Labor Distribution

The Kuali Financial System (KFS) Labor Ledger is USC’s system of record for payroll fiscal reporting. “Fiscal reporting” refers to the final accounting string (e.g., organization code, account, object code) assigned to the payroll transaction. Labor Distribution payroll reports are now generated using data in the KFS Labor Ledger, a payroll accounting sub-ledger to the General Ledger. The Labor Ledger provides the following functionality via KFS: Payroll Expense Transfers (PETs) and reconciliation with Business Intelligence Payroll reports.

Although the Labor Ledger is the system of record for payroll fiscal reporting, note that Workday is the system of record for payroll data (e.g., amount paid, taxes, employee pay information), along with being the data source of the original payroll expense sent to the Labor Ledger. Adjustments made to payroll expenses in KFS do not appear in the Workday system. Fiscal reporting can be done via USC’s Business Intelligence tool for Labor Distribution payroll reports.

NOTE: Labor encumbrances are not reflected in Workday, but they do appear in the Labor Ledger and General Ledger.

Overview of Process

  • Workday processes the payroll. Cost allocations that cannot be “resolved” are defaulted to the dean’s clearing account.
  • Workday sends off-cycle payroll daily and on-cycle payroll on processing dates to the KFS Labor Ledger.
  • Bad or expired accounts discovered in the integration process are defaulted to the dean’s clearing account. Bad object codes are defaulted to 14999.
  • Data in the KFS Labor Ledger are sent to the KFS General Ledger in the same nightly batch process.
  • Workday, the KFS Labor Ledger, and the KFS General Ledger all send data to Business Intelligence (BI).
    • Workday data is used for Payroll Services reconciliation reports and to supplement Labor Distribution reporting. However, it is not used directly for Labor Distribution reporting because account and/or object code for the Workday data could differ from that in the Labor Ledger as a result of error processing.
    • The Comptroller’s Office is responsible for reconciling the Labor Ledger to the General Ledger. Reconciliation occurs on a daily basis, and corrective action will be taken as necessary.
  • As noted, transactions with bad accounting string data will default to the dean’s clearing accounts.
    • Departments can use the ASR to find these transactions.
    • Departments can use the Payroll Expense Transfer (PET) eDoc to correct transactions and put them into their correct account.
    • Once the PET is fully approved, it is posted to the Labor Ledger and then to the General Ledger, correcting both ledgers with that one action.

Reporting

Although Workday provides information on the original payroll expenses incurred for USC employees, the University has transitioned to using Business Intelligence reports derived from the KFS Labor Ledger for all payroll fiscal reporting needs. These reports provide data on the original pay made to an employee, as well as any adjustments that may have been requested via the PET process.

System users who have been granted the BI-Payroll Reporting role in KFS are authorized to run the new payroll reports via the Business Intelligence reports. Users with the BI-Payroll Reporting role have access to payroll information using their current account level and organization code level security access. Where necessary, some users may request access for payroll reporting at the region code (home department code) level. The ability to request the BI-Payroll Reporting role and/or region code access is available via the Kuali User Access Request eDoc. (See the Kuali User Access page on this website for more information.) Please note that region code access can only be requested for BI-Payroll Reporting and is not currently used for any other functionality in KFS.

Payroll Expense Transfers (PETs)

System users who need access to accounts, or who want to request PET initiator or approver roles, can do so by submitting a Kuali User Access Request eDoc. (See the Kuali User Access page on this website for more information.)

The Labor Ledger is the data source for PETs; however, PET adjustments are not sent back to Workday. Although the amount an employee is paid cannot change from system to system, the accounting string can change because PETs and error processing will move the data between object codes and accounts. However, Labor Distribution reports can be run to show data sourced from Workday versus data sourced from PETs.

The PET eDoc in KFS offers the option of requesting object code corrections (including when 14999 has been assigned), plus the ability to transfer at the earn code level. The BI Payroll Reporting tool is a helpful resource when reconciling PETs.

Fringe

Fringe is calculated on labor object codes on a nightly basis when the data are processed in the General Ledger. Fringe calculations are not available in the Labor Ledger.

Year-End Processing

  • University biweekly payrolls that cross a fiscal year are split on a pro-rata basis between the years at the employee level in the Labor Ledger. The denominator of the pro-rata split is 14. The numerator of the split is the number of days in each fiscal year. The exception to this rule is that all CWS payroll in these payrolls is sent to the “old” fiscal year.
  • There are two payroll periods assigned to a split payroll. BW99 is assigned to the payroll that falls into the “old” fiscal year. The second period is the actual payroll period of BW14 or BW15, depending on the year. Adding BW99 prevents one fiscal year from having two payrolls paid with the same payroll period.
  • PETs are allowed in period 13 until a date specified in the closing schedule. Once this date is passed, PETs will go into period one of the new year. Note that PETs will not be allowed in period 13 and period 1 at the same time.

User Support Documents