Dear Colleagues,
The fiscal year 2024 (FY24) budget guidelines were approved by the Board of Tulane in their January 2023 meeting and should be used in preparing your FY24 Proposed Operating Budget. These guidelines will also be sent to the financial managers in the units who will perform the actual budget entry task. The FY24 Proposed Operating Budget will be presented to the Board at their June 2023 meeting for approval. Employees should not be notified of merit increases or other planned position changes related to new fiscal year funding until it is confirmed that the budget was approved at that meeting.
Anaplan Planning & Budget (APB) will be available for entering budget data on February 1, 2023. Please ensure your designated personnel have obtained the required Anaplan access and attended a training session. The deadline for budget entry is March 15, 2023. Specific information regarding the budget guidelines is below.
If your designated personnel do not have the appropriate access in Anaplan or require training, reach out to the Budget Office as soon as possible.
Compensation
The overall university salary raise pool is 4.0% of the FY23 original budget base salary natural accounts. Raises for salaries charged to restricted accounts must be funded by increased revenues or recoveries. The distribution of the raise pool is detailed below for faculty and staff groups. The raise pools for faculty and staff are separate and should not be mixed. Fringe benefits will be calculated using the proposed FY24 fixed fringe benefit rates.
Faculty Group (includes deans, post docs and graduate assistant natural accounts)
Your target budget will include a 3.75% pool for currently filled and vacant faculty base salaries. The Provost has recommended the following general guidelines: a 3.25% merit pool and a 0.50% pool for extraordinary salary adjustments. In addition to the 3.75% pool at the school’s discretion, a 0.25% pool will be held centrally by the Provost for ladder rank faculty promotions. A target adjustment will be made to disperse those funds as promotion decisions are made.
Staff Group (including non-academic administrators and librarians)
Your target budget includes a 3.50% salary pool for eligible staff raises effective July 1, 2023. The 3.50% pool is calculated based on Dec. 31, 2022 eligible staff salaries and reflects 2022 calendar year activity including employee performance evaluations. The Chief Operating Officer has recommended the following general guidelines: a 3.25% merit pool and a 0.25% pool for extraordinary salary adjustments. In addition to the 3.50% pool at the unit’s discretion, a 0.50% pool will be held centrally to allow for equity adjustments initiated by the Office of Human Resources & Institutional Equity.
Merit increase eligibility includes regular full-time and part-time active employees hired on or before Dec. 31, 2022. Employees on approved FMLA (paid and non-paid) are eligible to receive the July 1, 2023 merit increase. Temporary employees are ineligible to receive merit increases. The eligible amount of merit (% and $) will be shown on each employee’s record in Anaplan on the 1.2 Personnel Budgeting dashboard. Funds will not be provided for raises on staff vacant and group positions.
Merit Increases and Performance
Performance plays an important role when determining an individual merit increase recommendation. There must be a performance review on file and the recommended merit increase should be reflective of the performance review rating. The maximum merit increase you can give an employee is 5% and is dependent on you having funds in your allotted pool to cover it. Please make sure you complete your staff evaluations in time to meet the March 15 budget entry deadline.
Unless there are performance concerns documented within the performance evaluation and/or a performance improvement plan in place, a merit increase is required for all eligible employees. Employees who receive promotions after Dec. 31, 2022 should still receive a merit increase reflecting their 2022 performance and salary.
While a performance evaluation for employees hired after Oct. 1, 2022 is not required, in order to recommend a salary increase for an employee, it is required that they have met performance expectations at the time of budget allocation. The amount of salary increase should be prorated for the time worked in 2022.
HR Business Partners are available to answer questions and provide advice on merit increase decisions.
Staff Above Maximum Salaries
Staff with salaries above the maximum salary of their pay grade are eligible to receive a merit payment in lieu of a salary increase, limited to the annual stated unit merit raise pool, 3.5% for FY24. Merit payments will be included in the first paycheck in July 2023 as a one-time, lump sum payment. These merit payments are considered bonuses, are not classified as base salary and are, therefore, taxed at the supplemental tax rate and are not eligible for retirement plan contribution.
Notice will be sent to Financial Managers to indicate which employees need merit payments in lieu of salary increases. When entering the merit payments for these employees in Anaplan, use natural account 5538-Lump Sum Merit Staff.
Vacant Position Approvals
You should thoughtfully consider the positions that are currently in your budget. In particular,
- Re-budget vacant positions that you did not fill in FY23 but intend to fill in FY24.
- Mark Vacant in Anaplan positions that are budgeted on employees who will not continue in FY24. Doing so will create a replacement vacancy that will hold the budgeted salary dollars.
- New positions must have been included in a FY24 budget request submission and approved by the appropriate financial model governance committees.
For all other position requests: Areas reporting to the Provost should send their requests to Kady Weingart in the Office of the Provost, and all other areas should submit them to your assigned financial manager in the Budget Office. Those offices will coordinate securing required Senior Vice President approval.
Supply and Expenses
Non-salary budgets are set at the FY23 budget level and should be budgeted per the actual planned use of the funds and not all lumped into one natural account line. The Anaplan Revenue and Expense budget section includes up to three years of actual activity to assist with budgeting.
Restricted Funds
In preparing for the FY24 Proposed Operating Budget, revenues and expenses in all ledgers [e.g., Endowment, Sponsored Research, Restricted Gifts, etc.] should be properly budgeted. This is extremely important because the receipt and expenditure of the university's financial resources have a tremendous impact when projecting cash flow and future cash requirements. Funds from restricted gift and endowed account current year revenue and balances must be used first if the donor restrictions have been met before unrestricted funds are used. Endowment revenue projections will be loaded directly in to Anaplan based on a report provided by the Accounting Office. Budgeting assistance for the restricted ledgers will be provided by the following offices:
- Endowment (ledger 1 and 4) – Accounting Office.
- Sponsored Research (ledger 5) – Grants and Contracts Accounting.
- Restricted Contracts/Gifts (ledger 46 and 6) – Budget Office.
Please direct any questions concerning the guidelines to the Budget Office.
Patrick J. Norton
Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
Heather Hargrave
Assistant Vice-President, Institutional Budgets & Planning