TOP STORY
Three
pieces of legislation go into effect Nov. 1: HB 2435, HB 2619 and HB 2704.
Until the Statewide Accounting Manual is updated, this article
presents procedures that will be enforced for the new
legislation.
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Travel claims and vouchers may now cover more than 30 days.
However, one claim cannot cover more than one fiscal year.
- Rather than using map mileage for travel
between cities and vicinity miles within a locality, the traveler must
track actual business miles based on a recognized GPS system. We
recognize that for some travel GPS is not currently available and that
occasionally minor detours are necessary. GPS miles should be used
when available.
- When GPS is not available, actual miles per
the odometer will suffice as long as no personal miles are included and
every travel point is documented.
- Travel claims must include a log of each
location of travel and the associated miles.
- For agencies that have travelers that drive
over the state but not to specific addresses, a description of the
destination will suffice (e.g. ‘2
miles north of Ada’).
- Attaching GPS printouts to travel claims will not be required. Transaction Processing will be
performing sample audits of mileage to compare reported miles to a GPS
system for reasonableness.
- Mileage reimbursement rate - OMES is still
researching this issue and plans to make an announcement in December. Any change in the mileage reimbursement
rate will be effective Jan.1. Agencies
should expect some decrease in the mileage reimbursement rate.
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STATE COMPTROLLER
In industry it is customary for vendors to offer early
payment discounts. Some agencies may be taking advantage of these discounts on
a sporadic basis, but there has been no statewide initiative to maximize
savings from early payment discounts – until now. CAR, Central Purchasing, and Information
Services are collaborating on an initiative to maximize early payment discounts.
This initiative will result in some business practice changes that will affect
all state agencies. Ensuring that each agency understands this initiative and
has an opportunity to participate in the discussion is vital to its success.
OMES is offering three opportunities for interested agency
personnel to learn about the plan, pose questions and voice concerns:
-
Monday, Nov. 21 2:30
p.m.
Concourse Theater – no registration necessary
-
Tuesday, Nov. 29 9:30 a.m.
Concourse
Theater – no registration necessary
-
Wednesday, Dec.
7 1 p.m.
Webinar – watch for
registration information
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PAYROLL
In planning your work for November, remember
that Veterans Day is Friday, Nov. 11. Thanksgiving is recognized on
Thursday, Nov. 24, and Friday, Nov. 25, is also a state holiday. November
biweekly payroll for state agencies (“B” or “C” biweekly schedules) will be
paid on Thursday, Nov. 10, and Wednesday, Nov. 23. November monthly payrolls
will be paid on the last working day of the month, Wednesday, Nov. 30.
With these dates in mind, agency staff should plan their work
accordingly for the deadlines:
SUPPLEMENTAL: PeopleSoft supplemental payrolls are set to
pay on Thursday, Nov. 10. Agencies should have these payrolls processed
and paperwork forwarded to OMES by Thursday, Nov. 3.
BIWEEKLY: “B” and “C” biweekly payrolls are set to pay on Thursday
Nov. 10. Agencies should have these payrolls processed and paperwork
forwarded to OMES by Thursday, Nov. 3.
The next biweekly for “B” and “C” biweekly schedule agencies will
be Wednesday Nov. 23. Agencies should have these payrolls processed and
paperwork forwarded to OMES by Wednesday, Nov. 16.
MONTHLY: Monthly payrolls will be set to pay on Wednesday, Nov.
30. Agencies should have these payrolls processed and paperwork forwarded
to OMES by Monday, Nov. 21.
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Giving gifts to employees is restricted and should only be given
as part of a formal employee recognition program. See 74 O.S. § 4121 and
4122. Furthermore, any gift cards, certificates or coupons given to employees
are to be included in the employee’s taxable income. These items are considered
by the Internal Revenue Service to be cash or a cash equivalent and do not meet
the requirements to be excludable as a de minimis fringe benefit.
Even when an employer provides gift cards, certificates or coupons
to purchase a turkey, ham or other nominal value property, these are considered
wages and are subject to income and employment taxes. This is true even when
the card restricts the items purchased, the time to use the coupon, and any
unused portion is forfeited. Cash equivalents do not meet the de minimis fringe
benefit requirements.
