Shelby Klingerman, Content Curator |

Amberly Scheppach, HR-GL Application Manager at the University of Colorado, spoke about the process of automating payroll garnishments in a recent presentation. A garnishment occurs when a court orders an employer to withhold a certain amount of an employee’s paycheck to be sent directly to the person or institution to whom it is owed. Some examples would be child or spousal support, student loan payments or state and federal taxes.

After the University of Colorado upgraded to PeopleSoft HCM 9.2 in December of 2015, the payroll office was initially sending paper vouchers to the Accounts Payable department for payment of garnishments. However, they were able to successfully activate the integration broker services after their 9.2 systems went live for HCM and FIN. As a result, they were able to import vendors from their FIN 9.2 system, calculate and export garnishment vouchers from HCM to FIN and then process them systematically with other vendor payments.

Setting Up Garnishments

The first thing you need when setting up a garnishment is the Garnishment Deduction code. From there, it’s a good idea to validate that person’s employment before going through the process. After that, you’ll need to create a General Deduction and then create the garnishment itself.

There are several Garnishment Specifications that you’ll need to fill out when creating the garnishment. These specifications include information like: the garnishment type and ID, court name and ID, vendor-related information, frequency and schedule of the deduction, etc.

Next Steps

Once the garnishment has been created, the Deduction Register is reviewed during Payroll Processing. Then the voucher is calculated and sent to Accounts Payable after final review.

Creating these garnishments is fairly easy to do, the automation of the deduction and payment process saves a lot of time for staff members in comparison to completing paper vouchers manually.

Learn More

To learn more about the process of automating payroll garnishments, learn the navigation tracks to the steps that Amberly took and to see screenshots from what the setup looks like, check out the full presentation, Automating Payroll Garnishments from HCM to FIN, a member-only benefit.