Ever really want to know what your balance is on a sponsored account? Ever need to know who really is on the account? Want to be able to know what you have committed for personnel? Atat the beginning of the new fiscal year, these questions will be easier to answer.

WSU has developed functionality within the BANNER HR system to generate and post salary encumbrances for sponsored accounts. Additionally, as part of this implementation, the system will generate encumbrance for staff assigned to other University funds based on the institutional fiscal year or their respective appointments.

The implementation of this feature will begin with the first payroll of the new fiscal year. Each cycle, when payroll is posted, an encumbrance figure based on the current and future labor distributions will be calculated and posted to the appropriate indexes. Also, a fringe benefit amount will be calculated and similarly posted.

In order to implement this capability, labor distributions that include grant indexes will need to capture “new information”. This new information is:

1) a “Y/N” flag to determine whether or not encumbrances should be calculated for this distribution; and

2) an “Encumbrance Start Date” and “Encumbrance End Date” to capture the date parameters for the encumbrance for each distribution

The University has updated its HR forms to reflect these new fields. In essence, every form which includes a labor distribution line has been changed. These are available at the University stores.