Accounting Analysis and Payroll Charge Codes

Overview and Background

The accounting analysis (AA) table contains configuration and coding information that serves two primary purposes:

Directing payroll expenses to the appropriation funding source, including specific Uniform Statewide Accounting System (USAS) information for state-funded payroll
Directing employer-paid benefits to the correct funding source and FAMIS cost center (i.e., the FAMIS Subsidiary Ledger [SL] account)

The table can be either very simple or very detailed, depending on the business requirements.

FAMIS uses cost centers (SL accounts and support accounts [SAs]) and object codes to properly classify payroll expenses. Here, the FAMIS SLs and SAs will be referred to as the FAMIS SL-SA. Additionally, FAMIS utilizes the bank account attribute to manage and link accounting activities to state funds and state appropriations. Directing payroll to the proper bank account is critical to the payroll-to-accounting process.

The AA table was originally the domain of the previous A&M System payroll system (Budget Payroll Personnel [BPP]) that was retired in 2017. At that time, ownership and responsibility for the table were transferred to the FAMIS domain. The concepts and functionality of the table remained relevant because the Workday implementation did not address the benefit allocation or USAS state integration requirements.

Timing, Application and Building Payroll History

In the A&M System, payroll calculation is the responsibility of Workday. This includes managing positions, base pay compensation, allowances and other additional compensation, as well as deductions and benefits. Workday also manages the allocation of payroll expenses to FAMIS SL-SA and the actual payment of employee net pay (whether by Automated Clearing House [ACH] or check).

Once payroll is calculated and allocated, the data is transferred to the FAMIS application for posting to accounting, as well as for the allocation and distribution of employee deductions and employer-funded benefits (e.g., Teacher Retirement System [TRS], Optional Retirement Program [ORP], Social Security, Medicare). During the FAMIS process, the rules and guidance provided by the FAMIS AA table are applied to the Workday payroll results. This process is referred to as building payroll history. Payroll history contains all payroll details, from the allocation and costing of benefits to the employee and cost allocation level. The accounting analysis charge codes are critical to this process.

Benefits Not Calculated by Workday

During the implementation of Workday, the developers identified selected benefits that could not be calculated in Workday to meet A&M System requirements because the benefit rates were based on A&M System member costing allocations. Workday calculates payroll before it calculates the costing allocation split; therefore, it cannot accurately calculate the benefit rates to meet A&M System requirements. This was true for the following benefits:

Unemployment Compensation Insurance (UCI)
Workers’ Compensation Insurance (WCI)
Leave pool (LEAVE)

Assignment of the Accounting Analysis Code

AA codes are assigned to each payroll detail item based on the FAMIS SL-SA provided from the Workday pay results. The AA is specified as an attribute on each FAMIS SL-SA.

Additionally, FAMIS enables business administrators to modify and override AA codes throughout the fiscal year. Currently, this is done on FAMIS Screen 725 (Accounting Analysis Override).

Benefit Types

The AA table provides funding instructions for the following benefit types:

GIP – Group Insurance Premium
FICA – OASI (Social Security) and OAHI (Medicare)
LNG – Longevity
TRS – Teacher retirement contribution
TRS 90 – Teacher retirement contribution during the employee’s first 90 days
TRS CARE – Additional TRS medical coverage for some employees
TRS SURC – TRS surcharge for TRS retirees working at more than 50% effort
UCI – Unemployment Compensation Insurance assessment
WCI – Workers’ Compensation Insurance assessment
ORP BASE – Optional Retirement Base account
ORP SUPL – ORP supplemental amount (grandfathered ORP participants only)
ORP SSUP – ORP System supplement amount (grandfathered ORP participants only)
FIR – Federal Insurance Regular (for employees with Civil Service appointments)
OEEC – Other Employee and Employer Charges (current taxes assessed by another state for employees that do not live in Texas)
CSRS – Civil Service Retirement System
LEAVE – Accrued leave assessment

Charge Codes

The purpose of the benefit charge codes is to direct benefit expenses to the correct FAMIS SL-SA and bank. Based on business requirements and statutory requirements (both state and federal), funding for various benefits may need to come from a different source than the funding of the actual payroll earnings.

