CAR Newsletter - June 2023

Volume 33, Number 12 | Fiscal Year 2023 | June 14, 2023

TOP STORY

• Year-End Payroll Conversion

PAYROLL

• Increase in Payroll Fraud Attempts
• Additional Payroll Fraud Information
• Year-End Costing Allocation Changes   
• Changes in Fees for SoonerSave Deferred Savings Plan
• Changes in Fees for Pathfinder Retirement Plan
• No Change in State Share of Oklahoma Public Employees Retirement System
• No Change in Employer Contribution Rate for Justices and Judges Retirement System
• No Change in State Share of Oklahoma Law Enforcement Retirement System
• Change in Contribution Rates for Teachers' Retirement System
• Schedule of FY 2024 Pay Periods

HIGHER EDUCATION PAYROLL

• Form EWC – PFT Reversals
• Higher Ed Deferred Payroll

1099 INFORMATION

• Midyear 1099 IRS TIN Match

ACCOUNTING

• PeopleSoft Financial Security Reminder
• OMES Forms 11 and 11a
• FY 2023 Year-End Miscellaneous Claim Vouchers and Orders Processing
• Travel Reimbursement Crossing Fiscal Years

AGENCY NEWS

• Central Purchasing

TRAINING

• There are no trainings at this time.

Below is an article on Year-End Costing Allocation Changes. This information was sent to agency CFOs in May. If your agency has not yet submitted their conversion file, please submit it as early as you can. We have about 120 agencies to convert and as of June 6 have only received responses from roughly 10 agencies. Delaying this submission will jeopardize the timely conversion of your employee’s costing allocation.

There has been an increase in fraud attempts to change employees’ banking information, including multiple change requests coming from a single email address. This article is a reminder that this issue is still ongoing and to be cognizant when receiving requests to update payroll information. To avoid processing fraudulent information, you must verify any attempts for payroll changes.

Immediate steps to take:

• Agencies must pull all Payroll Change/Direct Deposit forms from their public websites and move the forms to an intranet or distribute by employee request only. 
• Additionally, until otherwise notified, personnel who handle employee payroll direct deposit procedures should verify ALL requests for changes to direct deposit by personally contacting the employee by phone and verifying information such as employee ID number, employment start date, etc. Do not contact the employee by responding to an email requesting the change. Make direct contact and ensure you are actually communicating with the employee and not someone posing as the employee.
• We advise agencies to set a time delay when changing direct deposit information to decrease the chance of wage theft.

• Call the OMES Service Desk at 405-521-2444 or contact the appropriate IT or security support for your organization if you receive a suspicious phone call or email.

Remember that employees must upload a signed and dated Automatic Deposit Transmittal (HCM-73) form along with a voided check or official document from their financial institution showing the financial institution’s routing number and the employee’s account number. If both documents are not provided by the employee, the change should not be completed in the HCM system.

If it is discovered that an employee’s banking information was submitted fraudulently, the employee should contact the HR/Payroll department immediately along with the authorities. Agency IT personnel should be notified if any correspondence was by email.

If the individual is also established in the Vendor File, please contact Victoria Baker at victoria.baker@omes.ok.gov or 405-522-3093.

For helpful information and tips, please visit the Oklahoma Cyber Command website.

The National Automated Clearing House Association website also has general information on electronic payment security along with a document for protecting against fraud.

Agencies are responsible for costing allocation changes in Workday@OK. OMES developed a method to make mass year-end updates for agencies as opposed to agencies individually adding a new costing allocation for fiscal year 2024.

Agency CFOs or Workday@OK Finance Partners will have to initiate these updates. This job aid will help to facilitate the mass update and provide instructions for running the necessary reports, downloading them to Excel, reviewing the current costing allocations, and making updates to the costing allocations by position/employee. The costing allocation updates can be submitted as early as June 1 as they are effective dated; it is recommended that you provide the updated file as early as possible. All positions/employees for that agency should be updated in a single file.

The schedule for running the costing allocation updates:

• Biweekly payroll agencies must provide updated funding by June 20. Biweekly payrolls for the pay period of June 18-July 1 will begin processing the first week of July. If costing allocations are not loaded prior to the initial calc done on July 2, agencies would have to individually run a calc on every employee updated by the load or changed online.

