In the Spotlight

Volume 1, Issue 2
Volume 1, Issue 2

Electronic leave and time

• Hourly employees only: In the past, holiday hours were automatically put into the payroll system for you. This is no longer the case. Holiday pay should be entered through ESS Time with the wage type: HOL. If you are not sure if you are eligible for holiday pay, please contact Lynnette Windhorst (EC) or Tammie Herrington (CC) and one of them will be able to help you.

• All leave eligible employees: Remember as a 12 month employee you are required to submit leave any time you are not working during your normal work schedule. If you need leave for jury, administrative or military please contact the HR team otherwise all other leave should be submitted through Firefly.

If you plan on using vacation hours around the 4th of July holiday, please pay special attention to requests that span the holiday. Normally ESS Leave will disregard the weekend and not charge vacation hours for Saturday and Sunday, but this is not the case when it comes to holidays. Example: if you plan on taking vacation Thursday, July 3 through Monday, July 7, you will need to submit a leave request for Thursday and another request for Monday. Creating the two requests will then accurately post your vacation to your employee record.

Splitting of requested vacation time will also be necessary for leave requests spanning the Labor Day holiday weekend in September.

• Please contact Carrie Brownyard, Lynnette Windhorst or Tammie Herrington if you have questions.

 

Supervisors

• ESS Time enhancement: As requested in our training sessions, ESS Time now shows the supervisor any time that has previously been approved through ESS Leave. Before, as a work around, employees were asked to enter a comment about any requested leave. This is no longer necessary UNLESS for partial days if the hours shown as leave are incorrect. In this case, the employee should put a comment noting the actual hours worked and the actual hours on leave along with ensuring the proper number of hours are recorded under each category.

• Hiring new employees: Please remember to notify the Business Team BEFORE agreeing to pay someone for work. This way, proper paperwork can be done to ensure they are paid timely and accurately. This includes staff, students, lecturers or contractors. Also keep in mind grad students cannot work more than 20 hours during the school year. Please work with the Business Team to determine the proper number of hours a grad student you are interested in is eligible to work. For student and on-call hourly hires, please ensure you are submitting the request using the Temporary Hiring Form (available from Tammie or Lynette) and ideally submit the form 2-3 weeks before the employee begins work.

• My Staff enhancement: My Staff selection reports allow managers to view data on their direct reports and others employees within their organizations (given the appropriate security). With a single click, managers can now view information about their employees’ positions, education, addresses, contact numbers, pay, etc. All reports are refreshed nightly, giving managers an up-to-date snapshot of employee information.

 
Spotlight 1.jpg
Spotlight 1.jpg

The enhanced Selection Reports are in the same location on Firefly, but have been separated into logical report groups. Each group contains two or more related reports:

1. Employee: “Employee General Information” and “Education”
2. Position and Org: “Position Values” and “Basic Pay”
3. Contact Numbers: “Work Phone List” and “Emergency Contact Numbers”
4. Addresses: “Work Address and Phone,” “Current Address and Phone,” and “Permanent Address and Phone”
5. Dates: “Birthday List – Alpha Order,” “Birthday List – Date Order,” “Service Dates – Alpha Order,” and “Service Dates – Date Order”

Documentation can be found by clicking the Options icon in the upper right of the window and selecting Help (as shown below). A narrated tutorial is also linked from the documentation.

 
 Let us know if you have any questions: servicedesk@nebraska.edu | 472-7373 | 877-472-7694
Let us know if you have any questions: servicedesk@nebraska.edu | 472-7373 | 877-472-7694

Let us know if you have any questions: servicedesk@nebraska.edu | 472-7373 | 877-472-7694

 

Accounts Payable

• Purchasing items: All purchases should be made through department contacts and not directly. The department administrative team will order books, supplies, etc. on their pcard or through eSHOP. This saves the department money by eliminating paying sales tax and often provides a cheaper price. Only in rare cases should an employee buy an item directly and request reimbursement from the University. If you do submit an item for reimbursement, see notes below in travel on submitting receipts.

• Packing slips: The person ordering an item should receive and check to make sure everything they ordered is received. The requester/approver should be different than the person ordering.

 

Travel

• All pretrip forms should be submitted and approved BEFORE any expenses are incurred. Please contact Nell Inselman with any travel questions.

• Submitting Receipts:
- Do not highlight or black/white out line items.

- If you are not claiming all items on the receipt, circle the items you are claiming and draw one line through the items you are not claiming.

- Provide details of your calculation if you are not claiming the entire amount of the receipt.

- Original receipts are required (copies, stamps, faxes or scans are not accepted).

- Get answers to any questions before you submit any reimbursements. This will speed up the process.

• Driving instead of flying: When choosing to drive a personal vehicle instead of flying commercially, and travel is further than 300 miles, an airfare quote must be obtained at least two weeks prior to the scheduled departure. The quote must be attached to the employee expense voucher.

• Purchasing tickets directly: If you choose to purchase airline tickets through another source other than Travel & Transport or Southwest, here are a few things to consider:

- You will have to pay for the ticket yourself and process the reimbursement with the rest of your trip expenses after your trip is complete. This is because an employee can only process one reimbursement per trip.

- You will have to bear the cost and inconvenience of any changes made to your ticket.

- It is recommended that you complete an Airfare Situation Report prior to the ticket purchase and get approval to purchase ticket from Travel and Transport.

 
Originally published July 2, 2014 - Submit an Item