December 3, 2021

Lump Sum Separation Payroll Action Request (PAR) Due Dates

Action Required by Department: Share the following information with all human resources (HR) office employees.

Description: Lump Sum Separation PARs with a separation effective date of November 1, 2021 through December 31, 2021 are required to be submitted to the State Controller’s Office (SCO) on a flow basis. See the dates below to allow SCO adequate time to process incoming separations. PAR packages received by SCO after the dates specified could result in charges assessed by CalHR to the agency as stated in section 1802 of the CalHR Manual and/or a corrected W-2 for the 2021 tax year.

1st tax year PARs with a separation effective date of November or December must be received by 12/10/2021

2nd tax year PARs with a November separation effective date must be received by 12/27/2021

2nd tax year PARs with a December separation effective date must be received by 01/14/2022

PARs submitted after these dates may not be processed timely and agencies will be held accountable for underfunded Savings Plus account penalty fees.

Further, agencies that receive a Payroll Services Division (PSD) 40 error notice from the Civil Service (CS) Audits program regarding a PAR that was submitted must correct all errors within one business day. Failure to respond timely will result in the PAR package being canceled.

Please refer to the Lump Sum Separation Toolkit for additional information and PAR package samples.

Population Affected: All HR Offices.

Contacts: 

Affordable Care Act (ACA) Email acasupport@sco.ca.gov

Cal Employee Connect Feedback Email connectfeedback@sco.ca.gov

Cal Employee Connect Email connecthelp@sco.ca.gov

California Leave Accounting System (CLAS) Email Clas@sco.ca.gov

ConnectHR Email connecthrhelp@sco.ca.gov

CS Escalation Email (HR Supervisors and Managers)  PPSDOps@sco.ca.gov

HR Suggestions Email (All HR Staff) PPSDHRSuggestions@sco.ca.gov

Management Information Retrieval System (MIRS) Email ppsdmirs@sco.ca.gov

Statewide Customer Contact Center (916) 372-7200

SCO Key Initiatives:

Cal Employee Connect Project

California State Payroll System Project

Uniform State Payroll System (Mainframe System) Password Change

Action Required by Department: Share the following information with all human resources (HR), Accounting, Budgets and FI$Cal Uniform State Payroll System users.

Description: Beginning December 6, 2021, the State Controller’s Office (SCO) will participate with many State Agencies in increasing our Uniform State Payroll System (Mainframe System) security. This includes but is not limited to the following systems: Personnel Information Management System (PIMS), Payroll History (HIST), Payroll Input Process (PIP), Leave Accounting System (LAS), Affordable Care Act System (ACAS), Management Information Retrieval System (MIRS), and View Direct. Users will see changes to the logon screen format and sequence. Additionally, users will be required to use a special character in their password at their next password change.

The new password must contain one or more of each of the following:

Uppercase letters

Lowercase letters

Numbers 0 - 9

Special characters:

# (Pound)

$ (Dollar)

@ (AT)

. (Period)

+ (Plus)

| (Pipe or Vertical Bar)

! (Exclamation mark)

*(Asterisk)

% (Percent)

_ (Underscore)

? (Question Mark)

= (Equal)

Additional Uniform State Payroll System (Mainframe System) security changes will be coming in 2022 and communicated to those affected. as the year progresses.

Please contact the SCO Information Security Office at infosec@sco.ca.gov with any questions.

Population Affected: All HR, Accounting, Budgets and FI$Cal Uniform State Payroll System users