ICON Update:
Giving back time to principals
Mirijana Jovic
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Mirijana Jovic, Director, Finance and Infrastructure Services, shares how ICON is improving four key processes in Term 4: holiday pay creation, accounts payable and payroll approval, year-end rollover and fee creation, and letters of offer generation.
Mirijana explains how simplified processes, leveraging technology and reimagining the shared services model will remove administrative burden and free up time to focus on learning while retaining principal decision-making autonomy.
In the video above, we share four exciting changes that MACS Shared Services staff have been working on to support our schools and relieve some of their administrative burden.
Feedback from schools last year indicated that much of the administrative burden was driven by four key areas:
eSIS end-of-year rollover complexity:
eSIS activities (for end-of-year rollover and fee generation) are detailed, with training involving three-day workshops at a time when schools are already stretched with end-of-term requirements
Documented support consists of a 120-page training manual for a process used a few times a year
Advanced (holiday) pay:
Insufficient time for school administration staff to process four pays before the end of the year
Other priorities (related to education and students) are also due during an already short month
Letters of offer:
There are 39 different letter templates just for teaching and educational support staff
Recent payroll audits found around 40% were either incorrect or not created at all, indicating the number of templates contributes to this inconsistency
Payroll and accounts payable approvals:
Principals have to approve up to 27 journals a month
Often the transaction has already been approved (e.g. via BPAY), with a journal also required to be approved for the same item
Closing out year-end invoices and payments is time-intensive.
As a result of your feedback, we’re rolling out the following changes to support schools:
1. Simplified eSIS and fee creation
You asked for …
A simplified ‘year-end’ process in eSIS for rollover and fee creation to address the timing and volume of activities clashing with other priorities at the end and start of the year.
We have created …
A new process where Shared Services will perform the end-of-year rollover and create fees based on the inputs from schools, driven by maintained student data and class lists.
Key points:
School administration staff are asked to ensure student data and class lists are as accurate as possible. Shared Services will subsequently perform the end-of-year rollover and create fees based on these inputs.
Fact sheets and supporting guides have been simplified and are available now at https://www.icon.cecv.catholic.edu.au/end-of-year.
2. Holiday pay processing
You asked for …
A better way to manage the payroll activities including pro-rata, leave loading and holiday pay due to the challenge of completing up to four pays in the final week of Term 4, while balancing student and educational year-end needs.
We have created …
System enhancements to generate auto-pays, with senior payroll officers at Shared Services reviewing and approving pays.
Key points:
To ensure accuracy in pays, we still need to include changes in staff. These are to be captured in contract management templates, which are now pre-populated for schools. Inputs required are:
new employees
employment variations
terminations
allowance changes
extended leave.
School-specific key dates are now automatically generated and contained in the contract management template, saving administration staff from having to look up timetables for submission dates.
To ensure accurate master data within the eHR system, administration staff are requested to submit changes by 26 November.
Schools will have received these files via HEAT, with our payroll officers available for support.
3. Consolidated letters of offer
You asked for …
A simplified way to quickly and accurately create a letter of offer for prospective employees to attract the best talent.
We have created …
An eForm process to generate a compliant letter of offer to prospective employees, accurately capturing contract conditions for all teaching and educational support staff.
Key points:
From 15 November, a new guided eForm which pre-populates a letter of offer for teaching and educational support staff will be available in the ICON ePortal https://portal.cev.vic.edu.au.
This guided eForm eliminates 22 different letter of offer templates.
The ‘old’ templates will continue to be available on the CEVN website for those schools not yet migrated to ICON.
4. Removing the accounts payable and payroll approval duplication
You asked for …
Removal of the need for principals to review and approve the payment journals for activities they have already approved as part of a prior process (e.g. endorsing BPAY, then approving the corresponding journal).
We have created …
An online auto-payment approval process for the majority of transactions, including an exception review by a Shared Services senior officer.
Key points:
This change will be effective for all journals raised from 1 December. Journals currently in a principal’s workflow pending approval or raised prior to 1 December will still need to be actioned by the principal.
At this stage, the change is only applicable to accounts payable and payroll journals. Financial adjustment journals still require approval from principals.
There is no action required by principals or school administration staff to effect the changeover to the new process that starts on 1 December.
For more information or clarification, please contact your Accounts Payable Team Leader.
Resources
Resources
A copy of the slides from this presentation can be downloaded here.
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