UW Research

August 17, 2023

For the Record- August 17, 2023: Special Issue on UW FT and Participant Payment Issues

UW Finance Transformation & Study Participant Payment Issues

HSD has been made aware of several issues affecting researchers’ ability to pay study participants post UW Finance Transformation go-live. In some cases, participants have gone unpaid for many weeks. These issues include:

  • Inability to make payments via check in Workday for amounts below $200 without providing a social security number (SSN), despite UW Procurement policy stipulating obtaining a SSN is only required when payment is anticipated to total $200 or more annually.
  • Inability to make payments via Zelle in Workday without providing the study participant’s bank account number and bank routing number.
  • Study participant payments processed in Workday generating notifications to approvers in other departments across campus, eroding confidentiality protections by providing potentially sensitive information (e.g., participant full name, SSN, contact information, bank account information) to others.
  • Elimination of the centralized batch participant payment process, which negatively impacts researchers with high volume enrollments by increasing individual processing time and pushing work back onto researchers and their department.
  • Limited approval of Field Advances that allow cash payments as an alternative.

HSD and the Office of Research are relaying these concerns to central administrative offices and making efforts to engage those offices in finding solutions. We’ve been advised that the best way to escalate this issue is to encourage researchers and their departments to submit a General Finance Help Request ticket under the “Procurement” category. Be sure to describe in detail the exact nature of your issue(s) and the impact it is having or will have on your research participants, studies, and programs. Please include a note to your Shared Environment that the ticket should route to Procurement under the “Misc Payment (non-UW employee payments)” option. Encourage your colleagues to submit their issues as well.

HSD and the Office of Research will continue to keep you informed of any significant developments.