Essentially, departments and agencies have the authority, when regular payroll doesn't run, to issue from their financial group what we call an emergency salary advance or a priority payment. When Phoenix went live, of course we had hundreds, if not thousands, of occurrences each pay period where people were not getting the appropriate pay or were getting no pay at all. We worked with departments and agencies to ensure there was a more streamlined process and access for individuals to reach their managers and deputies, as required, to receive these emergency salary advances and priority payments.
Over time, as we've improved the functionality and stability of the system, we're now in a position whereby, if we know when we run the pay that the confirm hasn't worked for an individual and they will get no pay or low pay, we can prepare a report in advance and share that with the department or agency. This enables them to proactively reach out to the employee to ask if they would like an emergency salary advance or an additional priority payment to be able to tide them over until we can correct the pay in the next pay run.
The gaps of no pay or low pay are occurring very seldom compared to when we first went live, because of the advances and improvements through the collaboration with departments.