday.
  • I-9 Verification Appointment Scheduler: After employees complete Section 1, please have them schedule an appointment to verify their unexpired, original document(s) with our team. We highly recommend this process be done within 3 business days of their hire date as required by the USCIS.

Please contact teamcas-i9@uw.edu if you have any questions.


FOREIGN NATIONAL SERVICES

A sticky note on top of notebooks that says "Incident Report"

Update to J-1 Incident Report Guidance

The Department of State has issued updated guidance regarding the J-1 incident reporting requirement. The list of examples of reportable incidents now includes “port of entry issues (e.g., applicant found inadmissible resulting in withdrawal of application for admission, expedited removal, or Notice to Appear)”.

Units should always report any known serious incidents or controversies involving a J-1 exchange visitor to AST (teamcas@uw.edu) and ISO (acadvisa@uw.edu) as soon as possible so that we can meet our legal obligation to report them to the Department of State. Please take this opportunity to review ISO’s J-1 Incident Reports page.

Please reach out to the Foreign National Services team at teamcas@uw.edu if you know of any such incidents involving a J-1 exchange visitor, or if you have any questions regarding J-1 incident reporting in general.


AST UPDATE

Dubs wearing glasses while looking at a excel spreadsheet of data, which depicts the ticket volume of monthly submissions and monthly ticket resolutions

From Heidi: "What's New In AST?"

The Payments and Procurement team (Cara, Jason, Katie, Will, Renecia, Andrea, and Ashley) has been busy with cross-training, assuring every member has expertise in each of the team’s business process areas. This includes purchasing, invoice payments, employee purchase and travel reimbursements, and guest reimbursements and honorarium payments.

Long-time Pay/Pro team co-lead Lauren Bachman has moved on to other adventures at the U. Natalie Lanza has joined us on an interim basis while we evaluate how to best fill the open position. Welcome Natalie!

Our HR/Payroll team (Ivy, Jim, Gabrielle, Veronica, Rita, Jenny, Michael, and Sophia) made it through the tidal wave of hires, reappointments, and payroll accounting adjustments that hits every autumn quarter. They are now evaluating the payroll roster template with the goal of reducing confusion and rework.

Our Foreign National Services team (Jack and Brandy) is collaborating with the Academic Services team (Ivy and Susan) to fill the position vacated by Jessey, who is now teaching in Japan. The reconfigured position will continue work on visa applications and will also help address the burgeoning workload associated with academic appointments.

With FY2024 year-end close well and truly concluded, the Accounting and Grants team (Cara, donna, and Marian) has pivoted to tackling the long-delayed effort reporting pre-certifications for those CAS departments lacking an ECC Coordinator. If you have questions, please contact them via the AST Grant Reporting form or the AST General Inquiry form.

Josh Eikren is fast becoming a rock star in the realm of Workday security roles and hierarchies. In particular, he is working to clean up redundancies in grant hierarchies while also navigating the 3-D maze of institutional, college, and departmental security roles.

Last but not least, our intrepid Help Team (Amy, Dahlia, Sam and Lisa) has managed a mountain of I-9s, updated intake forms, created reports, documented workflows, updated website content, and managed communication – including this newsletter. What can’t this group do?!

For a summary view of AST’s work in the past year, check out these three data tables showing:

  1. Tickets submitted and resolved by month
  2. HCM roster totals
  3. Submissions by business process area

Please contact Heidi at tilghman@uw.edu if you have any questions.


Dubs in a Superman costume on top of a building staring into the distance.As always, please fill out our General Inquiry Form (preferred) or email teamcas@uw.edu if you have any questions or concerns.

Administrative Support Team

Last Updated: Friday, December 06, 2024