Off-Cycle Payroll Policy

Pay changes and timesheets submitted after the On-cycle Payroll deadlines will be processed on the next On-cycle Payroll, unless conditions for an Off-cycle Payroll disbursement are met.

Standard Off-Cycle Payroll Disbursement
A standard Off-cycle Payroll disbursement is a payment to an employee earlier than the next established On-cycle Payroll. Off-cycle disbursements are an exception to regular payroll processing and should never be substituted for the timely processing of employee pay. The USG establishes the Off-cycle Payroll calendar annually and Georgia Tech Off-cycle Payroll dates will typically run between each regularly scheduled Bi-Weekly Payroll disbursement.

Off-cycle disbursements should only be requested when a true financial hardship exists making it necessary for the employee to receive a disbursement before the next On-cycle Payroll.

Off-cycle requests must be submitted by the Thursday before the Friday On-cycle Bi-weekly Payroll disbursement pay date. Off-cycle disbursements cannot be used to pay an employee before work is performed. Advance pay may not be issued to an employee under any circumstances.

Frequency of Payment and Timing:
Off-cycle disbursements are distributed every other Friday, opposite of the Biweekly On-cycle Payroll disbursement schedule. 

A request for Off-cycle disbursements should meet at least one of the following criteria:

• Paycheck reversal due to employee overpayment,
• Administrative error within GTHR payroll process,
• The employee has received less than 50% of their wages,
• The employee is owed 10 hours or more,
• The employee submitted their hours on time, but the time approver did not approve the hours on time,
• The employee has been involuntarily terminated.

Off-cycle disbursements should not be processed for the following reasons:

• Retroactive pay,
• The employee is owed less than 10 hours,
• Employee fails to enter and submit their time report on schedule,
• Supplemental pay — if the employee was paid for their regular wages,
• Failure to submit timely Vacation & Sick leave requests,
• Vacation pay out.

Emergency Off-Cycle Payroll Disbursements
Emergency disbursements are a subset of Off-cycles Payroll disbursements requiring pay date earlier than the established Off-cycle pay dates and shall only be processed in limited situations.

Emergency payments will only be processed if the below criteria are met:

• Undue hardship is placed on the employee because their respective pay has not been routinely issued,
• The underpayment was due to no fault of the employee,
• The request is approved by Georgia Tech’s Executive Vice President Administration and Finance,
• More than one emergency request for an employee, in any given calendar year, must be approved by Georgia Tech’s President as per USG Business Procedures Manual 5.3.8.

Emergency payments are issued as same-day Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments via direct deposit to the employee’s bank account. All requests for emergency payments must be submitted to the USG Shared Service Center (SSC) by the deadline as indicated on the established Off-cycle Payroll processing calendar. Requests not received by this deadline will be added to the next emergency payroll processing run.

Procedures for requesting an Off-cycle Payroll disbursement can be found in the Human Resources knowledge base at https://services.gatech.edu.  Departments can also submit a request for an Off-cycle disbursement via ticket at that same location.

Additional information is available in the Human Resources knowledge base at https://services.gatech.edu. Questions not answered in the knowledge base can be submitted via ticket at the same location.