Key Banner HR Terms

Additional Compensation

Formerly known as "Supplemental Pay," this is any compensation provided to status employees outside of their base regular earnings.

Adjustment

This is one of the six categories of payroll adjustments. An adjustment adds earnings or amounts to an already-processed pay event. It processes a manual check for an employee who (because of unreported hours, misentered hours, or excessive deduction amounts) was not given enough pay during the normal payroll cycle. NOTE that adjustment and payroll adjustment are defined differently. Refer to the definition of payroll adjustment (below).

Approval Category

In the electronic approval processes approval categories represent the purpose of the personnel action - the reason the Personnel Action is being created. Approval categories are commonly performed functions at an institution such as the transfer of an employee or the reclassification of an employee.

Approval Type

In the electronic approval process, approval types are defined to be the most basic type of action and specific to the processing of a Personnel Action. They are actions such as establishing a new job assignment for an employee or terminating an existing job assignment for an employee.

Banner ID

Is the key identifier for persons established in Banner (people, vendors, companies).  In most cases, the Banner ID for employees will be set as their social security number, unless an alternative ID has been requested and assigned.

Benefit Category

A Banner attribute that organizes the types of benefits that different employee classes are eligible to receive.

Core Deductions

These are the payroll deductions associated with the core benefit elections made by the employee (i.e., Delta Dental 2-person plan B).

Deferred Pay Processing

This is the withholding of portions of an employee's pay for disbursement at a later date. For example, the yearly wages of an employee on a ten-month contract can be paid in equal installments over twelve months.

Disposition

A system-defined code that indicates the current status of a pay event in the payroll cycle.

Distribution Org

A Banner attribute assigned on the NBAJOBS record that associates an Employee with how their paycheck should be distributed (mailed home, sent to home department?).

Duplicate

This is a payroll adjustment that creates a manual paycheck for a future or current pay event. A duplicate can be used to provide a starting point for creating a manual check. Earnings and deductions from a previous check are used as the "base" and can be changed to reflect appropriate earnings and deductions for a manual check in a different pay event.

ECLS

ECLS, Employee Classes, are categories of employees based on their benefits eligibility, type of work, and appointment.

Effective Date

For Banner, this means either the future effective date a change is to occur or the first day following the last paid date if a change is retroactive.

Electronic Approvals

Approvals applied to transactions through defined routing queue's.

Encumbrance

The reservation of budgeted dollars for costs associated with a specific position. As funds are expensed for the position, the encumbrance is reduced or liquidated.

EPAF

EPAFs are Electronic Personnel Appointment Forms, or Electronic Personnel Action Forms, and they allow Banner users to initiate transactions electronically that used to happen through paper and coding to the old system.  We will use EPAFs to hire, terminate, place on leave, and make changes to appointments for our employees.

Exempt

Employees whose work is paid on a salary basis and who are 'exempt' from being paid overtime.

FLSA

The US Fair Labor Standard Act. This act governs overtime compensation. It dictates that employees who work more than a specified number of hours in a government-defined work period must be paid 150% of their regular rate for those overtime hours. (Employees whose compensation is exempted from this law are referred to as exempt employees).

FOAPAL

The SCT Banner System fund, organization, account, program, activity, and location specified for a particular labor distribution. Components are defined as follows:

FTE

"Full Time Equivalent," in Banner, we will capture employee's percent and reflect it as FTE.

FYI

EPAF transactions can be set up to also provide FYI (For Your Information) records to individuals who, while not needing to validate and approve a transaction, may need to know that a transaction has been initiated and approved.  This is set up as an "approval" on the EPAF.

Home Org

A Banner attribute assigned on the PEAEMPL that associates an Employee with a department or organization, usually associated with the employee's primary job (status position and department).

Job Change Reason

For each change to appointments, a "Job Change Reason" needs to be entered so we can categorize the activities and use for reporting.

Job Type

Banner has three job types: primary, secondary, overload.  Most reports are driven to read off the primary job record.  Status positions will all be either primary or secondary.  Any supplmental appointments will be "overload."

JOBS ECLS

Employee classes assigned to the Positions and NBAJOBS records will categorize employees by their appointment type (i.e., tenure track or not), fte base (i.e., academic year versus fiscal year).

JOBS record

Nickname for NBAJOBS record.  It is a date effective snapshot of an employee's appointment to a particular position.

Labor Distribution

The accounts to which position expenses are charged. Refer to the definition of FOAPAL (above).

Leave Category

A Banner attribute that organizes the types of leave (vacation, earned time, sick leave) that employees are eligible to receive.

Location

A building and room number.

Manual

One of the six categories of payroll adjustments. A manual adjustment generates a pay event or check transaction outside of the normal payroll process. It is performed to provide a pay advance or to process an employee who was missed during the original pay cycle.

Mass Salary Increases

Processing one or more increases for many employees effective on the same date.

Module

A series of related functions or processes.

Non-Exempt

Employees whose work is paid on an hourly basis and must be provided overtime according to FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act).