Charge Code 1

Charge Code 1 is the most straightforward charge code. It simply directs the benefit to the same FAMIS SL-SA and bank that funded the employee earnings.

Charge Code 2

Charge Code 2 is used when the benefit expense is to be assigned to a different FAMIS SL-SA account and also requires the specification of a FAMIS bank. Simply defined, Charge Code 2 means paid by the bank and account specified on the BPP AA table. This code is typically used when benefits are centrally funded (and not charged to departmental FAMIS SL-SA accounts) or when other restrictions are in effect.

Note that for SAs, the AA table does not allow for the specification of an SA as part of its configuration and process. However, special coding is in place for both AgriLife Research (06) and AgriLife Extension (07) to facilitate the assignment of the SA. For AgriLife Research, the SA is the same as the one used for the earnings; for AgriLife Extension, the support account is derived from the bank and the fiscal year.

Charge Code 3

Charge Code 3 indicates that the benefit is to be charged to the same FAMIS SL-SA as the earning but is assigned to a different FAMIS bank account.

Charge Codes 4 through 7

Charge Codes 4 through 7 are specifically created for the allocation of retirement benefits when federal funds are used to fund the earnings. These codes are only allowed to be specified on TRS and ORP benefits for the following system members:

06 – AgriLife Research
07 – AgriLife Extension
05 – Prairie View A&M University

Charge Codes 4 and 5

Charge Codes 4 and 5 have special processing that splits the retirement benefit amount into two parts:

Up to 5% of the covered earnings is considered the “charged” amount.
Retirement benefit amounts beyond the 5% are considered “uncharged.”

Note that the payroll integration process does not handle these uncharged amounts. The state general revenue appropriation actually pays the uncharged benefits for TRS or ORP through special processes.

With Charge Code 4, the charged amount is assigned to the same FAMIS SL-SA and bank as the earning.

With Charge Code 5, the charged amount is assigned to the specified FAMIS SL-SA and to the specified bank. The same special logic for SAs as applied in Charge Code 2 is also applied to the SA.

Note that Charge Codes 4 and 5 are for TRS and ORP only and cannot be used on the other TRS benefits or the ORP supplemental benefits.

Charge Codes 6 and 7

Charge Codes 6 and 7 are new in Fiscal Year 2025 and replace special hard-coding and exception logic, placing control of the retirement split in the hands of the person maintaining the AA table.

These codes have special processing that splits the retirement benefit amount into two parts, which differs from the split used for Charge Codes 4 and 5:

One-half of the employee’s retirement benefit, with a maximum of 5% of the covered earnings
The remaining amount (nearly always the other half) is uncharged.

With Charge Code 6, the charged amount is assigned to the same FAMIS SL-SA and bank as the earnings.

With Charge Code 7, the charged amount is assigned to a specified FAMIS SL-SA and to the specified bank. The same special logic for SAs as applied in Charge Code 2 is also applied to the SA.

As with charge Codes 4 and 5, these uncharged amounts are not handled by the payroll integration process. The state general revenue appropriation actually pays the uncharged benefits for TRS or ORP through special processes.

With Charge Codes 6 and 7, the charged contribution is calculated as the employer ORP-covered earnings multiplied by .033 (half of 6.6%) for most employees and employer ORP-covered earnings multiplied by .0425 (half of 8.5%) for “grandfathered” employees. See Grandfathered ORP Employees and ORP Supplements for more information.

Note that Charge Codes 6 and 7 are for TRS and ORP only and cannot be used on the other TRS benefits or the ORP supplemental benefits.

Charge Code 0

Charge Code 0 is a special charge code applicable only to certain benefits. Note that specifying Charge Code 0 does not eliminate any obligation the system member may have in paying or funding benefits.

