Position control is the process of allocating and maintaining personnel budgets for University funds that ensures positions are fully funded. The process confirms there are sufficient funds to cover employee salaries and benefits for all permanent positions and non-tenure track faculty positions. Position control is designed to ensure effective fiscal management and ongoing accountability as an integral part of filling positions. Personnel costs account for a large portion of the institution’s expenditures, and it is critical that hiring managers balance the need for fiscal responsibility and effective hiring practices when filling positions.
A budgeting and planning tool that organizes and tracks a workforce by position rather than by employee and helps ensure sufficient funding is available to support staffing commitments.
Position control is designed to ensure effective fiscal management and ongoing accountability as an integral part of filling positions.
Personnel costs account for a large portion of the institution’s expenditures, and it is critical that hiring managers balance the need for fiscal responsibility and effective hiring practices when filling positions.
Budget Management
Cost Allocation: ensures each position is tied to the budget and funded appropriately
Forecasting: enables planning for future hires and adjustments while maintaining budgetary control
Personnel Planning
Workforce Planning: aligns new hires with strategic initiatives
Vacancy Management: filling roles strategically and in alignment with institution priorities
Compliance and Reporting
Compliance with regulations: labor laws, union agreements, state funding requests and reporting
Audit trail: shows how decisions were made for external audit purposes
Organizational Structure and Efficiency
Position Management vs People Management: managing positions to be filled based on institutional needs
Job Classifications: ensure consistency in classifications and ranges, supporting equity and transparency
Budget Accountability and Compliance
Supports financial oversight to avoid overspending and maintains fiscal discipline
Link to budgeting tools for forecasting, cost projections and reporting
Position tracking with a unique position number to maintain continuity in structure
Strategic resource allocation toward institution priorities and goals
Ensures Organizational Consistency
Standardization in job classifications, salary ranges, and organizational structure
Sustains long-term planning to align staffing levels with anticipated growth or expansion over time
Improves Decision-Making
Data-driven decisions based on costs and turnover levels are often more sustainable and defensible
Manages vacancy and attrition to ensure critical positions are not left unfilled for long periods
Balancing Best Practices and Convenience
Best practices for governance and strategy
• Essential for institutions aiming to maintain budget discipline, equitable resource allocation and compliance obligations
Convenience for Day-to-Day Operations
• Offers significant strategic advantages while providing integrated position control systems for real-time oversight of staffing needs
Budget Services is responsible for implementing and overseeing position control processes to accurately allocate, monitor, and report on all continuing and fixed-term faculty and staff positions.
Department Financial Managers are responsible for managing funds they oversee within their available budget, ensuring permanent positions are fully budgeted with a funding plan prior to hiring commitments.
Division Heads (or their Executive Assistants) are responsible for positions within their divisions to ensure recruitment and hiring processes follow set standards.
Once leadership has made a commitment to filling a position, funding must be identified either within existing levels or from other additional sources.
Position Control procedures begin with approval by the Executive Leadership Team, then flow through the Human Resources recruiting system for necessary approval of salary ranges, funding levels, and regulatory recruitment requirements.
As a best practice, permanent positions should only be hired with recurring funds — In rare circumstances, one-time funding may be appropriate as a bridging strategy while waiting for permanent fund availability.
Position Control Process
People Admin is the University’s online position and application system. It is used when requesting to fill a new or existing position. The following steps are followed for this process.
- ELT approves a request to fill a new or vacant position
- Level 1 user works with HR to enter position details, salary, labor distribution, funding plan
- HR inputs position details in People Admin
- Level 1 user reviews, attaches approvals and funding plan, then sends to Level 2 user
- Level 2 user approves and sends on to any further approval level needed
- Position request comes to Budget Services for review
- Budget Services reviews position number and funding available within the position, requests information about funding plan as needed
- Budget Services creates new position number and record as needed, then sends on to HR
- HR posts position
- Requesting department manages recruitment
- Once a hiring decision is made, the People Admin action routes back to Budget Services for review
- Budget Services reviews for any changes to original plan and sends back to HR
- HR finalizes all hiring actions
- A PAF is generated
Payroll Action Forms (PAF) are used to document and initiate changes in payroll-related information for employees. PAFs are either in paper form or generated as an e-PAF in Banner. These forms can serve various purposes.
