Students employed on campus have been facing issues with the payroll system throughout they year. Most of these issues arise from missing checks during the pay period, which takes place biweekly on Fridays.
“My last check was lost earlier this term, but I think that another one was lost en route to my mailbox again during the last pay period,” said senior Kaitlyn Lindgren. Lindgren is currently working in the library, and has been working there for the past three years. Lindgren was able to work with the payroll office to resolve the issue, since it was misplaced into someone else’s mailbox.
This isn’t the first time that this has happened to Lindgren and other students have faced losing their checks or being confused on how much money they were actually making.
“I know a lot of times there’s confusion in the lag, which is the issue,” said Jean Chaote, payroll manager at Augustana. Chaote understands the confusion that may arise when students begin working on campus, where they get confused on the amount of money they make in a given payroll period.
Chaote gave the example of someone working on the 13th, and how they would get paid for that day on May 6, as the payroll check would include the time from April 11 to April 24. Students are paid by the amount of hours that they put in via TimeClock Plus, which records how the hours they put in. If a student forgets to record the hours through TimeClock Plus, the supervisors enter the time on their behalf.
If students are logged onto TimeClock Plus, then students can check their individual times, and Chaote encourages students to check this before they close off the pay week period to avoid confusions. Even though there is nothing to account for human errors in the payroll process, students need to have a knowledge of the hours and times that they have been working for in the given pay periods.
“We can’t make any adjustments to time unless it’s made by the supervisor,” said Choate. The supervisors can check back with the student employees, and then the payroll office checks the times for reasonableness.
Lindgren was able to resolve her issue with her checks, but still would prefer to have paper checks, rather than switch the push to direct deposit, even though the first solution they told her was to switch to the direct deposit system. Lindgren found it disrespectful of them to ask her that right after they lost her paycheck.
“No matter how many times I’ve told them that I would prefer checks in my mailbox, they still ask me and are really pushy about it,” said Lindgren.