Release 1647 introduces new functionality to PPS to establish salary
caps at the point in time that employee pay rates are added or changed.
The impetus is the need to comply with National Institute of Health (NIH)
'guidelines that restrict charging payroll expenses at payrates in excess
of the Executive Level II of the Federal Executive Pay Scale', however
the implementation is generalized in such a way that it can be used for
other sorts of salary caps if the need arises.

The program code changes are modest in scope; it's the table entries that
are most extensive and do a lot of the 'heavy lifting'.  Two tables are
central to the process:

- Entries in the fund range table (41) with grouping definition SALRYCAP
   identify, by fund number, the FAUs subject to the cap.
- Entries in the assessment rate table (42) with an assessment type of
   CAP specify the amount of the cap as whole dollars.  This is a departure
   from how we've used the table in the past as a repository for rates, i.e.,
   multipliers, but demonstrates the flexibility of the design.  Previously
   the PPCTARTE transaction edit program allowed only transactions with
   assessment types of IAP, GAL, and EPL, but r1647 removes that
   restriction and thus opens up the table for more general, even
   custom, use.

The two sets of table entries are linked together on the basis of a group
code value of FEDC.

New edit program PPEC603 will be triggered by FAU and other changes to
determine whether a cap exists, and if a cap is exceeded, the entry will be
rejected.  Existing edit program PPEC052 will be triggered by either DOS
code or FAU change, and will issue a warning if a cap is found for a
without salary (calculation function A) DOS code to say
that it's not allowed.  Program PPWECON 'has been modified to pass the
Appointment Rate Code to PPVREDO for proper decimal alignment display of
the Distribution Pay Rate.'

TABLE UPDATES
   These are extensive.  All are provided except those for the FND
table, which will vary by site.

- routine definition - to define PPEC603
- processing group - to assign PPEC603 to the '08' group
- data element - to identify fields that when changed will trigger
   execution of PPEC603 and PPEC052
- message
- assessment rate.  The release installation document indicates that
   the value in the provided transaction is 'the 2005 annual limit of the
   Executive Level II of the Federal Executive Pay Scale', and because
   it's a federally assigned value, it can be used for all sites.

- fund range table.  We will need you to provide these transactions for
   us and will be glad to test them to make sure they're syntactically
   correct before implementing in production.  It won't hurt to go ahead
   and implement the rest of the release before these are available.
   The effect will simply be that no FAUs will be eligible for the cap.

   It occurred to me that some sites (ASUCLA? Hastings?) might not
   receive any funding from NIH and therefore not provide any FND
   SALRYCAP entries.  Per Jim Tuohig in Base Payroll, this is ok.

   Davis, you have a special situation in that you have no fund numbers
   in your FAUs.  That means you'll need to identify an equivalent
   means of identifying FAUs subject to caps, hopefully one of the
   several methodologies already implemented.  In addition to the
   special nature of the FND table transactions, we'll need to modify
   the FND table utility routine PPFAU018 so that it knows what sort
   of lookup routine to perform.

IMPLEMENTATION

   As always, we'll need your approval to install the release.  In
addition, please let us know if you intend to use the salary cap
functionality, and if yes, provide us with FND table transactions.

   bvb