Payroll Update 9 May 2022

News for School Payroll Staff


Kia ora

In this issue:

  • New pay cycle
  • EP31 form – new form for SUE report corrections/advice of changes
  • SUE report – what you need to know
      - SUE adjustments
      - Identifying termination payments and out of cycle payments
      - Total pay for the pay period
  • Termination pays and out of cycle payments have their own payslips
  • We need your help – please always reply to EPL emails directly, so your request stays on the same ticket
  • ACC processing backlog
  • Salary assessment delays
  • Activity history enhancements in EdPay
  • Scheduled fortnightly EdPay maintenance
  • Want to ask a question or give feedback?   

New pay cycle

We’ve just completed the first new pay cycle. With there no longer being ‘stop pays’ to process, we’re able to disperse payments to banks earlier on day 14, which means funds should be deposited into employee bank accounts by close of business, instead of overnight.

EP31 form – new form for SUE report corrections/advice of changes

The new EP31 form has replaced the NOVO31 form and makes it easier to identify and process SUE adjustments and out of cycle payments. Remember to use the correct email subject line when submitting the form:

  • Out of cycle payment (employee name, MOE number)
  • SUE adjustment (employee name, MOE number)

We will be progressively updating the old NOVO forms and converting them to EP forms.

SUE report – what you need to know

SUE adjustments

You can only submit a SUE adjustment via an EP31 for payments already listed on the 1st SUE report (Friday, day 10). For any urgent new payments, please use the out of cycle payment option.

Identifying termination payments and out of cycle payments

In the pdf version of the SUE report (but not in the CSV file) termination and out of cycle payments have boxes in the amount paid column.

Total pay for the pay period 

The figures in the EQUALS TOTAL PAY line will be correct as far as showing the total funds paid during the pay period. However the Operations Grant and Direct Debit totals will be the combined total of:

  • termination payments  (day 1 of pay period)
  • out of cycle payments   (day 3 of pay period)
  • main pay payments   (day 14 of pay period).

Termination pays and out of cycle payments have their own payslips

Employees will receive separate payslips for termination and out of cycle payments. This is because these payments are made separately to the main pay day.

These can be seen in the Fortnightly pay cycle

We need your help – please always reply to EPL emails directly, so your request stays on the same ticket

When responding to an email, please use the reply function to keep your request on the same ticket, so we can provide you with a faster response.

If you initiate a new email, it generates a new ticket that then has to be matched up with old ticket(s) manually, slowing down our response times. This becomes compounded during busy periods or when we are short-staffed. A recent check showed numerous multiple separate emails for the same original ticket, with some tickets having as many as 10 subsequent separate emails, which show up as new tickets in our system. Your help with this is very much appreciated.

ACC processing backlog

The ACC team is working hard to reduce their ticket and processing backlog. If you are concerned about staff getting overpaid due to having no sick leave balance, you can book USL (unpaid sick leave) via EdPay, which we then reverse and re-book as ACCWO.

We are working through the outstanding queue and tickets, from oldest to newest, regardless of who has sick leave and who hasn’t. Working based on order of tickets received means we guarantee the same service level for every request sent in. As above, it’s very important to reply to emails directly, rather than sending new emails, as these create duplicate tickets that slow us down significantly.

Salary assessment delays

We currently have a backlog of salary assessment applications and these are taking longer than the standard 15 working days to process.

If you have supplied all information needed for the salary assessment, we expect to complete it and get back to people within 30 working days. We acknowledge that this is not ideal and are doing everything we can to clear the backlog and reduce processing times. We will contact applicants during the review process if we need further information to complete their application.

The delays are due to a number of factors, including a higher-than-expected volume of applications, staff shortages and absences due to COVID-19, and time spent assessing incomplete or partially complete applications. Our salary assessment staff are working overtime to help process applications more quickly and we appreciate your continued patience and understanding as we work through them.

New teachers
We are working as quickly as we can to clear the salary assessment backlog and are prioritising new teachers. As an interim step, we have moved all registered new teachers to the trained scale, so the teacher will have seen the change in their salary (including back pay) reflected in their payslip on 4 May. It will also have been in your first draft SUE report for pay period 03 on Friday. Once their application has been assessed and processed, they will then be moved to the correct grade and step, and any further money owing will be back paid as a lump sum.

Activity history enhancements in EdPay

In response to your feedback, we’re continuing to enhance the activity history.
From today, you’ll notice:

  • all records now display on the same page, so as you scroll down more records will be loaded
  • there is now the option to filter the status type. This new status filter is located on the left of the screen
  • there is now an option to download a CSV file. You can select a year, then download activity history records that were either created or updated in that year, to filter, sort or print.

Please note: transaction types that weren’t recorded in the activity history until recently (eg bank account change), will only show from the date they were recorded for the first time.

Scheduled fortnightly EdPay maintenance

EdPay will be unavailable once a fortnight due to maintenance. The maintenance is scheduled to take place between 6pm Saturday and 6am Sunday every second week until further notice, with alerts on the EdPay website and EdPay portal.

Want to ask a question or give feedback?

If you have a question that's not answered, or if you want to provide feedback, please email feedback@edpay.nz
 
Ngā mihi
Education Payroll