Time is of the essence for biweekly staff paychecks
July 17, 2012 •
The biweekly pay cycle conversion, the ambitious transition of nearly 400 nonexempt UCOP employees from monthly to biweekly pay, has been successfully completed. But, as they say, old habits die hard.
Now the challenge is for all those employees and their supervisors to submit and approve timesheets for each biweekly pay period — that’s 26 times per year instead of 12 — in order to initiate a paycheck, says BRC Director Helen Valness, who oversees payroll.
“This is the hardest thing for people to get used to because the deadlines come around much more quickly,” Valness says. “Having to submit timesheets twice as frequently is easy to forget, but it can result in employees being underpaid or not receiving a paycheck at all.”
Employees newly transitioned to biweekly pay must report all actual hours worked, then submit their time reports to their supervisors for approval, who must in turn submit them for processing. With all these deadlines, BRC Payroll is investigating other methods for reminding affected staff of when to do what. Look for more announcements on this in the coming weeks.
When should I report my time?
All transactions are driven by a strict Time Approvers Schedule issued by UCLA (the campus that processes UCOP payroll). For the next several biweekly pay periods, here are the upcoming deadlines from that schedule; note that all deadlines are 12 noon on the deadline date:
| Pay period | Payday | Employee deadline | Supervisor deadline |
| 07/08/12 – 07/21/12 | 08/01/12 | 07/23/12 | 07/24/12 |
| 07/22/12 – 08/04/12 | 08/15/12 | 08/06/12 | 08/07/12 |
| 08/05/12 – 08/18/12 | 08/29/12 | 08/20/12 | 08/21/12 |
| 08/19/12 – 09/01/12 | 09/12/12 | 09/03/12 | 09/04/12 |
| 09/02/12 – 09/15/12 | 09/26/12 | 09/17/12 | 09/18/12 |
How should I report my time?
The final stages of the transition this month are complicated by the fact that nonexempt employees switching to biweekly pay are using two different methods to report their time. Policy-covered employees made the switch to the shorter pay cycle on July 1 and immediately began using the new electronic Time Reporting System (TRS). But represented staff, whose transition was briefly delayed by collective bargaining negotiations, are still using the monthly paper timesheet to report their time on a biweekly basis.
The TRS is UCOP’s automated, web-based system that replaces paper timesheets and electronically collects time and attendance data. It will also streamline reporting and improve data integrity as it integrates complex pay policies and automated business rules into the payroll/personnel system.
Nonexempt represented employees will begin using the TRS on July 30, 2012, for the biweekly pay period of July 22 to Aug. 4, 2012. Until then, they should continue to use the July monthly paper timesheet to report time worked during the period of July 8 to 21, 2012.
Note that the deadlines for submission of this time report, even though it’s on the old monthly timesheet, are Monday, July 23, for employees to submit to their supervisors and Tuesday, July 24, for supervisors to approve and submit to BRC Payroll.
For those who will transition to the TRS on July 30, most users say the system is easy to use and very intuitive, but webinars will be offered July 19, 20 and 23 for both employees and supervisors. For more details, go to UCLA’s TRS Resources website, or find a session to enroll in (see the Webinar Training Sessions) on the pdf entitled TRS Training for Employees & Supervisors.
If you have any questions, please contact Ana Trejo, BRC Payroll Team lead, at 510-987-9057 or via email at ana.trejo@ucop.edu.
