The nightly data load process for the BI system failed last night.  As a result the data in BI is current as of 2/8/2012.  We expect to have the issue resolved today so that the next scheduled data load process can run successfully.

NCAS agencies:

Payroll staff
CMCS staff
Budget staff
Fiscal Staff

The March 2, 2012 bi-weekly payroll will post in February.

All BEACON bi-weekly pay days that occur on the 1st,2nd, or 3rd of the month will be posted to the prior month.   Pay days falling on the 1st, or 2nd will have both the GL entries and the CMCS requisitions dated in the prior month.  Pay days falling on the 3rd will post to GL with an effective date of the last day of the prior month and CMCS requisitions posted in the current month as a “set back” to the prior month.    Please be aware that NCAS postings and CMCS requisitions will be dated in the month prior to the pay date.   Please make sure all applicable personnel are made aware of this notification to ensure your agency has the funds available in the month prior to the actual payroll date.

System Availability:

The HR/Payroll system will be unavailable for a significant number of weekends in the first half of 2012.  This will allow us to do various systems maintenance, including patching and database upgrades/reorganization.  Our goal is to complete this work as much as possible on the weekends that we are not in the middle of a payroll cycle or benefits enrollment.  The usual plan for these weekends will be to bring the system down at 6:00 on Fridays and make sure it is available by 6:00 AM the following Monday.

Currently, we plan to take the system down on the following weekends:

• Feb 17-19
• Mar 2-4
• Mar 16-18
• Mar 31-Apr 1
• Apr 13-15
• Apr 27-29
• May 11-13 (if required)
• May 25-27 (if required)

All W2’s for 2011 have been processed and mailed as of 1/23/2012.  The W2’s were mailed to the employee’s address on record as of 1/13/2012.  Beginning February 1, employees with ESS access can re-print their own W-2.  BEST will reprint W-2’s only for current and former employees who do not have access to ESS.  All valid reprint requests submitted during a week will be processed and mailed on Fridays. 

Time data will be available in BI on  Wednesday afternoon.  Until then please do not use the Time data in BI as it is not complete.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

BI Production is now available with the exception of the Time reports.  We are considering our options for those reports and will send an update once we have determined the best course of action.  The Daily load process completed successfully so all other BI reports should be up to date.

BI Production:

We are experiencing an issue with BI Production.  Currently the system is producing an error when reports are executed.  We are working on the issue and will advise when it has been corrected.

BEACON Portal Session Timeout:

Beginning February 1st, the BEACON Portal will enable a new Session Timeout security feature to  enhance your Portal session security. The Portal  will log you out  after 30 minutes of inactivity.  You will receive a pop-up warning message after 25 minutes of inactivity, and then you will be given a 5 minute grace period to resume usage of your Portal session.  If you are actively working in another application, the pop-up may appear behind another window on your screen.  If you do not respond to the pop-up message or resume usage of your Portal Session within the 5 minute grace period, you will be logged out and will have to log back in to the portal to resume portal activity.

NCAS agencies:

Payroll staff
CMCS staff
Budget staff
Fiscal Staff

The February 3, 2012 bi-weekly payroll will post in January.

All BEACON bi-weekly pay days that occur on the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd of the month will be posted to the prior month.  Pay days falling on the 1st, or 2nd will have both the GL entries and the CMCS requisitions dated in the prior month.  Pay days falling on the 3rd will post to GL with an effective date of the last day of the prior month and CMCS requisitions posted in the current month as a “set back” to the prior month.    Please be aware that NCAS postings and CMCS requisitions will be dated in the month prior to the pay date.   Please make sure all applicable personnel are made aware of this notification to ensure your agency has the funds available in the month prior to the actual payroll date.

NCAS – BEACON payroll users:

Automated BC documents generated from BEACON payroll postings into NCAS had an error for postings between 12/21 – 12/30.  They were created but an error occurred due to duplicate DOC ID numbers.  This error can be viewed on the OSCOPX BC310-1 BC BATCH REPORTS  (X=C or F depending on region) report in XPTR.  The missing BC entries as they need to be entered manually, if not already done so, can be found in  OSCOPX BEACON PAY INTRFCE BC DOC.  The correct date for the missing transaction must be selected.  Your agencies BD800 will be out of balance until they are entered.  Many agencies have already keyed these entries manually, however if you have problems with entering this entry manually and wish it to be automated please contact Sandy Fields at Sandra.Fields@osc.nc.gov.  Any questions regarding these entries can be directed to BEACON help desk 707-0707 mentioning this message and directed to Tier 4 Financials.

December 2011 Pay Date
The pay date for the December 2011 payroll for biweekly and monthly employees will be December 23, 2011

System Availability 12/9-12/11:
The HR/Payroll system will be unavailable starting at 6:00PM on Friday, Dec 9th due to system maintenance.  It will be available again by 7:00 AM on Monday, Dec 12th.

System Availability 11/04-11/07:
The HR/Payroll system will be unavailable starting at 6:00PM on Friday, November 4th due to system maintenance.  It will be available again by 7:00 AM on Monday November 7th.

System Availability 11/18-11-21:
BI Reports will be unavailable starting at 12:00 noon on Friday, November 18th due to system maintenance. They will be available by 7:00 am on Monday, November 21st.

