Frequently Asked Questions

In preparation for the implementation of HR Design and UPS, the UWSA HR office, the UWSA Budget office, and the Service Center have created a new solution within PeopleSoft HRS which will allow the distribution of pay plan and merit-based compensation adjustments along with corresponding funding changes. The Compensation Administration Tool (CAT) allows users to make compensation and funding changes en masse on an external spreadsheet and then load the updated data back into HRS and the budget system. The CAT, accompanied by a new standard business process, is an intermediate solution which will prepare the institutions for the future deployment of a new budgeting system to support scenario-based analysis, forecasting, and the delivery of rate increases to HRS.

There are three important components of the tool:

• The Initialization Report (IR): The Initialization Report (IR) is an Excel report generated from HRS that gathers all active employees’ job data and funding information for a given effective date. The user will copy the data from the IR and paste it into the Institutional Planning Spreadsheet, where he or she can then make compensation and funding adjustments. The IR will be run at the beginning of the budget planning process.
• Institutional Planning Spreadsheet (IPS): This is a sophisticated spreadsheet that allows the user to view existing HRS data, analyze employee populations, and assign rate increases and funding changes. As an Excel tool, the IPS provides the ability to change rates and funding both for individual employees and for multiple employees at once. The IPS also includes basic totals and summary data for a variety of categories (e.g. total dollar amounts by funding department). All data changes made in the IPS are then uploaded into the CAT.
• The Compensation Administration Tool (CAT): The CAT is a PeopleSoft tool that allows for rate and funding changes to be made at the job level. The user can search and edit a single employee at a time, which is especially useful for more complicated employees. For example, while changes can be made in the IPS for employees with more than five funding splits, it may be easier to make the changes for those specific employees one at time in the CAT. Changes to employees can be made in the CAT until the budget needs to be locked and uploaded in HRS.

The CAT serves the following purposes:

• The mainframe budget system was not equipped to accept classified (university) staff compensation increases to reflect the budget year salary. This was a necessary functionality under the new personnel systems (HR Design and UPS). Thus, there was a need for a system that was able to accept salary and funding information for all staff types. (The CAT replaced BDGT, BDGR, and BRATE transactions.)
• The University of Wisconsin System (UWS) embarked upon a strategic initiative to replace the mainframe budget system with new financial planning software (PlanUW).
• A mechanism for compensation administration for all employees must precede a new financial planning system, which has taken other large research universities two to three years to implement. The CAT allows for compensation increases and funding changes for university staff to be distributed and budgeted for in the meantime.
• The CAT increases consistency and efficiency by aligning the compensation administration and budgeted processes for university staff and FA/AS/LI staff.
• The CAT enables institutions to monitor and analyze compensation and funding changes at the job level prior to loading to HRS.
• The CAT decreases dual entry between HRS and the mainframe budget system (3270).
• The CAT increases efficiency by using spreadsheets to mass-initialize the budgeted population and to administer mass changes (such as pay plans) for all staff types.

Five security roles have been developed for the CAT which will allow access to CAT-specific pages and functionality using PeopleSoft row-level security. CAT Access is separate from HRS Access, and you may request access to the CAT even if you do not have HRS access; however, some links in the CAT that refer to HRS data may not be accessible. Row-level security tiers data and grants users access to a single division or department but not multiple divisions or departments. For example, if a user only has access to one division in the CAT, but needs access to multiple divisions because an employee has split funding, they will need move up an entire security level to view the entire institution.

More information on security roles, access, and role request processes can be found in the Security Overview document under the Other Resources tab of the homepage of the CAT Website.

With or without a compensation plan, the CAT increases efficiency and allows for strategic alignment in the following ways:

• Initializes the CAT (budgeted population) using a spreadsheet upload
• Makes mass changes to compensation and funding using a spreadsheet upload
• Displays compensation and funding source commitments made for an employee on a single page
• Automatically feeds compensation and other employee data changes from HRS to the CAT for major portion of the comp admin cycle, thus minimizing dual entry
• Maintains all compensation and corresponding funding in PeopleSoft, which increases data integrity
• Moves UW System person detail establishing salary lines and FTE off the mainframe 3270 system and towards a more modern technology
• Streamlines business processes
• Accommodates changes for all staff types

By not having a pay plan, the university can familiarize itself with the new system prior to implementing a full pay plan for all staff.

The Initialization Report (IR) is an Excel report generated in from HRS that gathers all active employees’ job data and funding information for a given effective date. The user will copy the data from the IR and paste it into the Institutional Planning Spreadsheet, where he or she can then make compensation and funding adjustments. The IR will be run at the beginning of the budget planning process.

Knowledge Base documents and User Guides for the IR can be found on the homepage of the CAT Website.

This is a sophisticated spreadsheet that allows the user to view existing HRS data, analyze employee populations, and assign rate increases and funding changes. As an Excel tool, the IPS provides the ability to change rates and funding both for individual employees and for multiple employees at once. The IPS also includes basic totals and summary data for a variety of categories (e.g. total dollar amounts by funding department). All data changes made in the IPS are then uploaded into the CAT.
There are two versions of the IPS to choose between, depending on each institutions’ business processes. The institutional liaisons will choose which version to use for their institutions in the Annual Setup. The two versions of the IPS are:

1. Off of Original Base (aka Base or Off-Base): any adjustments will be made with respect to the original rate, not including any subsequent adjustments
2. Cumulative: any adjustments will be made with respect to the most current rate, including all previous adjustments

IPS Cumulative and Base Templates, Knowledge Base documents, and User Guides for the IPS can be found on the homepage of the CAT Website.

