Supervisor FAQ

No, student employees only need to fill out their payroll paperwork one time during their enrollment years here. If they left the University and returned, employment paperwork will likely need to be completed again. The only form needed in this case is the Electronic Personnel Action Form (EPAF) submitted through BannerWeb.

The account numbers for student payroll are -6312 (Federal Work Study), -6311 (University Work Program), and -6413(Grants). If you are paying a student from a departmental index that does not have budget for these account numbers, you will need to cover your student employment expenses from other accounts in your index. Grant numbers beginning with 27,xxx, 28,xxx or 29,xxx will be account -6413, but for those accounts, the EPAF must first be approved by Tammy Hicks in Grants Accounting.

If the student has worked on campus before, the student employee will be entered into Banner within a few days. The most likely reason that a student hasn’t received payment once an EPAF is submitted is that the student did not submit the electronic timesheet by the deadline. 

If the student missed a deadline and have late time to submit for a previous pay period, they must fill out a Late Paper Timesheet for each payroll period for which time was not submitted on time. They must submit the paper timesheets to their supervisor, who should approve and then forward to Payroll for payment.

The most common reason an account number is changed is that a student has either been awarded Federal Work Study (FWS) or has decided to decline their FWS. These changes can take place at any point during the school year, although they usually occur within the first month or two of the academic year. Therefore, while the student employee may have been on your FWS list when you completed the EPAF, he or she may have since decided to decline their FWS. The Financial Aid Office keeps up to date on these lists, so the account number on the completed EPAF is the correct account to be charged.

Whom you should contact depends on the nature of your student employment question. Financial Aid handles the determination of students’ eligibility for Federal Work Study (FWS). You should contact Payroll at 289-8171 if you have a question about proxies, check status, direct deposit, W-2s or hours worked versus paid. For Student Employment budget questions contact the Office of Planning and Budget. All other questions should be addressed to Caitie Hoeckele (choeckel@richmond.edu) in the Financial Aid Office at 289-8438.

If your department’s student employment budget can support the new job without additional funds, you need only to create a new job description and determine what the correct pay level is based on the 2 generic job descriptions provided by the Financial Aid Office.  Please notify the Office of Financial Aid of any job opportunities you would like posted on the Student Employment website by completing our online form. We also ask that supervisors complete this form even if the job does not need to be advertised. Then you can submit an EPAF with the new job title listed.

If the new job will require additional student employment funds, you will have to wait until the budget request process takes place in November and request the increase in budget under the normal budget process to your budget manager, dean or VP. If you have other funds in your operating budget that can be used, use account code -6311 when you submit the EPAF. Your department will be responsible for covering any overage to the -6311 account number in your index.

Financial Aid/Student Employment tracks the earnings of all students on FWS. We will notify you when the student has met his or her award.

Once students reach their earnings limit under FWS, they must either be switched to the UWP, if your departmental UWP budget can support this without additional funds, or released from their position. Financial Aid/Student Employment will take care of the changes in Banner and notify the supervisor that the change has occurred.

Everyone at the University of Richmond has a stake in preventing fraud. Money spent fraudulently is money that could otherwise have supported student services, academic programs or even salary increases. Not all frauds are financial, even though most high-profile ones in profit-making industries have been. The nature of the higher education environment means that other frauds—from grade changes to research—can also make the news, to devastating effect.

The University of Richmond has a strong system of processes in place to prevent frauds, thefts and mistakes, and protect valuable assets. These control processes are varied and include management sign-off on invoices; employee and manager signatures on time cards; written faculty approval of late grade changes; competitive bidding on large purchases; periodic fire extinguisher testing; virus upgrades on the network; and checking a University ID before resetting a network password.

Some examples of how each of us prevents fraud:

• Senior management respects the processes in place and does not pressure employees to bend the rules, even if they promise to take responsibility. Senior management creates the "Tone at the Top," and they want to set a tone of ethical behavior for the rest of us to follow.
• Employees know the rules and follow the rules. Employees question when someone wants to circumvent the rules and, if necessary, can report concerns to their manager, the internal auditor, or the police.
• Individuals responsible for approving invoices, expense reports, grade changes, leave and vacation records, timecards and other documents take the time to read and understand what they are approving. Making the assumption that "my staff wouldn’t have put this in here for my approval unless they were sure it was OK" not only circumvents the entire process, but actually leaves your valued staff members vulnerable to questions about their involvement if something inappropriate occurs. Don’t approve something without sufficient proof that it is correct.