Payroll Manual

NYSTEP Certification

General Information

As pursuant to the Civil Service Law, Section 100, no officer of the State may approve any salary payment for personal service to any person holding a position in the classified service unless the Department of Civil Service (DCS) has certified that the person is employed in that position in accordance with law, and rules made pursuant to law. Accordingly, OSC is required to ensure that all employees in the classified service have been certified by DCS and that key information contained in PayServ is the same as the information contained in DCS’s NYSTEP system. Therefore, when the actions identified below under the heading “Transactions Requiring DCS Certification” are reported in PayServ, the agency must also report the actions in DCS’s NYSTEP system.

The deadline for entering transactions into NYSTEP is generally the Friday prior to the PayServ submission deadline. During the week the PayServ transactions are being audited by OSC, DCS reviews and certifies the transactions entered into NYSTEP to ensure the employee meets the qualifications of that position. At the end of the audit week, DCS submits all certified transactions by file to OSC.

If there is a change to a transaction entered into NYSTEP, the agency must make sure the same changes are made in PayServ. Since the NYSTEP cutoff is before the PayServ cutoff, the agency will have time to add any new transaction that are needed. Any discrepancies as described below may result in issues that may prevent the employee from being paid.

As the certifiable transactions entered into PayServ by agency are inserted on the Job record, the system also creates a record on the employee’s Job Certification page to reflect the effective date, action, position number, and the position attributes for both the regular and NYS positions. For each row inserted on the Job Certification page, the certification flag on that row is automatically set to “Not Certified”. If more than one certifiable transaction is inserted on the Job record and the effective dates are different, a separate row will be inserted on the Job Certification page for each transaction and the certification flag on each row will be set to “Not Certified”. If more than one certifiable transaction is reported on Job for the same effective date, rows will be inserted into the Job Certification record for each certifiable transaction and will be sequenced accordingly. However, all transactions that are not “top of stack” for a particular effective date will automatically be updated by the certification program from Not Certified to Approved, as the top of stack transaction overrides any under rows for the same effective date.

After the DCS file which contains all transactions certified in NYSTEP by DCS is received by OSC, a special certification program is run that will compare the transactions on the DCS file to the transactions on the Job Certification page. If the compare process results in a match between the PayServ and NYSTEP record, the Job Certif flag will be flipped from Not Certified to Approved. The following further describes the match process.

  • For each employee on the NYSTEP file, the system will determine if the employee exists in PayServ: If the employee does not exist in PayServ, the system will place the DCS transaction in a holding file to be checked again in the following pay period.
  • If the employee exists in PayServ, the system will determine if there is a row on the employee’s Job Certification record with the same effective date as the DCS transaction.
    • If no match is found on effective date, the system will place the transaction in a holding file to be reviewed again the following pay period.
    • If a match is found on effective date, the system will compare all fields in PayServ against the DCS fields. NOTE: If the employee has more than one page on the Job Certification record with the same effective date, the system will start with the highest sequence number for that effective date and do the compare and if no is match found, the system will then review all other Not Certified rows with the same effective date to determine if there is row that has matching information.
      • If all critical fields match (dept, position, title, grade, percent), the system will update the status on the Job Certification page to “Approved” and then will go on to match all non-critical fields (BU, JC, Appt code, line number, full/part-time indicator). If there is a mismatch on a non-critical field, the system will report the error on the NHRP519 Agency Mismatch Report. The agency will have access to view this report in Control D and should do so routinely and correct the error in PayServ and/or NYSTEP accordingly.
      • If any of the critical fields do not match (dept, position, title, grade, percent), the employee’s status on the Job Certification page will remain Not Certified.

After all transactions on the DCS file and those on the holding file from a previous period have been compared against the Job Certification page and the match process is complete, the NHRP reports identified below are generated for review by OSC or agency, identifying the results of that match process.

Transactions Requiring DCS Certification

  • Hire
  • Rehire
  • Concurrent Hire
  • Return from Leave
  • Return from Disability
  • Chg PT Full
  • Transfer
  • Work Percentage Change
  • Position Change (provided one or more of the following critical fields are changing: dept, regular position number, grade, title, and percentage worked.)
    • Exception: Position Changes with a reason of Z10 and Pos/TSC which are title structure changes that were done by DCS and do not require the agency to enter a NYSTEP transaction for the impacted employees. Rather, DCS automatically adds the new title to the NYSTEP record of impacted employees.

Certification Reports

There are several reports that require review by agency payroll staff and/or OSC Audit staff that identify discrepancies between PayServ and NYSTEP. These reports are run, and all results are provided to agencies via e-mail on Tuesday mornings during a normal schedule and Monday mornings when there is an accelerated schedule.

If Certification issues are not resolved, OSC may disable an employees’ direct deposit and/or hold employees’ paychecks until the issue is resolved. 

  • Direct Deposit Disables occur on Wednesday mornings during a normal schedule and Tuesday mornings when there is an accelerated schedule.
  • Checks are held Thursday mornings on a normal week and Wednesday mornings when the schedule is accelerated.
  • Agencies must notify employees whose direct deposit is disabled and/or paycheck is withheld.
  • Agencies must enter all transactions that require any certification by the respective NYSTEP and PayServ cutoff dates.

Appointment End Date Report (Also available for Agency use via NYSTEP) 

The NYSTEP Appointment End Date Report is maintained by DCS. This report tracks employees who were only temporarily certified in their positions and, as a result, have a certification “good thru” date assigned by DCS. Generally, employees who are not permanently assigned to positions are given a “good thru” date.

Agency Actions: 

  • Review the NYSTEP Appointment End Date Report and enter the transactions into NYSTEP for those employees or positions that require recertification by Civil Service before the NYSTEP deadline.
  • Agencies should be sure the recertification transaction is submitted into NYSTEP prior to the certification end date to avoid an employee’s check being held by OSC.

NHRP715 - Transactions Not Certified Report

  • Identifies those certifiable transactions entered into PayServ that do not have a corresponding transaction entered and approved in NYSTEP with matching critical fields.
    • Critical fields include: effective date, department, position number, job code, grade, and percentage of time worked. 

Agency Actions:

  • If entered into NYSTEP and not approved, the agency must contact Civil Service to inquire about approval.
  • If not entered into NYSTEP or entered incorrectly in NYSTEP, the agency must contact Civil Service to ask for permission to enter/correct and to request immediate approval.
  • If the transaction entered into PayServ is incorrect and the information in NYSTEP is correct, the agency must contact OSC to correct the discrepancy.

NHRP735 - Unused DCS Transaction Report

This report provides OSC with a listing of transactions that are approved in NYSTEP and do not have a corresponding PayServ transaction, such as Leaves, Percentage Changes and other removals.

Agency Actions:

  • If the transaction in NYSTEP is correct, the agency must contact OSC to correct the discrepancy in PayServ.
  • If the transaction in NYSTEP is incorrect, the agency must contract Civil Service to ask for permission to correct the transaction.

NHRP519 - Mismatch Report (Only available to agencies via Control-D)

This report identifies all transactions entered and approved in both NYSTEP and PayServ, where there are one or more non-critical field mismatches. Non-critical fields include:

  • Line Number
  • Employee Status
  • Appointment Code
  • Jurisdictional Class
  • Full/Part-time Indicator

Agency Actions:

  • Review the Control-D NHRP519 Agency Mismatch Report to resolve the non-critical field mismatches by entering the correct follow-up transaction into NYSTEP and/or PayServ by the next payroll period.

 

Last Updated: 07/17/2025