University of Pittsburgh                                 M-245 Scaife Hall
School of Medicine                                          Pittsburgh, PA  15261
Office of Planning and Management               (412)-648-8964
 
TO:                Department Administrators

FROM:          Mike Gaber

RE:                Procedures for Paying University Incentives and Administrative Supplements

 

You should be aware of the change in policy effective July 1, 2003, which states that all research and academic incentives and supplements are to be paid through the University, and not through UPP (per memo from Drs. Levine and Webster dated March 5, 2003).

 

The School of Medicine policies are available on the Internet at the following address: www.medschool.pitt.edu/facultyaffairs/Compensation/Compensation.taf
 

The following outlines the procedures that should be followed for these payments.  Any submissions for payments that do not follow the below guidelines, which may be periodically updated, will be returned to the initiating department unprocessed for correction.

Administrative Supplements

  • These supplements may be included in the monthly University paycheck via the Employee Record form.  The monthly supplement amount should be added to the regular monthly University base salary amount and the total entered in the “Salary/Hourly Rate” box on line 11 of the ER.  Applicable supporting documentation, approved by Drs. Levine/Webster, should be included with the ER when making any salary changes.  Please note that this procedure should only be used for payments that will not vary from month to month.
  • Do NOT include the supplement amount in the “Faculty Contract Salary” box (line 15).
  • Other Administrative Supplements (i.e., non-recurring) should be paid on the University Supplemental Earnings form (PITT 0153R – revised May 2003).  Adequate supporting documentation should be included with all such payment requests.
  • In all cases, payments will not be made if adequate budgets are not in place for the applicable faculty member.  Please see numbers 3-7 regarding Research and Academic Incentive (below) for other information related to supplemental payments.
  • Research and Academic Incentives

    Other incentives (e.g., academic) should include adequate supporting documentation to ensure that subsequent reviewers will have sufficient information to approve the payment.
  • If charging the payment to a restricted/development account, ensure that there are sufficient funds in the account to cover the payment.
  • The form should be approved by the department administrator or his/her designee and forwarded to Gayle Murrell.
  • The form MUST be received by Gayle no later than 5 business days before the University’s payroll deadline for the month (we will be receiving approximately 700 of these forms each quarter).  Service Requests for late payments are not permitted for these incentive payments. Requests received after the deadline will not be processed for payment until the following month.
  • It is the department’s responsibility to ensure that adequate incentive budgets are established for each faculty member prior to initiating a payment.  Payments that will cause a faculty member to exceed the budget, as shown in the School’s faculty salary database, will be returned unprocessed to the department.  Departments can verify salary budgets by using the School’s web-based faculty database.  Please note that there is some delay between the time Dr. Levine signs the approval and the data is entered into the School’s system.  Please plan accordingly.
  • Due to the large volume of these payments, the Office of Planning and Management cannot respond to inquiries on the status of specific requests. Departments should submit their incentive payments in one batch via hand delivery to our office to ensure timely receipt and to verify that the forms have made it to our office.  A summary sheet of the payments should be included, and should contain the total indirect cost recovery for the department for the quarter and a reconciliation of that amount to the base used for the payments.
    If you have any questions, please let me know.