In the HCM system, process the gift card amount using the TRC Code
of “GIFT,” which will show as earnings code “GFT.” The amount will be included
as taxable income and will be taxed on the paycheck.
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The OMES Form 94P has been updated and is available on the OMES website. The
updated form, revised 7/15/2016, contains new fields for reporting the
Pathfinder retirement plan. The instructions have been updated as well.
Please be sure to use the new form on all overpayment refund requests.
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Agencies need to review all outstanding employee overpayments and
collect required amounts from employees. After collection, please submit OMES
Form 94P as applicable. Agencies will be entitled to receive refunds for all
forms submitted by Thursday, Dec. 22, 2016. After this date, refunds cannot be
returned to the agencies; however, agencies are still required to submit the
form after this date for employee wage corrections. Corrections due to
overpayments will still be posted to the employee’s 2015 W-2 for requests
submitted through Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. Any corrections submitted after Jan. 6
will require a corrected W-2.
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Agencies must complete Form DER, Deceased Employee Reporting when an employee dies and payments are made after the
date of death. The form is on the OMES website under DCAR Forms. Complete all forms and send to OMES/DCAR payroll, attention Beth Brox or
Jean Hayes no later than Friday,
Jan. 6, 2017, so that 2016 year-end reporting will be correct.
For procedures on processing payroll after the death of employee,
the HCM how-to document titled "Payroll Processing for Death of an
Employee" is on the EBS website under HCM’s Module News for "How-to
Documents."
NOTE: Remember to update the date of death on the HR Personal
Data Record, update Job Data for a termination with the reason code ‘SO4’
(deceased), and terminate the employee’s direct deposit. Banks will return
direct deposits for deceased customers. A return of an item will cause a
delay to the individual receiving the payment.
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40 O.S. § 165.3a, allows employers to provide employees the option
of designating a beneficiary for wages and benefits payable upon an employee’s
death. There is no requirement for an employer to allow employees to
select beneficiaries, but agencies may want to consider adopting a policy which
allows employees to designate a beneficiary. Providing the option to
employees would relieve stress and anxiety after the death of the employee on
the family members, etc. Also, agencies would have clear guidance on who
is to receive final wage payments and avoid any potential difficulties in
determining who gets the payment(s).
This statute does not include any longevity payment that may be
due as of the date of death of an employee. 74 O.S. § 840-2.18,
subsection H.2, authorizes any longevity payment to be paid to the decedent’s
surviving spouse, or if there is no surviving spouse, to the decedent’s
estate.
For more information or sample forms and instructions, please
contact Lisa Raihl at 405-521-3258, lisa.raihl@omes.ok.gov or Jean
Hayes at 405-522-6300, jean.hayes@omes.ok.gov.
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Beginning in 2012, the IRS mandated Box 12 reporting for the cost
of employer-provided health coverage. The W-2 must show the amount in Box 12
with Code DD.
To correctly report the cost of health coverage, all
payments made for health insurance must process through the payroll
system. Failure to process through payroll will result in incorrect
reporting on the W-2. For help establishing the appropriate deduction
codes, state agencies should contact the OMES HelpDesk. Assistance will
be provided by the EBD HCM Payroll team.
As a reminder, this reporting to employees is for their
information only. The amount reported is not taxable and is only intended to
inform them of the cost of their health care coverage.
For questions or more information, please contact Lisa Raihl at
405-521-3258 or lisa.raihl@omes.ok.gov, or Jean
Hayes at 405-522-6300 or jean.hayes@omes.ok.gov.
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Please verify the correct agency address is being used on the
Oracle/PeopleSoft HCM system. The agency address can be found on the Employee’s
Earnings Statement. If the address is not correct for the agency, this will
need to be updated before year end processing of tax forms. Please contact the
OMES Service Desk at 405-521-2444 to have the agency’s address updated in the
HCM system.
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As a reminder, in the Oracle/PeopleSoft HCM system, the W-2
process loads the employee’s mailing address for IRS Form W-2 reporting.
If there is no value in the mailing address field, then the employee’s home
address will be used on the W-2. If there is a value in the mailing
address field that is not to be used on the Form W-2, it will need to be
updated or inactivated.
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The 1095-C form process in the Oracle/PeopleSoft HCM system has
been set to load the employee’s mailing address just as the W-2 process does.
