Managing Salary Cap Issues in Workday

This webpage provides resources relating to current issues with Salary Cap and Workday.

Overview

• PAA Salary Cap Adjustments in Workday
• Hourly Employees and/or Retro Pay
• Incorrect Salary Cap Fund
• Stand-Alone Grant and Intercompany Issues
• Missing SOC Basis Worktag

PAA Salary Cap Adjustments in Workday

Preparing a Payroll Accounting Adjustment for an individual with Salary Over the Cap (SOC) can be tricky. Watch this video from CORE on how to process Salary Cap adjustments in Workday via a PAA: PAA SOC Adjustments (18 min).

Hourly Employees and/or Retro Pay

Note: A fix for the issue impacting hourly employees was implemented on 2/12/26, and is effective for the 2/1/26 - 2/15/26 pay period. For pay periods prior to 2/1/26, the information below regarding hourly employees is still valid. 

• Issue: Workday charges Salary Over the Cap on certain employees even when the employee's pay is well below the Salary Cap threshold. This happens whenever hourly employees receive a pay type other than their standard hourly pay (e.g. sick leave, vacation leave, etc.).
  • The issue also occurs when retro pay is processed or there is a retroactive correction to leave pay. Note: Retro pay will post according to the current payroll costing allocation in Workday for the individual, not the allocations in effect for the retro period(s).
• Impact: The issue causes Workday to undercharge salary to impacted grants.
• How to Correct: Prepare a Payroll Accounting Adjustment (PAA) to fix these transactions.
• Resources: Below is a PowerPoint presentation and a link to an exception report for Hourly Employees in the BI Portal to help identify instances where this error is occurring.  
• PowerPoint: Fix Salary Cap on worker who should have Salary Cap
• BI Portal Report: Salary over the cap - Hourly Employee 
  • This report displays payroll that has been posted for hourly employees with a Salary Over the Cap (SOC) worktag. Hourly employees usually shouldn’t have any SOC amounts, so this payroll needs to be reviewed and a PAA should be processed to correct the payroll. 

Incorrect Salary Cap Fund

• Issue: Some Salary Cap transactions are incorrectly posting to grant-related Funds (FD200 or FD209) when they should post to FD101 (“Dedicated Local Fund”).  
• How to Correct: Update the payroll costing allocations to prevent the error from recurring and prepare a Payroll Accounting Adjustment (PAA) to correct previous transactions.
• Resources:
  • PowerPoint: Fix Salary Cap Fund Issues includes instructions on updating allocations and preparing the PAA.
  • BI Portal Report: Salary Over the Cap - Funds FD200 and FD209
    • This report displays payroll that has been posted to a sponsored grant in fund FD200 or FD209 with a Salary Over the Cap (SOC) tag. This payroll needs to be reviewed to determine if it’s actual SOC or if the tag is incorrect. An appropriate Payroll Accounting Adjustment needs to be processed to correct the payroll.
  • BI Portal Report: Sponsored Salary Fund Mismatch
    • This report displays payroll that has been posted to a sponsored grant not in fund FD200 or FD209 without a Salary Over the Cap (SOC) worktag. This payroll needs to be reviewed to determine if it’s missing a SOC tag or if the payroll should have been posted to a grant fund. 

Stand-Alone Grant and Intercompany Issues

• Issue: A stand-alone grant worktag cannot be used to pay for SOC and SOC cannot be paid from a different company than the under-the-cap coverage.
• How to Correct: For the stand-alone grant worktag issue, the recommendation is to use another worktag and process a funding transfer to reflect the cost on the stand-alone grant. It is important not to use PAAs to solve this issue.
  • For the intercompany issue, the leaders/Shared Environments of the Schools/Colleges will transfer the funds between specified program worktags on a regular cadence.
• Resource: Review the Integrated Service Center’s presentation for more information: Stand-Alone Grant and Intercompany Salary Cap Issues
  • If you have questions about this issue and how to correct it in Workday, please reach out to your Shared Environment or the Integrated Service Center.

Missing SOC Basis Worktag in Workday

• Issue: Campus users have noticed an inconsistent behavior from Workday for the creation of the Salary Over the Cap (SOC) Basis Worktags. Users sometimes experience this when they go to prepare a Payroll Accounting Adjustment, expecting to add an SOC Basis Worktag, but there is not one in Workday.  
• How to Correct: Submit an Award Portal ticket to Grant & Contract Accounting with the following information: 
  • Topic: Other
  • Subject: Missing Salary Over The Cap Basis Worktag
  • Description: Please complete an award correction given the Salary Over The Cap Basis Worktag is missing for GRXXXXXX.

GCA will update Workday and notify the requestor when it is done.