Open Enrollment

The period each fall where benefits-eligible employees select benefits for the following calendar year.

Originator

The creator of an Electronic Personnel Action. The originator will be the first person who commits data entered on the Electronic Personnel Action Form (NOAEPAF) to the database.

Overload Job

A position that takes the employee over full time. Refer to the definitions of primary job and secondary job (below).

Pay Event

That entity which is defined by Year, Pay ID, Pay Number, Employee ID, and Sequence Number. Examples include a regular paycheck, a void, a manual, and an adjustment. PHALIST lists all pay events that have occurred for an individual. Each pay event includes only one PHRHIST record and at least one PHRJOBS record. A pay event typically includes multiple records on PHREARN, PHRDEDN, PHRELBD, PHRDOCM, etc. Refer to the definition of payroll (below).

PAYID

The actual paycycles that USNH runs to produce paychecks.  USNH has three PAYID's - a bi-weekly pay for hourly folks (B2), a bi-weekly pay for salaried folks (B1); and a non-pay cycle (NP).  The non-pay PAYID allows us to avoid processing pay for "dummy" positions or for non-paid people like ROTC faculty and campus ministers.

Payroll

That entity which is defined by Year, Pay ID, and Pay Number. A payroll contains multiple pay events (mostly regular paychecks). Refer to the definition of pay event (above).

Payroll Adjustment

A correction to a payroll that has already been run. There are six types of payroll adjustments to SCT Banner HR; voids, redistributions, manuals, adjustments, reissues, and duplicates. Note that payroll adjustment and adjustment are defined differently. Refer to the definition of adjustment (above).

PCLS

PCLS, Position Classes, categorize the type of work being performed and are assigned to a pay range and scale.  Example include Administrative Assistant II; Associate Professor; Accountant; Utility Worker.

PEAEMPL ECLS

Employee classes assigned on PEAEMPL will categorize employees by their benefits and leave (earned time versus vacation) eligibility.

Personnel Date

The actual date that changes to employee records SHOULD have occurred.  Since Banner cannot allow changes before the "last paid date," personnel date will indicate when the change SHOULD have occurred, and effective date will indicate when the change actually managed to be made in the system.

PIDM

A unique number assigned on a background table to persons in Banner.  A PIDM is assigned whenever a new person or new ID is entered.  The PIDM is used to connect the information from one process to another.

Pooled Positions

A position established with a budget that can have one to many employees hired into it.

Position

A position is used to budget for personnel services.  It associates a position classification (like Accountant) with a accounting line (FOAPAL), a work schedule, and a reporting line.

Position Group

Position groups cluster position classifications into broad groupings that support federal reporting (i.e., Executive/Administrative /Managerial; Faculty; Skilled Trades)

Position Org

A Banner attribute assigned on the NBAPOSN record that associates a budgeted position with the area/department/organization responsible for it.

Position Type

USNH Policy recognizes different types of positions, based on their continuation and funding (i.e., permanent, grant, term, non-status, student, graduate, etc.)  Some of these position types have been embedded into the Position Number coding convention.

Primary Job

The job for which the employee was hired. This is the job used for EEO1/IPEDS reporting. Refer to the definitions of overload job (above) and secondary job (below).

Proxy

During the electronic approval process, proxies are individuals authorized to take approval action in the absence of an approver

Queue Status

The status of the Electronic Personnel Action (PAF) for each individual defined in the approval queue.

Query

A request for data from the database.

Redistribution

One of the six categories of payroll adjustments. A redistribution alters the original labor distribution of an individual pay event. This action is internal to the payroll/finance office(s) and is invisible to the employee.

Re-Extract

A payroll procedure performed when something about a deduction or job record changes withini the payroll currently being processed. It tells the system that the employee records extracted during PHPTIME and the values for records defaulted to the electronic timesheets must be erased and replaced with a revised electronic time record.

Reissue

One of the six categories of payroll adjustments. A reissue automatically creates a void transaction on the original event and a manual transaction to replace the original event. Its most common use occurs when an original paycheck is lost or destroyed.

Salary Grade

Salary Table

Secondary Job

An additional position that takes the employee to (but not over) full time. Refer to the definitions of overload job and primary job (above).

Single Positions

Superuser

A "superuser" has the ability to approve any transaction at any time during the approval process and bypass the people in the approval queue that have not yet taken action on the transaction (approved, in the queue, etc.). This functionality is critical to the timeliness of the payroll process. The payroll or human resources office can those PAF's pending approval view either on-line or in a report. With verbal communication from each approver in the queue, they can approve pending transactions (and bypass all approvers) when the changes must be applied to the database for accurate payroll processing. The only approver action that is not valid for the superuser is the action of "disapproval." If action needs to be taken on a PAF that would mandate that the PAF be withdrawn from the approval process, the superuser can 'void' the transaction or "return it for correction."

Timesheet Org

Units

Void

One of the six categories of payroll adjustments. A void nullifies a check.

Voluntary Deductions

WISE

Work Schedule