Templates for both the Cumulative and Off-Base IPS are located in the Resource section on the homepage of the CAT Website.

This is the only external resource needed in the CAT process. Everything else will be found through PeopleSoft.

There will be three types of data in the Institutional Planning Spreadsheet:

• Data that is copied and pasted from the IR.
• Data that is entered by institutional users (e.g. rate increases).
• Data that is populated using pre-entered formulas (e.g. Proposed Comprate).

PeopleSoft does not have the ability to generate a sophisticated spreadsheet (with formulas, formatting, and summary data), like the custom-made Institutional Planning Spreadsheet. It can only generate a basic data file of existing employee information, so the user must manually copy the data from the IR and paste it into the corresponding IPS columns. The IR is simply a step to transfer data from PeopleSoft into the IPS, which can then be used as a tool for analysis and distributing rate and funding changes.

Yes. There are many ways to use the IPS to make adjustments for specific groups of employees. For example, an institution may choose to divide the employee population by home division or by employee class and make the adjustments that way.
There are three ways that the population can be divided:

• By running the IR for a specific population, as determined on the IR Run Control
• By filtering the IR parameters to a specific population before copying it and pasting it into the IPS (note: it is recommended that any major filtering is done here, as the IPS is a more complicated spreadsheet and may take longer to process the adjustments)
• By filtering the IPS parameters to a specific population

Please take caution when dividing a population of employee records that no employee records are accidentally excluded.

The Additional Adjustment Page (AAP) supports UW institutions and divisions in the planning and budgeting of Group, Lump, Vacant, and Negative positions throughout the compensation administration process. It contains two sections for users to enter positions in: Vacant Positions and Other Budget Adjustments (formerly Group, Lump, and Negative positions). Each Funding Department has a unique page in the AAP. These types of entries will not be tied to specific employee records, so they cannot be entered into the Compensation Administration Tool.

This page is to be used as a reconciling tool. The AAP interfaces to the current budget system, but does not transfer data to HRS. The data on this page will pass back to the Budget Summary Report, the CAT summary report and BSUM.

The CAT will be used by those who perform a variety of tasks throughout the compensation administration cycle, including funding and salary changes to HRS, as well as those who account for and reconcile those decisions for budgeting purposes. These may include Human Resources and Budget staff at each institution. Different users will have different security roles which allow them to access certain parts of the CAT. Each institution is encouraged to incorporate the user roles into their current business process models.

More information on security roles and access can be found in the Security Overview document under the Other Resources tab of the homepage of the CAT Website.

Initial training sessions will be held in December and January. These sessions will include both conceptual overview and hands-on engagement with the CAT. Specific locations, dates and times can be found on the CAT Calendar tab of the CAT Website. Please contact your Institutional Liaison or Jennifer Goytowski (jgoytowski@uwsa.edu) with any questions.

HR employees are responsible for providing and approving final compensation increases and may or may not be responsible for the entry of those increases within the CAT. Many HR employees may use the CAT to run reports and reconcile with other system data.

HR employees will still be responsible for entering compensation increases that take affect outside of the Compensation Administration cycle into HRS.

The CAT handles each employee record individually. Thus, it will not matter if an employee has multiple records in different divisions or institutions. If an employee record is funded out of two or more different divisions or departments, those divisions and departments must communicate to reach a consensus on the compensation and funding information for that employee record.

Data level access is given based on home department or division. If an employee is funded out of your division or department but has a separate home department, you will need to be given edit-access to all divisions (Business Unit level access), in order to view this employee in the CAT.

New hires will be caught on the HRS Change report and may need to be added to the CAT. For more information, please refer to the HRS Change Report KB on the homepage of the CAT Website.

Terminations will be caught on the HRS to CAT Comparison Report and will need to be removed manually from the CAT. For more information, please refer to the HRS to CAT Comparison Report KB on the homepage of the CAT Website.

Transfers involving a position number change will be caught on the HRS to CAT Comparison Report. They will need to be removed and reentered with their new position number on the CAT. Transfers not involving a change in position number will automatically be pushed to the CAT.
For more information, please refer to the HRS to CAT Comparison Report KB on the homepage of the CAT Website.

There are a variety of error statuses that appear on the CAT Page and error reports that handle different CAT errors, new hires, terminations and transfers. For more information, please refer to the reports and CAT Page KBs on the homepage of the CAT Website.

Vacant, Group Lump and Deduct position entries will now be handled in the Additional Adjustments Page. You will enter a row for each funding string for each Vacant Position or Budget Adjustment (Group, Lump, Deduct) position.

For more information, please refer to the CAT AAP KB on the homepage of the CAT Website.

No, the CAT cannot be used to make title or FTE changes in HRS. You can edit an employees budgeted FTE and budgeted title. These fields will only affect the titles and budgeted amounts passed to the Budget Summary. They will not affect any change in HRS.

The Departmental Planning Spreadsheet (DPS) was developed for UW-Madison’s decentralized comp admin and budgeting process. Similar to the IPS, it is a sophisticated spreadsheet that allows the user to view existing HRS data, analyze employee populations, and assign rate increases and funding changes. As an Excel tool, the IPS provides the ability to change rates and funding both for individual employees and for multiple employees at once. The DPS also includes basic totals and summary data for a variety of categories (e.g. total dollar amounts by funding department). All data changes made in the DPS are then uploaded into the CAT. The DPS differs from the IPS in that the funding splits are listed vertically as rows beneath each employee.  For additional information, please visit UW-Madison's Budget Office website.

Please contact your Institutional Liaison or send an email to serviceoperations@uwss.wisconsin.edu.