If there is no value in the mailing address field, then the employee’s home
address will be used on the W-2. If there is a value in the mailing
address field that is not to be used on the Form W-2, it must be
updated or inactivated.
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Oracle/PeopleSoft HCM system employee W-2s and 1095-C forms are
processed and printed in mail drop order. Please ensure this field is
properly used for employees. The forms will print in the same order as checks
and advices sort, which is based on each agency’s needs.
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State agency W-2 forms will be printed from the PeopleSoft HCM
System. The format for the W-2 forms will be the same as that used last
year. Envelopes that fit the 2015 PeopleSoft W-2 forms should fit the 2016
W-2 forms.
The format for the 1099 MISC forms is the same as last year.
The forms will have three sections with the top 1/3 and the middle 1/3 of the
page containing the 2 copies of the form. The bottom 1/3 of the page will
include instructions and a mailing address. Standard No. 9 or No.
10 envelopes with left windows should work.
Sample printed forms of the PeopleSoft W-2 and 1099 MISC can be
provided if requested. Please contact Jean Hayes at 405-522-6300 or jean.hayes@omes.ok.gov, or Beth Brox at 405-522-1099
or beth.brox@omes.ok.gov
NOTE: This is not applicable
for the Institutions of Higher Education due to the fact that they will be
responsible for their own year-end reporting.
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For state EBD insurance purposes in calendar year 2017, please
distribute this listing to Payroll and Human
Resource Directors (to view the table click the link). Questions may be
directed to Lisa Raihl at 405-521-3258, lisa.raihl@omes.ok.gov or Jean
Hayes at 405-522-6300, jean.hayes@omes.ok.gov.
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HIGHER EDUCATION PAYROLL
The 500 MISC Higher Ed Payroll
Issue File includes a new edit check to ensure the warrant numbers are not
being reused. Vouchers with duplicate warrant numbers cannot be resaved
in the event of a lost payment reissue or stat cancel replacement. If the file
contains a warrant number already submitted, the following will display in the
error report: Warrant number already loaded in the OCP_HE_PAY_ARCH table. Pay
Claim:____
If you receive this error
message, please review your file and resubmit with new, unused warrant numbers.
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The IRS offers TIN Matching through their e-Services Online Tools for tax
professionals. On the IRS website it
states, TIN Matching is a pre-filing service only offered to payers and/or
their authorized agents who submit any of six information returns (Forms
1099-B, 1099-K, INT, DIV, OID, PATR, or MISC). It enables validation of TIN and
name combinations prior to submission of the information return.
- Interactive
TIN Matching enables payers to match up to 25 payee TIN and name
combinations in real-time
- Bulk
TIN Matching enables the submission of a file with up to 100,000 TIN
and name combinations. We send a response file to the users secure mailbox
within 24 hours.
Payers must be listed on the IRS Payer Account File (PAF) database in order
to participate. If your institution has not filed information returns with the IRS in
one of the past two tax years, you are not eligible. A principal of the
institution must complete a TIN Matching Application after registering.
Refer to Pub 2108A -
On-Line Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) Matching Program for complete
information.
If any college or university
is having difficulty with their TIN Matching process, please let me know and I
will be happy to help where and when I can.
You may contact me, Beth Brox, at 405-522-1099, beth.brox@omes.ok.gov.
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ACCOUNTING
Changes are being made to the
retention time for the temporary table related to the Summary of Receipts and
Disbursements. This change is necessary to enhance performance for users
of the report and associated query.
A temporary table is populated when the report is
processed. This temporary table is used to build the report and to allow
users to run the associated query. Data populated on the temporary table
was available to query for 48 hours before being purged. Due to the
number of lines that the table was accumulating, the performance on the report
and query was not acceptable. To enhance performance, the retention time
for data on the temporary table will be reduced to 60 minutes.
Query users who plan to utilize the OCP_GL0059_SMMRY_RCPTS_DISBS query to
obtain CSV/XLS output must run the query before the data is purged from the
temporary table. If the query returns with no results, it is likely the
data has already been purged, and you will need to reprocess the report and
make sure the query runs within the 60 minute time frame.
It is anticipated that this enhancement will be in
production no later than Nov. 11, 2016, with earlier migration
possible. If you have scheduled this report to run during the night with
plans to extract the data the following day, you will need to modify the timing
of your scheduled process.
