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We’ve heard from several units who have successfully reduced pay-impacting errors and even sped up approval times by setting their own internal HCM and payroll deadlines – usually several days in advance of ISC deadlines – in order to confirm that all their HCM and payroll transactions are submitted and approved in a timely fashion.

If your unit doesn’t already have their own internal deadlines, you may wish to take a moment to look through your unit’s processes and workflows to calculate how long it takes for any given transaction to be entered and routed through your own department for approvals. Some examples:

• If it regularly takes three business days for a Change Job to be entered and approved within your unit, you may wish to require that all Change Jobs are entered at least three days prior to the HCM Transaction Unit Approval deadline (aka, the “purple” day).
• In order to give your unit administrators enough time to validate time and leave entries – and follow up with any employees as necessary – you may wish to require that certain reports (such as R0207, R0521, R0500 or R0365 to name a few) are run on a weekly or even daily basis.

Different transactions could take more or less time to enter and approve, so you may wish to set several internal deadlines as necessary.

Many units regularly send out reminder emails to employees and administrators about such time-sensitive requirements as:

• Upcoming deadlines: For example, units often send “Submit Timesheets,” “Approve Timesheets” and “Did you Enter Your Holiday Taken Time Off?” reminder emails several days before the Time and Absence Transaction Deadline (aka, the “red” day), to help ensure all timesheets and approvals are accurate and completed in time for payroll processing.
• Which reports they should run to determine if any outstanding actions might be pending: For example, units can send “Start Running R0321 and End/Extend Jobs as Necessary” reminder emails several days before Pay Calc opens (aka, the “orange” day) to identify which fixed-term or temporary employees have upcoming Employment End Dates and need to be extended or terminated. Fun Fact: Encouraging administrators to run R0321 each pay period and taking the corresponding action in Workday can reduce approximately 65% of all payroll errors alone!

Of course, each unit is unique in how they wish to send reminders, and which communication channels work best – in addition to email reminders, we’ve also heard that some departments add tasks and reminders to Outlook calendars, post reminders on Teams or Slack or other messaging platforms, and many also regularly include payroll-impacting reminders in their weekly team huddles.

In addition to running R0321 prior to the “orange” day each pay period, one of the most important times to be running audit reports to help prevent payroll errors and ensure your employees are paid correctly and on time is the period between the “purple” day and the “red” day. For a comprehensive list of the reports your unit should be running each pay period, who should be running them, and when, make sure to see our Payroll-Impacting Reports by Deadline page. From “purple” to “red” day, we especially recommend units incorporate the following reports into their workflows:

• Earnings and Actuals reports
• R0521 Summarized Time Tracking Audit
• R0500 Time Off and Leave Transactions Awaiting Approval
• R0032 Staff on Leave Audit
• R0317 Faculty on Leave Audit