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Marcy Van Winkle IS student payroll

by Becky Stephenson, human resources

marcy

Marcy Van Winkle, senior services technician, payroll services

The beginning of the academic year is the busiest time of the year in human resources for hiring students, setting up the student job fair for Miami campus jobs, processing student I-9 paperwork and “building jobs” in Banner.  The next two weeks Working@Miami will be focusing on student employment.

Marcy Van Winkle is the person who makes sure our student employees are accurately paid in a timely manner.  She has been in payroll services for eight years. 

During the beginning of fall semester student payroll jumps from about 900 summer student employees to about 4,000 student employees.  While student employment is busy adding the jobs in the Banner system, Van Winkle is checking to make sure the jobs roll into our Kronos Time and Attendance system correctly.  

Payroll pointers for smooth operations

It is essential that correct primary and secondary job information get entered into Kronos. 

If correct information is not entered, students cannot clock in or transfer their hours to the correct department when they start working.  This creates a lot of manual work for managers to hand enter time and fix transfer codes.  In addition, if the correct transfer information is not entered on the time card, the student’s manager cannot see the timecard to approve it. The departments then contact Van Winkle to fix the transfer codes for each employee.

Payroll approvals are due Tuesdays by 8:30 a.m. after the pay period ends. The student then gets his or her paycheck the following Tuesday. 

When students used to get paid on Fridays, they had to wait about three weeks for their first paycheck because the pay periods ran behind for the student payroll.  Van Winkle was a member of a Lean team which cut the wait time for students' first paychecks by three days thereby getting paid on Tuesdays instead of Fridays.

At the end of each pay period, Van Winkle runs audits to catch errors such as missing punches, incorrect transfers, etc., and notifies the departments with any discrepancies.  But she relies on the managers to approve the students’ time cards to ensure that the hours are being charged to the correct department and to fix any missing punches.  

If the managers don’t approve the time cards, there is a risk of the student not getting paid for the hours due, the student could get paid at the incorrect pay rate or departments could be charged for hours that are not theirs. 

If these mistakes are not caught before the payroll ends, it results in additional work for general accounting and payroll to do a payroll correction.  This may also cause a hardship for the student who is expecting his or her correct paycheck on payday.   

Van Winkle loves that she has the opportunity to get to know and talk to just about every department on campus and finds the job challenging and very rewarding.

For more information about payroll services or for contact information, go to www.miamioh.edu/hr/payroll.