FAQ - General

Will monthly employees be paid hourly?
No, salaried employees will still be paid a set amount not determined by hours entered on their timesheet. Salaried employees will take their annual salary divided by 26 pay periods (or 20 pay periods if 9-month paid over 9-months) in the year to calculate their biweekly pay.

I’m going to need help figuring out my personal finances/budget, is there someone who can help me?
Yes, Magellan (our Employee Assistance Program) will host financial planning workshops and provide additional financial planning resources.

What should I do, as an employee, to prepare for this change?
If you are a staff member or 12-month academic appointment and plan to utilize the leave payout option to bridge the delay in paychecks in April-May, you can start saving up/planning to reserve up to 80 hours of your leave or you can start putting away funds now or making plans within your personal budget to account for this pay frequency change. You can determine when your bills are due/when auto-drafts are made and make any changes necessary to your bill pay schedule. Make sure you’re familiar with the new payday schedule and the employee resources on the Payroll website.

How does this affect my OU departmental budget?
This change should not impact your budget as the salary expenses for FY24 will be neutral. If an employee elects to receive a leave payout, the cash paid by the university to the employee will be equal to the traditional monthly schedule by fiscal year end.

My biweekly rate is less than 1/2 of my monthly paycheck. Why?
There are 26 biweekly pay periods during the calendar year, which results in ten months having two biweekly paychecks and two months with three paychecks. To calculate your gross biweekly paycheck amount you would take your annual salary and divide by 26. So, as an example if your annual salary is $50k (monthly gross paycheck is $4166.67), your biweekly paycheck would be $1923.08. For months that have two biweekly paychecks you would receive $3846.15. For months that have three biweekly paychecks you would receive $5769.23. *If you are a 9-paid-in-9 faculty, you would take your annual salary divided by 20 pay periods.

Do I have less money per month on the biweekly schedule?
The amount of pay you have on any given date may be different on the new schedule, but it is not necessarily less. Because you will be paid more frequently on a biweekly schedule, there are actually ~329 days out of the year that you will have more of your pay in your possession under the biweekly schedule than the monthly schedule.

Why are we transitioning to biweekly instead of semi-monthly in which we could be paid on the 1^st and 15^th?
More than half of OU employees are already on a biweekly schedule, this includes all hourly paid employees on Norman campus as well as all HSC employees. Moreover, the State of Oklahoma does not offer a semi-monthly payroll schedule option.

Will the employees who take the leave payout be on vacation the last part of April 2024? Won't this cause a problem in departments if we're all out of the office at the same time?
No, employees will not actually take the leave they request for the payout. If employees elect to receive a bridge payment on May 3rd, they are getting the leave paid out to them on a paycheck instead of using the leave to be out of the office.

I have additional tax withholdings taken out of my paychecks, is there anything I need to do to update this when I start getting paid biweekly instead of monthly?
For 12-month employees transitioning in April, if you have additional federal and/or state withholdings as of April 2024, you will need to go into Self Service (Payroll-Tax Withholding) between April 20, 2024 and May 3, 2024 and update the amount to reflect the remaining 17 biweekly paychecks (or 18 if you want to include your bridge payment), instead of the 8 remaining months of withholding. 
For 9-month employees transitioning in August (includes 9/9 and 9/12), if you have additional federal and/or state withholdings as of August 2024, you will need to go into Self Service (Payroll-Tax Withholding) between August 10, 2024 and August 23, 2024 and update the amount to reflect the remaining 9 biweekly paychecks, instead of the number of months of withholding. 

Am I getting paid for all of my time worked? Will there be furloughs during this transition period?
Employees will be paid for all time worked during this transition. There will NOT be furloughs. The one-time delay in pay is a result of transitioning from pay being processed prospectively during monthly payroll to pay being processed retrospectively two weeks after the pay period has ended; it is not a result of employees working without pay. Employees electing to receive a leave payout will receive their leave in the form of a paycheck rather than taking leave.

Is there a tool I can use to see what my paycheck will look like when I transition to being paid biweekly?
Yes, you can use salary calculators like what is provided by PaycheckCity: https://www.paycheckcity.com/calculator

For questions about this pay frequency transition please email us at paydaychange@ou.edu.