ECRT Job Aide: Handling Overload, Overtime and Augmentation Payments


Augmentation payment:

Certify the effort associated with the payment. A person's pay is augmented when the normal scope of his or her activities change, for example when a professor becomes a department head. Therefore, the effort statement will accurately reflect the effort the researcher spent on normal University activities.


Overtime payments (used for civil service and union staff):

Certify the effort associated with the payment. These payments reflect additional effort spent on the normal activities so they need to be part of the effort certification process.


Overload payments (used for academic staff):

Do not certify the effort. These payments are made for activities researchers perform that are outside of their regular appointment, for example, when a professor teaches a seminar in another department. Therefore, an overload payment reflects compensation for work that is not part of the normal scope of their appointments.

When ECRT calculates the effort percentages based on the payroll, it will include the overload payment. Therefore, the effort calculations will be incorrect. However, because payroll is correct, effort cannot be adjusted by using an HSA to change payroll. Instead, effort must be adjusted on a manual statement. To do this:

1.      Verify that the payroll distribution is correct.

2.       Recalculate percentages of all account strings excluding the overload payments. If they do not exceed 5%, then apply the reasonableness criteria from effort policy and procedures; and approve/certify the statement in ECRT with a note about actual variance in the comments field. If any percentage value exceeds the 5% reasonableness criteria then proceed to instructions below (3. and after)

3.       Enter a note in the comments field of the ECRT statement indicating that the employee has an overload payment and that a manual effort statement has been generated.

4.      Produce a correct manual effort statement using the form found at http://www.ospa.umn.edu/forms/effortstatement.xls.

5.      Do NOT have the researcher certify the effort statement in ECRT. The statement remains unprocessed until the effort administrator in SPA receives the manual effort statement.

6.      Send the manual effort statement to the effort administrator in SPA.

7.      The effort administrator will adjust the effort statement status within the effort system to reflect that a manual effort statement has been submitted. At this point, the statement will be processed.