• Monthly payroll agencies must be submit these files by July 5. If costing allocations for agencies that run only monthly payrolls are not loaded prior to the initial calc, which will be done on July 16, agencies would have to individually run a calc on every employee updated by the load. Your supplemental or off-cycle payrolls for June do not have to be completed for this update to be loaded.

After all necessary adjustments have been made, email the adjusted file to the HRMS Workday Support Group. This will enable the CORE group to prepare and load the funding changes requested by the agency through the submitted document into Workday@OK.

The rate certified for the administrative cost to be calculated in payrolls submitted for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2023, has changed to $3.69 per month for any qualified participant. The equivalent amount for a biweekly pay period is $1.71. This change will be reflected in any payrolls submitted with a pay period code of M01, B01 or C01.

The rate certified for the administrative cost to be calculated in payrolls submitted for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2023, has changed to $2.71 per month for any qualified participant. The equivalent amount for a biweekly pay period is $1.25. This change will be reflected in any payrolls submitted with a pay period code of M01, B01 or C01.

The amount the State of Oklahoma pays for employee retirement will remain at 16.5% for FY 2024.

The amount the State of Oklahoma pays for employee retirement will remain at 22.0% for FY 2024.

The amount the State of Oklahoma pays for employee retirement will remain at 11.0% for FY 2024.

The federal matching contribution rate for the Teachers' Retirement System will increase from 7.9% to 8.4% for FY 2024. The federal matching contribution rate must be paid when salaries are paid by federal funds or externally sponsored agreements such as grants, contracts and cooperative agreements. Other TRS contribution rates remain the same for FY 2024. For a complete list of rates, please see this distribution.

Please distribute the FY 2024 pay date schedules found at Schedule of FY 24 Pay Periods to Payroll and Human Resource directors. Questions on the codes may be directed to payrollreporting@omes.ok.gov.

All Electronic Warrant Cancellation (EWC) forms that are associated with payroll warrants must have PFT Reversal files processed before the warrants are canceled in the PS Financial system. Agencies are notified when funds have come back from the bank and are instructed to process the PFT Reversal file(s). A PFT Reversal file must be submitted timely in order for the agency to move the money from the 789 class fund and return the amounts to the funds that were used for the payroll. When this process isn’t completed, the net pay and associated withholdings remain in the 789 class fund and are not available for the agency to use as needed.

NOTE: Institutions are required to reconcile the 789 class funding no less than monthly. All balances remaining in the 789 class funding must be documented and identifiable. The only balance left in a 789 class funding after a payroll should be related to timing differences.

Payroll claims for hours worked in fiscal years 2023 and 2024 on one payroll fund transfer file will record payroll expenses to the institution’s operating funds with bud refs 23 and 24. The claim number will begin with 24, which will require that all class 78900 transactions on the PFT file be recorded with bud ref 24. The first two digits of the claim number determine which 78900 budget is used for the net payroll vouchers, so all 78900 transactions on the PFT must be recorded with bud ref 24 to ensure the same allotment budget is used. Please ensure the FY 2024 78900 allotment budget is sufficient for the FY 2023 expenses paid in July and August 2023.

If a payroll contains only FY23 expenses, then the claim number will be 23aaaxxxxx and the PFT bud ref will be 23.

If a payroll has FY 23 and FY 24 expenses, then the claim number will be 24aaaxxxxx and the PFT bud refs for the operating funds (290, 430, 700) will be as applicable and the 789 bud ref must be 24.

If a payroll contains only FY 24 expenses, then the claim number will be 24aaaxxxxx and the PFT bud ref will be 24.

In June, OMES will TIN match names and tax id numbers with the IRS on all vendors who have received 1099 reportable payments for the first half of tax year 2023. By doing this, we will be able to provide more correct information on the 1099 that vendors will receive at year-end. We will notify individual agencies of vendors that don’t match with the IRS, asking for them to provide the necessary correcting information. Please be ready to respond promptly if/when you are notified. Contact Alicia Reel at 405-522-1099 or at alicia.reel@omes.ok.gov if you have any questions.

