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Distributing Pay for FWS Employees

What is pay distribution?

Pay Distribution is a process that accumulates, post and reports the total payroll charges that are incurred and paid to an FWS student-worker for the actual hours worked or paid during the biweekly pay cycle. Pay Distribution for the FWS employee is entered into GEMS by either University Payroll or a department representative within the Pay Distribution Pilot group via an Appointment Distribution Form. The form is prepared and approved by an authorized person in the college, division or department. The department representative should follow the department internal procedures that have been established within their college, division or department when preparing and entering these forms into GEMS.

How does pay distribution work?

On a biweekly basis, each employing department should complete a review of their FWS employee's appointment, payroll activity and award information to determine if they need to update the FWS employee’s pay distribution information. The pay distribution information is maintained and updated in GEMS. When distributing pay for an employee, GEMS will look first for an appointment level distribution record. If a record does not exist at the appointment level, it will look for a position level distribution record. If one exists, it will use that. If neither an appointment nor a position level record is found, it will use the department-level distribution record, which will distribute the employee’s payroll expenditures to the default pay account for that department. The department should check to see if they have identified the correct employee record number for the employee. The employee may be charged to an incorrect account if the wrong employee record number is used.

How to reconcile?

The results of the Pay Distribution function will generate Departmental Ledgers, Payroll Registers and other supporting documentations that will report total payroll charges that have been posted to a department’s FWS account. The department should reconcile their Payroll Registers and pay warrants/earnings statements to make sure that the employee was paid for the correct hours, paid the correct compensation rate, and pay is charged to the correct FWS account code. The departments should complete the reconciliation function on a biweekly basis. This function is critical since it requires the departments to review an employee’s payroll activity on a biweekly basis to make sure that the FWS employee’s compensation has not exceeded their award amount and that they are still eligible to participate in the FWS program.

If the department determines that the employee’s pay was charged to an incorrect account, an expenditure transfer form should be filled out and sent to University Payroll. There should be adequate internal control procedures in place to make sure proper separation of duties exist in each department. The department should contact University Payroll if there are questions about internal/administrative controls within their respective department.

Departments should refer to the Pay Distribution Process section of the COMPASS Business Procedures or attend the GEMS Monthly Departmental Training sessions for more information regarding the process of distributing an employee’s pay to an account.

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