Start of year process affects pay periods

Minister Responsible for Novopay Steven Joyce today released the reports on complaints and notifications received in regards to Pay Period 24 and 25 of the schools’ payroll.

Pay Period 24, which was paid on the morning of 19 February, paid 80,746 people a total of $163.79 million. The report for that pay shows complaints and notifications were received regarding 1.06 per cent of staff across the country, 274 staff were notified as not paid, 89 were overpaid, and 492 underpaid. Affected staff were from 615 schools or 25.41 per cent of schools in the payroll system.

Pay Period 25 paid 85,799 people a total of $174.31 million on the morning of 5 March. The complaints report for that payday shows that complaints and notifications were received regarding 0.78 per cent of staff across the country, 390 staff were notified as not paid, 42 were overpaid, and 234 underpaid. Affected staff were from 432 schools or 17.85 per cent of schools in the payroll system.

“The error rate for Pay Periods 24 and 25 is disappointing, although not unexpected given the Start of Year process,” Mr Joyce says.  “At the start of each year a large number of data entry changes have to be made that affect 60-65 per cent of all staff on the payroll,” Mr Joyce says.

“I have previously stated that this process would likely lift the error rate for three or four pay periods, as it does every year.  It is more challenging with Novopay as remediation work on the system continues.  However, the error rate across the Start of Year process is significantly better than last year and the system will settle down again as the year proceeds. 

“Pay Periods 23, 24 and 25 are the first pay periods above the 0.5 per cent acceptable steady state error level as defined by the Novopay technical review since April last year.

“The good news is that there have been very few software issues following the very significant work done on the programme in the last few months.  The main problems have been traced to data entry errors, and the way the service centre model works, which continues to be very frustrating for school administrators.”

The service centre model is currently being revised with the sector in a process that started in September.  The plan is to start introducing changes in the first half of this year.

“While significant work still needs to be done on the school payroll and it remains frustrating for school administrators, the Novopay system and software is running a lot better than this time last year with good progress made in stabilising and remediating it,” Mr Joyce says.

^           This was higher due to the one-off voluntary bonding error
*           Start of school year pay 2014
**          Start of school year pay 2013
#          This was higher due to one-off Principal Career Structure payment error