Employee-related expense reporting
Commitment Accounting performs payroll accounting functions within Financial Services. It oversees the resulting Workday journal entries generated from the payroll process.
When a department overpays an employee, Commitment Accounting works with the employee to recollect excess wages on the university’s behalf. Commitment Accounting completes all remittances and reporting related to payroll, retirement and benefit deductions, and payroll taxes — federal, state and local.
Commitment Accounting also compiles W-2 forms at year-end, administers taxes for employees living or working outside of Arizona, participates in Workday system testing, and assesses the taxation of the graduate-level tuition waiver.
Email Commitment Accounting with questions.
ERE rates
Employee-related expenses are ASU’s cost for benefits provided to employees as part of their total compensation package at the university. These include workers’ compensation insurance, unemployment insurance, and the employer’s portion of Social Security taxes, retirement plan contributions, health/dental insurance and life/disability insurance.
ERE is budgeted and charged to departmental Worktags based on rates determined by the ASU Office of Planning and Budget. Departments do not incur the actual benefit cost. Each job category in Workday is assigned an ERE rate, which is applied to an employee’s gross pay to determine ERE expense. ERE charges per employee are capped on a fiscal year basis when gross income exceeds $400,000. However, Workday does not systematically cap these charges; the central accounting team manually adjusts them before the fiscal year-end. Refer to the table below for fiscal year ERE rates in Workday.
| Faculty | Staff | Non-benefits eligible | Students, excluding RA/TA | RA/TA | Post-doctoral | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FacAdmAppt and Faculty | AcademicProf, Admin, ACPRFAdmAP | Can include all faculty, staff and post-doctoral | Students and graduate service assistants | Graduate students under RA/TA job codes | PostDoc | |
| Workday ERE ledger | 7112SC0232 | 7113SC0236 | 7117SC0233 | 7116SC0237 | 7115SC0235 | 7114SC0234 |
| FY 2026 rate | 30.60% | 35.50% | 11.10% | 1.90% | 7.40% | 22.30% |
| FY 2025 rate | 30.40% | 36.80% | 10.90% | 1.20% | 8.50% | 25.30% |
| FY 2024 rate | 27.10% | 34.20% | 10.20% | 1.60% | 11.50% | 21.70% |
| FY 2023 rate | 25.60% | 34% | 10.60% | 2% | 10.70% | 21.40% |
| FY 2022 rate | 26.50% | 32.60% | 10.10% | 1.70% | 10.20% | 22.10% |
| FY 2021 rate | 26.30% | 33% | 9.40% | 1.50% | 10% | 21% |
| FY 2020 rate | 27.30% | 36.70% | 9.40% | 1.10% | 7.10% | 22.70% |
A job category is assigned to each position and job. For employees with multiple active positions, each job is separately charged the applicable ERE rate per the assigned job category of the respective position.
Non-benefits eligible employees, excluding students and graduate students, are charged a specific ERE rate. Faculty, staff, and post-docs can be subject to the non-benefit ERE rate based on their employee type and the total scheduled weekly hours assigned in Workday. Non-benefit eligible employees are defined for ERE purposes as those whose position is not a regular or regular fixed term employee type, and/or their combined total scheduled weekly hours for all jobs are less than 20 hours.
The job category, employee type, and scheduled weekly hours can be viewed by clicking on the position or job hyperlink on the employee profile in Workday.
General operating programs are assessed ERE. Departments are not allowed to move the general operating ERE budget to personal services or operations appropriation units. Earnings codes for non-ERE listings include:
| Non-ERE listings | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adoption Subsidy — ASB | Award/Prize Grossed Up — AWP-GU | Award/Prize — AWP | Award/Prize Regular Student — AWP-STU | Bones: Discrentionary Grossed Up — BNS-GU |
| Bonus: Discretionary Normal —BNS | Bonus: Discretionary Normal Student — BNS-STU | Bonus: Nondiscretionary Normal — BNN | Bonus: Nondiscretionary Normal Student — BNN-STU | Bonus: Nondiscretionary Grossed Up — BNN-STU |
| California Meal Penalty — CMP | Cancer Subsidy — CSB | Car Allowance — CAR | Danger Pay Allowance — DPA | Distributed Excess ASRS — ASR |
| Educational Bonus: PD — EDB-PD | Graduate California Meal Penalty — CMPG | Health Incentive Program — HIP | Honorarium — HNR | Housing Allowance Grossed Up — HSG-GU |
| Housing Allowance Normal — HSG | Longevity Bonus: PD — LTB | Meal Penalty — MPN | Referral — REF | Same Day Meal — SDM |
| Signing Bonus — SIB | Student California Meal Penalty — CMPS | Student Meal Penalty — MPNS | Taxable Fringe Benefit Grossed Up — TFB-GU | Tech Subsidy Non-Taxable — TSN |
| Technical Subsidy — TEC | Unpaid Time — UPT | |||
Payroll accounting adjustment transactions will automatically transfer the corresponding ERE expense for the selected pay period in equal proportion to the amount of earnings moved.
Vacation and compensatory payouts are centrally funded. The ERE rate includes a component to fund vacation payouts.
ERE posts under the Fringe Benefit and Fringe Benefit Actual Adjustment journal sources, under the following ledgers and spend categories:
| Ledger | Spend category |
|---|---|
| 7112: Employee-related expenses — faculty | SC0232 ERE rate — faculty |
| 7113: Employee-related expenses — staff | SC0236 ERE rate — staff |
| 7114: Employee-related expenses — post-doctoral scholar | SC0234 ERE rate — post-doctoral scholar |
| 7115: Employee-related expenses — RA/TA | SC0235 ERE rate — RA/TA |
| 7116: Employee-related expenses — student | SC0237 ERE rate — student |
| 7117: Employee-related expenses — other | SC0233 ERE rate — non-benefit |
The referenced journal sources, ledgers and spend categories can be used as filters for ERE reporting purposes when querying Workday Departmental Reports and the Financial Data Warehouse, Amazon Redshift.
For any ERE-related questions, contact your Financial Services accountant or your Grant and Contract Officer for inquiries specific to sponsored grants.