NOTE: This does not apply to Higher Ed institutions, which will do their own 1099 reporting for 2023.

Agencies must send a request to deactivate a user. When an employee leaves the agency, submit a service desk request as quickly as possible. Until the user is inactivated, they still have access to the system even if they do not have a state computer.

If an agency wants to review a comprehensive list of financial system users and their access, email a request to accounting@omes.ok.gov and we will send you a list of current users and their access.

As we approach fiscal year-end, it is critically important that Clearing and ASA reconciliations and transfers to the General Revenue Fund be completed timely.

As a reminder, the Clearing and ASA reconciliations must be submitted to OMES by the 20th of the month. While the form is not due until the 20th, any amounts that are required to be submitted to the statewide General Revenue fund must be transferred by the 10th of the month.

Agencies must submit the reconciliations on the current form, available on the OMES website. 

Following are the procedures for closing out the current fiscal year and then beginning the new fiscal year activity.

• Miscellaneous claim voucher processing. Voucher batches received by 1 p.m. on Thursday, June 29, 2023, will be processed for payment by the close of business June 30. Vouchers received at OMES after 1 p.m. may be held and processed for payment in FY 2024. Vouchers may be created through 5 p.m. on June 29 to accrue for 2023 expenditures in FY 2024. New vouchers should not be created on Friday, June 30, since that day is reserved for fiscal year closing activities. Agencies should resolve all voucher exceptions by the close of business on June 30. New vouchers may be created beginning on Monday, July 3.
• EDT vouchers submission. Agencies uploading voucher data via EDT transmissions (vouchers from remote) should provide for sufficient internal lead time so that vouchers arrive at OMES by the 1 p.m. deadline on June 29. Alternate system agency vouchers transmitted after noon on June 29 will be paid on Friday, June 30. Do not submit EDT transmissions on June 30. EDT agencies should resolve all voucher exceptions by the close of business on June 30. New EDT transmissions may be submitted beginning on Monday, July 3.
• Manual warrants. The cutoff for issuing manual warrants is noon on Thursday, June 29, for non-alternate system agencies and 5 p.m. for alternate system agencies. Agencies whose warrants are entered into the system by OMES must have the supporting paperwork to OMES by 5 p.m. on Thursday, June 29. Manual warrants should not be issued to payees after these deadlines since vouchers should not be created on June 30. Beginning Monday, July 3, manual warrants may be issued and the associated voucher created.
• 340 fund expenditures. Expenditure entries for 340 funds for June 29, 2023, and prior must be received by 9 a.m. on June 30 to be processed in FY 2023. Expenditure entries for 340 funds for June 30, 2023, must be received by 2 p.m. on June 30 to be processed in FY 2023.

WARNING! 2024 Expenses Due Early in July 2023

Payments for 2024 expenses (e.g., July rent) may not be paid with 2023 budget. These payments may not be paid until the agency receives its 2024 budget. Agencies should notify vendors and contractors of this end-of-year processing dilemma, which could delay payment beyond the due date.

Transaction Processing would like to remind agencies of the following:

Per the Statewide Accounting Manual, Chapter 10.5.2:

Payment of expenses is restricted to amounts applicable to the fiscal year in which the travel occurred. In addition, payment shall be subject to the availability of the amounts in the agency’s budget.

Vouchers for reimbursement of travel expenses shall not cover more than one fiscal year (74 O.S. § 500.3). In cases where the travel period (days claimed) extends beyond the end of the fiscal year, the travel voucher must be closed and a subsequent voucher submitted for the remainder of the trip in the next fiscal year. In addition, the first travel voucher must be annotated to show the travel period is continuous and a copy submitted with the second voucher for verification of the payment history of expenses claimed. If submitted together, a copy of the second voucher must be included with the first voucher.

Agencies must split the travel expenses at midnight: one voucher will end travel status at 11:59 p.m. on June 30, and the second voucher will begin travel status at midnight on July 1. Lodging incurred the night of June 30 and morning of July 1 should be included on the June 30 voucher. Be sure to cross-reference each voucher for audit purposes. For additional questions regarding this procedure, please email omestptravel@omes.ok.gov.

As of May 2023, OMES Central Purchasing began issuing a monthly newsletter. 

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