This action opens a form to allow the user to enter detailed staff data for the selected staff member. Typically this is used to amend the Increment Due Date, or to vary the Pay Multiplier, Cost Centre Allocation or Reported FTE by month over the 5 years.
Maintain Staff Plan
This card presents sub-forms to Maintain the Staff Plan or to Review Costs in 1-1000 (Personnel Number) or A-Z (Surname) order.
Maintaining the plan involves changing data, adding or copying rows etc. and then running rules to calculate costs and aggregate data, as described on this and other pages in the Staff Plan website, especially in the Concepts and Terminology section.
The Review costs sub-form are read-only, and are intended to allow quick lookup of costs.
Saving Data
When data is changed it will be highlighted on screen and must be saved before running rules or moving to another form. This is done by clicking the Save button (or Ctrl + S). Saving should be very quick and shouldn’t delay you when amending data. It does not need to be performed individually for each row, but as with other systems, it is a good idea to save regularly. When the data is saved it is stored in the database in the Cloud.
Rules
Rules allow the system to calculate values, to move or copy data, and/or to aggregate values in the system. The detailed rules below allow the user to control these activities but it is also important to know that rules can be run automatically in the background as Jobs.
The rules are available from the UCD Staff Planning menu
Automatic, Scheduled Jobs
Key rules which are performed automatically are set up as scheduled jobs. An example is the automatic copying of the Staff Plan to the Overnight version each night. This provides a version that can be compared against easily, for example to ensure that changes have been saved or re-calculated.
Calculation and aggregation of data can take time and it will not always (!) suit Finance Managers to manually run these rules and to wait for results. Calculation and Aggregation of Staff Plans is currently scheduled to run during the morning, in the afternoon and overnight. Details of the schedule are maintained on UCD’s PBCS website here. Further discussion of Calculation and Aggregation is available on UCD’s PBCS website here.
Rules run by User
Rules can be run from the Actions menu, or by right-clicking on the relevant row where they refer to a particular row. Ensure that you click on the final dimension (ie cost centre) when running a rule by right-clicking.
Once changes have been made and saved to the database, calculations need to be run to update the calculated costs.
Calculate This Row
calculates the row but does not aggregate to any level, ie does not update Form or other Totals.
Calculate This Form
will calculate all of the rows on the form and also updates the total for the Form.
When there are a significant number of changes to be made to a unit, the easiest way to operate is usually to apply the changes, save the form, run the Calculate This Form rule and then review the version against a previous version (e.g. Overnight) to ensure that you are happy with the changes.
Move This Row
This action allows the user to move the current row. It does this by copying an existing row editing either the person, pay scale or cost centre, and deleting the original row. This can be used to change the cost centre or pay scale of a person.
The select button, on the right of each text box, enables the user to search through the entire list of Cost Centres, Pay Scales, and Persons.
The Launch button will then copy the row to the new point of view, and delete the old row.
Copy This Row
This action allows the user to add a new row. It does this by taking an existing row, copying it, and editing either the person, the pay scale, or the cost centre. This can typically be used to add a pay scale or add a cost centre. As with Move This Row, the rule can be run by right-clicking on the cost centre of the row to be copied or from the Actions menu.
The select button, on the right of each text box, enables the user to search through the entire list of Cost Centres, Pay Scales, and Persons.
The Launch button will then generate sample data for that row so it appears in the form.
Delete This Row
Will delete the row that you are on when running the rule. Ensure you are on the correct row, as there is no option to cancel. The totals for the unit will be automatically updated.
Copy This Row to Submission Working
This rule allows you to copy a row from whatever Scenario / Version you are currently working in, to the Submission Working plan ie to your regular Working Plan. It can be a useful way of copying data from e.g. a What If scenario into your Working Plan.
Unknown Appointees
New Persons (sometimes called Dummy Persons) are used to plan posts for whom the appointee is not known. The Personnel No. for such posts does not need to be meaningful, it just acts as an identifier of the particular row. The Comment should be used to provide whatever context is relevant. The standard rules above - Move or Copy as appropriate - are used with New Persons.
A New Person may be used multiple times in a Plan, as long as they are planned against different Payscale and Cost Centre combinations. For clarity, it is recommended that the same New Person is not used more than once within a cost centre, even where Payscales are different.
Aggregate Entity
Aggregate Entity will update the aggregation of information to other levels e.g. College and University and may be run after Calculate This Form. Note that this aggregation is run automatically regularly in the background, and so only needs to be run if the user needs the College level amounts to be updated immediately.
Push to FinPlan
Push to FinPlan pushes the costs from the Staff Plan to the Financial Plan. The data is pushed at cost centre level to the Financial Plan Submission. Data is written to 2 accounts – 81001 Salaries and Wages per Staff Plan and 81914 Social Costs per Staff Plan. The financial plan is then re-calculated and aggregated.
It should only be run after Calculate This Form.
Push To Forecast
This rule maybe used to push the future periods from the Working Staff Plan (Submission/Working) to the Staff Plan Forecast, where it will be combined aith actuals to date. The Staff Plan Forecast can then be pulled into the Financial Plan Forecast. Usually this is handled by Central Finance staff at the start of a forecasting exercise.