The Employees Grid is the primary place for working with Employee and Position Data.  Specific Employee information is displayed based on the current Employee Scope selected.  The image below shows the Employees Grid.

The Employee information maintained with each Scenario contains a comprehensive view of the Employees as uploaded from the Human Resources Management System.  Because there are many different factors that impact Employee costs to the organization, managing them is a complex process.  Modeling Employee records is done independent of the actual Scenario Budget.  As adjustments are made to Employees and Salary Plans, the Employees are recalculated with the Recalculate Employees process, and the costs are rolled-up to the Scenario Budget Element String data with the Recalculate Scenario process.

Employee Data

Employee costs generally consume the largest portion of resources available in public sector budgets, this is particularly true for public schools systems.  Managing these employee costs is also the most complex area of the budgeting process as there are so many variations and unique situations that must be dealt with.  In any payroll system, there are many tables of information used to manage the payment and accounting of employees, and ESP maintains much of that same information,  but in more generalized forms.  Because ESP is first a modeling tool, it is important that employee data be mapped to standard values and factors whenever possible, minimizing or even eliminating, unique or "one-off" employee situations.

ESP is designed to work with virtually any financial or payroll system so this mapping process is accomplished during employee data loading and reloading by using unique processes designed specifically for the financial and payroll system you are using, as well as configuration settings and factors unique to your own organization.  In any payroll system, there are many tables of information used to manage the payment and accounting of Employees, and ESP maintains much of that same information,  but in a more generalized form.  The primary types of records ESP uses for Employee budgeting and reporting include:

Employee Status Flags

FTE Calculation

Although the ultimate goal of Budgeting focuses on costs, a primary component in managing staffing and associated costs is the Full Time Equivalency factor, or FTE.  In its simplest form, an employee's salary can be calculated by multiplying a salary base amount from a schedule or contract by an FTE factor.  This is very simple when an employee is a full time, salaried employee with an FTE of 1, but unfortunately this often is not the case.  If you have an employee that is full time and salaried, but has their salary funded from 2 different cost centers, programs or grants, their total FTE may still equal 1, and they still receive their full salary, which is really all the employee cares about,  but they may have .375% of their salary provided by one cost center budget and the balance, or .625%, provided by another.  Most Budget Analysts know that .375 FTE is the same as 3 work hours in a standard 8 hour work day, and .625 is 5 Works hours, but as funding splits get more complex and often use fractional hours, managing them using Work Time rather than FTE is much simpler and leaves the calculations and necessary rounding to ESP.

FTE is used throughout employee budgeting and is almost always calculated from the Work Time of Employee Fundings and Positions.  This makes it important that each Employee Funding be able to reference a base Work Time value, either Work Hours or Work Days, or both.  If one or both of the Work Time values is missing from the Employee Funding, or if only FTE is provided, ESP will calculate the Work Time values from values ESP knows about using the following progression:

1.Position Funding

2.Employee Position

3.Salary Plan

4.Standard Work Hours/Days

Annualized Salaries

As data is loaded and reloaded from the payroll system, there are many variations in the implementation of Employee Positions which need to be evaluated in order to best report or model the Employee Fundings.  When using a Modeling Scenario, it is often necessary to extend or Annualize the Work Days of a partial year Employee Funding so the anticipated costs in the upcoming year are fully realized to a full year, as is the case of a filled Vacancy, but for truly partial year, or Segmented positions, maintaining the position Work Days may also be desired.  In the case of SnapShot or Maintenance Scenarios, Work Days are not automatically Annualized.

Contract Year

Contract Year is determined by adding the Salary Plan Work Days to the Salary Plan Contract Date.  If the Salary Plan Contract Date is missing or occurs before the Scenario Budget Date,  the Scenario Budget Date will be used as the Contract Start.

Calculated Working Days

Calculated Working Days are the available working days which occur between the start and end dates of the Employee Position or Employee Funding, excluding weekends but including holidays.  ESP supports excluding additional days by using a Calendar Data Schedule assigned to the Salary Plans.

Work Days Fulfilled

Employee Fundings, Work Days are considered Fulfilled if the Calculated Work Days of the Employee Position are greater than or equal to the Work Days of the Employee Position, and either the Employee Funding Start Date or the Employee Funding falls with the Contract Year.

Annualized Work Days

Based on the conditions loaded from the payroll system, Employee Fundings with Work Days less than those defined by its Employee Position may have the Work Days increased to match the Employee Position, ensuring adequate Costs are modeled for the upcoming Fiscal Year.  The process of extending the Work Days to a full year is called Annualization.

Segmented Employee Fundings

Segmented Employee Fundings are used when an employee fills multiple partial year positions, or when the funding source within the Fiscal Year.

 

Employee ESP System Settings