This code indicates that the benefit amount retrieved by Workday should be ignored or not charged. This is best understood by examining the appropriate use of Charge Code 0 for each relevant benefit.

Workers’ Compensation Insurance

The WCI benefit is an assessment to allow the A&M System to build up a reserve pool for future WCI claims. Note that the A&M System runs a self-insured workers’ compensation plan. Currently, certain types of funds do not now allow an assessment of this nature. For example, WCI cannot be charged on state funds because it would allow funds to be moved from USAS and the state treasury to be held locally for potential future expense.

Unemployment Compensation Insurance

Like WCI, the UCI benefit is an assessment that allows the A&M System to build a reserve pool for future unemployment claims. Also like WCI, the A&M System runs a self-insured plan for unemployment claims. Certain types of funds allow an assessment of this nature. Note that if an employee is funded from state general revenue, the state (not the A&M System) is proportionally responsible for any unemployment claims, and the proportions are reported to the Texas Workforce Commission through a quarterly integration between FAMIS and the commission.

Leave Assessment

The A&M System also assesses an amount of payroll to fund vacation balance payouts when employees terminate. This is the LEAVE assessment. As with WCI and UCI, certain funding sources do not permit this type of assessment.

TRS when Funded by General Revenue (State of Texas Fund 0001)

When TRS is funded (or partially funded) by state general revenue appropriations, most system members assign Charge Code 0 to the TRS contribution. A special process at the state transfers funds to TRS from the general revenue fund, and the dollars do not flow through the system members’ treasury accounts. System members later manually book these expenses.

Civil Service Retirement

Texas AgriLife Extension is fully responsible for Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) contributions. Other system members do not share these contributions and are not charged; therefore, Charge Code 0 is used by all other A&M System members for CSRS.

Optional Retirement Program

Although it is not recommended, some members use Charge Code 0 for the ORP base amount and manually handle the state general revenue portion of ORP.

FIR and OEEC

When the new OEEC benefit became active in Workday, a decision was made to share the FIR AA directives with OEEC. This decision was made due to the limitations of the FAMIS AA table and the complexities of adding another set of codes to the AA table. The sharing of AA directives was possible because FIR charges are very rare and are being phased out.

Therefore, the FIR charge code is now shared with the OEEC benefit. System members have traditionally used Charge Code 0, but in the future, Charge Code 0 should no longer be permitted.

Note that the charge codes on the table under the OEEC / FIR label are now primarily for OEEC. If FIR changes are allocated to any system member other than Agrilife Extension (07), the charge code will be changed to 0, and no FIR charges will be applied.

Grandfather ORP Employees and ORP Supplements

In the mid-1990s, the State of Texas limited its contribution to ORP retirement to 6.6%, which was the TRS employer contribution amount at that time. Employees already enrolled in ORP at that time retained the previous ORP rate of 8.5% and are referred to as “grandfathered.” The A&M System set up a process to fund the additional 1.9% (the difference between 6.6% and 8.5%).

This change occurred in two steps, and the 1.9% was split into two components:

ORPL – 1.19% of the employee’s covered earnings
ORPS – 0.71% of the employee’s covered earnings

The ORP base amount is 6.6% of the employee’s covered earnings. Note that Workday is responsible for identifying grandfathered ORP employees and applying the correct employer contribution rate for the ORP contribution. The FAMIS payroll history process is responsible for splitting the ORP contribution for grandfathered employees into the base and supplemental components.

Employees with Federal Appointments

In addition to the charge code logic, special logic for AgriLife Extension employees with federal appointments remains in place during the payroll history build process. This is true even though only a handful of employees with federal appointments exist. Employees are identified as federal appointments if they are both AgriLife Extension employees and have a CSRS deduction. When an employee has a federal appointment, the charge code for ORP or TRS is set to zero (Charge Code 0), in accordance with federal guidance.