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Two new public queries are
available to users who have purchase order and vendor inquiry accesses.
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The OCP_PO0356_Rundate
query lists encumbrances as of the date and time run. It differs from the
Outstanding Orders report in that it provides project chartfields, the buyer, a
description of the item or service encumbered and other additional information.
Since it runs without prompts, this query can be scheduled to run on a
recurrence basis.
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The OCP_PO0356_RUNDATE_RANGEDT
query provides the same data as the OCP_PO0356_RUNDATE query except that it
prompts by PO date range.
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P-CARD
Remember that the maximum payment amount in any single
transaction is $5000 unless the purchase is one of the following:
- Statewide contract;
- Inter-agency payment;
- Utility payment; or
- A qualified professional service (under 18 O.S. 18 § 803)
The correct SW contract or other service type must be
selected from the drop down list in the Category column on each P-Card
transaction. The $5000 limit applies to multiple invoices or folios
‘batched’ by the vendor/merchant for their convenience. The $5000 limit
also applies to any and all emergency purchases at this time.
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We would like to welcome Cindi Reisman as the new State Travel
Manager. She will be assisting agencies with issues concerning airfare, hotels
and local transportation through the state travel contract. She will also be an
additional contact for p-card issues. Cindi can be reached at 405-522-4812 or cindi.reisman@omes.ok.gov.
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MISCELLANEOUS
OMES
has successfully submitted the required ACA reports for all state agencies for
2015. In order for 2016 ACA reporting to be correct, agencies must ensure
that the information for all employees is correct on the ACA Eligibility Page
located within PeopleSoft HCM no later than Dec. 1, 2016.
Each
October, agencies must run the Annual ACA Eligibility report which contains a
listing of the current employees measured during the 12-month look back
period. The report is available within PeopleSoft HCM at OK Custom
Reports/OK Reports/HR/ACA Eligibility Hrs Rpt (0666). The report must be run
after all October 2016 payrolls are confirmed.
Here
are a few reminders to help ensure that your agency is in compliance with the
ACA:
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All
active employees should have a current ACA Eligibility Page. Run the
GO_HR_ACA_HIRE_NO_ACA_STATUS query to ensure your compliance.
Employees
regularly working 40 hours per week should have an effective dated row of 1/1/2015, or their
hire date if hired after 1/1/2015. The FT/ACA eligible checkbox should be
marked, and medical offer date field should be complete.
Employees
working less than 40 hours per week, or variable hour employees should have an effective dated
row on the first of the most recent stability date, or their hire date,
whichever date is most recent
Once you review the October
Annual reports, any variable or part-time employees will need a new ACA
Eligibility Page row, effective 01/01/2017. If the employee has earned
benefits, the medical offer date will be 01/01/2017. If they did not earn
benefits, leave this field blank.
Do not mark the ACA/FT Eligible
box for these employees.
The Evaluation Date will be 10/16/2015
– 10/15/2016
The Stability Date will be
01/01/2017 – 12/31/2017
- All employees
that are offered health insurance must have the ‘Medical Offered Date’ entered
on the ACA Eligibility Page. The date will be the first day of the month in
which their insurance coverage will begin.
-
Employees
who have terminated since 1/1/2015 should have a Termination row on the ACA
Eligibility page. The effective date should be the same effective date
reflected on Job Data. Run the GO_HR_ACA_TERMS_NO_ACA_STATUS query to
ensure your compliance.
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Employees
who are not active on your agency’s payroll should be terminated in Job Data
with the appropriate retroactive effective date. Run the
GO_PY_NOT_PAID_SINCE_PROMT query. We suggest using the 1/1/2016 prompt
date to ensure your compliance. NOTE: There
may be extenuating circumstances for an unpaid employee to remain on payroll,
such as an employee who is on workers compensation TTD. If your agency
has an employee(s) who will remain active, in an unpaid status, you must enter
a row to reflect their current ACA Status on the ACA Eligibility page. It
would be advisable to utilize the “Remarks” field.
Agencies will continue to run the ACA Monthly Hours Report 0668
each month, including October, to determine eligibility for part-time and
variable hour employees. Utilize the testing calendars found on the OMES ACA page for assistance
with determining the Evaluation and Stability dates for these employees.
For
additional ACA resources visit the ACA page found here, that contains
helpful information and resources.
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