HR/Payroll System:
The HR/Payroll system has resumed normal operations at this time.

SAP:
We are experiencing intermittent problems with the SAP system at this time. Please continue to check this page for further updates.

System Availability 9/16-9/19:
The HR/Payroll system will be unavailable starting at 6:00PM on Friday, Sept 16th.  It will be available again by 7:00 AM on Monday, Sept 19th.

All BEACON bi-weekly pay days that occur on the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd of the month will be posted to the prior month. Pay days falling on the 1st, or 2nd will have both the GL entries and the CMCS requisitions dated in the prior month.  Pay days falling on the 3rd will post to GL with an effective date of the last day of the prior month and CMCS requisitions posted in the current month as a “set back” to the prior month. Please be aware that NCAS postings and CMCS requisitions will be dated in the month prior to the pay date. Please make sure all applicable personnel are made aware of this notification to ensure your agency has the funds available in the month prior to the actual payroll date.

The September 2, 2011 bi-weekly payroll will post in August.

System Availability 8/07-8/08:
The HR/Payroll system will be unavailable starting at 6:00AM on Sunday, August 7th due to system maintenance.  It will be available again by 7:00 AM on Monday, August 8th.

Update on the errors associated with the running BI ReportsWe have implemented a correction to the BI reporting system that we hope has resolved the errors that our customers have been experiencing while running BI reports.  If you have experienced a problem running reports after 7/26/2011 please let us know by submitting a ticket to BEST Shared Services.  We apologize for the inconvenience that we know this issue has created and thank you all for your patience as we worked to resolve these issues.

BI Report Status
Users are continuing to experience an error when attempting to run BI reports.  We ask that you please log a ticket with Shared Services, and we will contact you once the issue has been resolved.  We apologize for the inconvenience.  Thanks for your patience.

Training System Availability  on Friday, 7/15:
The SAPGUI Training Sandbox will be unavailable on Friday, July 15th due to system maintenance.  It will be available again by 7:00 AM on Saturday, July 16th.

COUNCIL of STATE and CABINET SECRETARIES – BEACON payroll postings for Council of State employees’ regular salary is posting correctly to account 531141.  The postings for holiday pay, vacation pay, sick pay, etc., for these employees should also be posting to this account but are incorrectly posting to 531111. Please take the necessary steps to reclassify these postings to the correct account distribution until this issue is resolved.  Please report any questions regarding these postings  to the BEST shared service center.   

System Availability 7/01-7/03:
The HR/Payroll system will be unavailable starting at 8:00PM on Friday, July 1st due to system maintenance.  It will be available again by 7:00 AM on Sunday, July 3.

Training System Availability 6/24-6/26:
The SAPGUI Training Sandbox system will be unavailable starting on Friday, June 24th due to system maintenance.  It will be available again by 7:00 AM on Monday, June 27th.

System Status
The HR/Payroll system will be unavailable starting at 6:00PM on Friday, June 17th due to system maintenance.  BI Reports will be unavailable starting at 12:00 noon on Friday, June 17th.  Both systems will be available again by 7:00 AM on Monday, June 20th.

First day of corrections for BW 0413 will be Thursday, 6/16/2011.  This means that we will operate just like we do any other first day of corrections. 
Second day of corrections for BW 0413 will be Friday, 6/17/2011.  Note that payroll will be locked after the 3:30PM run on Friday.  This means the system will not be available for any changes that would impact the BW 0413 payroll after 3:30PM on Friday.

BEST will finalize the BW 0413 payroll results and exit on Friday, 6/17/2011, at 5:00 PM.
There is no change to the CMCS requisition process.  CMCS requisitions will be available as originally scheduled on Wednesday, 6/22/2011. 

W-2's available in ESS
Employees can now view and reprint their 2010 W-2 forms through ESS.  If you do not have access to ESS, you may call BEST to request a reprint. 

All W2’s for 2010 have been processed and mailed as of 1/25/2011.  The W2’s were mailed to the address on record as of 1/15/2011.  If you have ESS access, please verify that your address is correct and make any changes necessary via ESS; if you do not have ESS access, please see your agency HR office for assistance with verifying and updating your address.  Please allow 7-10 business days for the W2 to arrive at your address.  If you do not receive your W2 within the 7-10 day time frame, and you have access to ESS, you may print your own W2 beginning February 1, 2011.  If you do not have access to ESS, you may call and request a reprint.  We will verify your ESS access and advise at the time of your call whether you must print your own W2 or we will print and re-mail it to you.

System Availability 1/23:
The HR/Payroll system will be unavailable from 6:00AM to 11:00AM on Sunday, Jan 23rd due to system maintenance.

SAP:
We are experiencing intermittent problems with the SAP system this morning. Please continue to check this page for further updates.

W-2’s for Tax Year 2010
W-2’s for tax year 2010 will be mailed to all employees by the January 31 deadline.  Employees can view and reprint their W-2 through ESS beginning February 1.

BEST Shared Services Call Center:
Due to inclement weather, the BEST Shared Services Call Center currently has limited staff available to take calls. We will process requests through email and faxes. The BEST email address is BEST@osc.nc.gov and the fax number is 919-855-6861. Thank you for your patience and understanding during this time.