UAccess Employee, the UA’s new payroll computing system, left some employees confused but was still a success with no major glitches, Mosaic Project coordinators said.

The system went live Sept. 28 in time for Friday’s paycheck, the first since the change. The UA paid 18,500 people with checks totaling $29 million.

Some problems were phoned in to the Mosaic team, but overall the transition was fairly smooth, said Hank Childers, Mosaic Project director.

“”The volume of calls is much lower than we thought,”” Childers said. “”The help desk, financial service desk and the many other desks — none of us have been burdened with calls.””

The calls received mainly consisted of individual problems, like people who needed help reading the online pay stub or navigating the system’s Web site. Others couldn’t see the money posted in their credit union accounts, he said.

“”In order to see your pay stub you have to enable pop-ups on your browser, so we received calls about that,”” Childers said. “”The credit unions have until 10 a.m. to post the money so we asked them (the callers) to call back after 10, and there were no issues or calls about that after 10.””

One major processing mistake was an error with vacation and sick leave pay.

“”(For) some employees who reported vacation and sick leave correctly, we charged the time as regular time,”” Childers said. “”So we’ll fix that retroactively on the next pay check by reversing out the regular pay and charging them vacation pay instead.””

That problem has since been fixed, he added.

Some Residence Life employees, who are not responsible for timekeeping, received e-mails about their time recording information being incomplete, which left some confused, said Christine Pham, a finance junior and Pima Residence Hall desk assistant.

“”Some different areas on the campus, such as Residence Life, decided to keep their current timekeeping system so they had to interface it with the new one,”” said Kay Beasock, manager of organizational communications for the project. “”But there were people who didn’t add it on time and … it’s not going to go through the system.””

As a result, there were some system-generated messages, like the one received by Pham, that went out to employees of departments who hadn’t met the deadline to transfer their timekeeping records into the new system. These problems were solved before payday.

The Mosaic team has been advising employees to sign up with direct deposit for their paychecks, and has had success this year.

“”There’s been a modest increase for direct deposit,”” Childers said. “”Relative to last year we’re printing more than 400 to 500 fewer checks.””

Thanks to long hours put in by the central administrative units and departmental timekeepers the past two weeks, the transition to UAccess Employee has exceeded expectations, Childers said.

“”The whole campus has been extremely cooperative and for the most part self-sufficient,”” Childers said. “”This is not how it usually goes, I can tell you that.””