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SOCIAL SECURITY

UC payroll will deduct more for Social Security withholding, effective Jan. 1. Withholding goes back to the historical rate of 6.2 percent (from 4.2 percent), and the taxable wage base increases to $113,700 (from $110,100). If the president and Congress ultimately agree to maintain the rate at 4.2 percent for another year, UC will adjust employees' checks to return the overcollection of Social Security withholding, retroactive to Jan. 1 — just like what happened last year.

about Social Security withholding and other payroll changes effective Jan. 1.

Important payroll reminders for nonexempt staff, referring to the 5,000 or so employees who are eligible for overtime:

• Your paychecks will look a whole lot different starting in February. Instead of being paid once a month, around the first of the month, you will be paid biweekly.

• This could lead to complications with your finances, prompting the university to set up a couple of programs to help with your cash flow, so long as you apply by Friday, Jan. 4.

Payroll officials already have reached out to the affected employees, almost all of whom are on the Davis campus. (All but a handful of nonexempt employees at the �ٺ���Ƶ Health System are already on biweekly pay.)

In making the change, �ٺ���Ƶ is joining the rest of the UC system in using standardized payroll processes, as part of the UCPath project — a systemwide shared services center now under development on the Riverside campus and scheduled to open April 13.

UCPath includes new payroll and human resources technology to replace the 30-year-old Payroll Personnel System, or PPS, which is difficult to use, maintain and enhance, and which requires redundant data entry, manual calculations and significant paper processing. Not to mention that it has limited HR management functionality.

Also, with 11 variations of PPS around the UC system, payroll and HR data cannot be easily aligned and aggregated.

Biweekly pay system

In the biweekly pay cycle, your pay will be spread over 26 pay periods instead of 12, with paydays every other Wednesday.

Your last monthly paycheck will come Jan. 2 (for the Dec. 1-31 pay period). On Feb. 1, you will receive a partial monthly check, for Jan. 1 to 19.

Biweekly timesheets will kick in Sunday, Jan. 20. Each pay cycle will run for 14 days, which means the first cycle will run to Feb. 2. Your paycheck for this period will come Feb. 13, and your next one after that will be Feb. 27, and so on, every two weeks.

Officials said, employees, supervisors and payroll processors will need to be especially mindful of submitting and approving timesheets on time.

Deductions will be handled as follows:

• Percentage deductions (including federal and state withholding taxes, Social Security and Medicare, and UC Retirement Plan) will apply to all paychecks.

• Flat-rate deductions (including medical plan, flexible spending, legal plan and parking) will be split in half and taken from your first two paychecks of every month. Two or three months each year have three Wednesdays; in these months, your last paycheck of the month will have no flat-rate deductions — giving you a so-called benefits holiday.

Transition assistance

Depending on your personal situation and how you set up your finances, you may need assistance to help with your bills during the transition.

For example, say you have arranged with your bank to make automatic payments from your checking account for your rent or mortgage and car loan. That works fine when you are paid monthly, and your check is big enough to cover the payments.

But it may not work when you start receiving biweekly paychecks. First, your pay dates are changing, so your automatic payments may no longer coincide with the dates when your payments are due.

Secondly, your biweekly check may not be big enough to cover your payments (the way you have them scheduled).

Therefore, you may need to contact your creditors to ask about splitting your payments between two paychecks a month, and-or changing your due dates.

If you still need help with your cash flow, and you are a nonexempt employee converting to biweekly pay, the university has set up a transition assistance program:

• You may cash out vacation time and-or compensatory time off, up to a maximum of 80 hours. The money will be added to your Feb. 1 check.

• You may take a no-interest loan ($100 to $1,000). Repayment will be by automatic deduction, starting with your March 13 paycheck. Your last payment is due by Aug. 28.

To figure out if you may need financial assistance, you should start by estimating how your biweekly checks will total out. Click for a pair of calculators: biweekly pay and biweekly gross pay comparison.

Online

The includes links for transition help, pay dates and FAQs, as well as “Quick Facts” in English and Spanish. The includes a link to the for financial assistance. Remember: The deadline is Jan. 4.

Questions or comments? Use the or send an email to . If you are union represented, please direct your comments to your union representative.