- New Hires and Terminations: Recording details about new employees or updating the payroll system when an employee leaves
- Salary Adjustments: Capturing details of salary increases, bonuses, or other compensation adjustments
- Changes in Employment Status: Documenting changes like promotions, demotions, changes in job title, full-time to part-time transitions, or similar adjustments
- Timekeeping and Hours Changes: Adjusting scheduled hours, overtime pay, or time-off requests that may impact payroll
The following step are used when processing a PAFs.
- PAF is created by either the Department or by HR
- PAF is routed via Google Drive folders or through the ePAF workflow to the necessary approvals within each department
- PAF is routed to Budget Services to review accuracy of calculations, dates and factor/pays, FOP structure, and completeness
- Upon signing the PAF, it is saved in Budget Services folders for input into Axiom and then forwarded to HR for input into Banner
- Once PAF information is updated in Banner, the new job information will pull into the next Payroll run
PAF adjustments must be analyzed to determine the types of changes that will occur and the effect those changes will have on the position budget. This analysis includes the following items.
- How much does the change effect salary?
- What about benefits?
- When does the change occur?
- Is there an index change?
- Is there a percent time change?
- Is the change permanent or current-year only?
- What is the current-year component for changes mid-year?
- What are the impacts for potential salary savings?
PAF adjustments must be input into the Axiom Budget Planning and Maintenance system. These adjustments will either increase or decrease the budget associated with the position, creating a file for input into Banner. When the labor adjustment is processed to Banner, it will interact with reserves for Index 1 and direct expense within the index for all other index types. We strive to process a labor adjustment once each week to keep budget information in Banner as up to date as possible.
The following steps are used when managing positions through PAFs.
- Specific analysis is done to determine how the PAF changes the permanent position budget, as well as current-year levels
- PAF is input into the Axiom Budget Planning System
- A labor adjustment file is generated, interacting with either the reserves for Index 1 or direct expense for all other index types
- The labor adjustment file is posted to Banner
- Labor adjustment worksheets are provided to units to provide line-item detail of the changes
Additional adjustments to position budgets may be necessary during the year. Pooled positions may be proactively increased or decreased to reflect current need and single vacant positions may have budget held in the compensation accounts that is needed for other purposes.
Axiom has systematically-programmed processes to offset position changes to a standardized source. Index 1 type is automatically offset to the reserve index for each unit and all other index types are automatically offset to the direct expense account in each index.
Complexities exist when adjusting budgets for regular salary and benefit accounts.
- Traditional budget revisions can be used to make changes to accounts 66xxx, 67xxx, and 7xxxx accounts.
- Accounts 61xxx, 62xxx, 63xxx, and 65xxx are tied directly to a position number and must be adjusted through the Axiom position card.
Options exist for making these requested changes.
- Option 1: Use the existing budget revision form to specify which accounts need to be adjusted to accomplish an end goal. In this option, the account code is directly input into each row requesting an increase or decrease to result in a balanced budget revision.
- Challenge: Because the adjustment to compensation accounts must be done in the position card, the budget revision needs to be pulled apart into sections for processing to achieve the desired result.
- Option 2: Email position change requests directly to Budget Services and do a budget revision for the backfill. Most salary savings requests are made this way. In this option, the request to change the compensation-related budgets is sent via email and Budget Services uses the email to make the adjustments.
Labor reconciliations occur each month to adjust position budgets for forecasted need. Labor reconciliations look at the following situations to determine what changes to make.
- How much budget currently exists in each position?
- How much has been expensed?
- How much is currently encumbered?
- How much encumbrance should be released based on expensed amount?
- What is the forecasted need for the remainder of the year?
A reconciliation file is generated and posted to Banner. Index 1 interacts with reserves and other index types interact with direct expense within each index.
Reconciliation Reports are generated and provided to departments
