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SPRS User Guide –
What is SPRS?

The Road to SPRS … and Beyond!

The Road to SPRS…

USAS

In 1987, the 70th Legislature enacted legislation that required the Comptroller's office to make uniform the collection and reporting of statewide personnel and payroll data. Through this legislation, the Uniform Statewide Accounting Systems (USAS) were established.

HRIS

In the first phase of implementation in 1989, the Human Resource Information System (HRIS) was created. HRIS was established to collect personnel descriptive data about each state employee as well as job related information for the positions they held.

USPS

In 1994, the Uniform Statewide Payroll/Personnel System (USPS) was implemented. USPS was established to process payrolls for state employees, utilizing a centralized and standardized payroll calculation.

SPRS

In 1997, the 75th Legislature modified the statute, which had previously required that all state agencies use USPS as their internal payroll system, to allow the Comptroller to designate a standardized payroll calculation on one or more systems. After evaluating several options, the decision was made to build a new system that is not product specific to capture necessary data elements from the agencies' internal personnel/payroll systems, validate the information before payrolls are processed and post the validated personnel and payroll information.

This new system, the Standardized Payroll/Personnel Reporting System (SPRS), allows the Comptroller to continue meeting its statutory obligations of processing valid claims, fulfilling statewide reporting requirements, and ensuring, via post-payment audit, a standardized payroll calculation. The greatest benefit of SPRS is a system for capturing and validating uniform personnel and payroll information for agencies not on USPS. Now that SPRS is fully implemented, all personnel and payroll information will be validated, enabling the Comptroller to provide more consistent information.

…and Beyond!

Phase One

The first phase of the SPRS Project addresses the needs of a limited number of state agencies that will begin reporting to SPRS from their internal payroll/personnel systems in 2002.

The SPRS team has met all of the first phase's goals and objectives on time and within budget! Here are some of Phase One's milestones:

January 2000
SPRS system design launched.
December 2000
Interim SPRS system solution brought online for the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC).
February 2002
Final SPRS core personnel and payroll edits added.
March 2002
TWC began SPRS conversion and parallel testing.
June 2002
SPRS was fully implemented. TWC converted to production SPRS.

The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) was the first agency converted to SPRS. Parallel testing was conducted from March through May of 2002. TWC submitted their first regular monthly payroll, 4048 payments, to SPRS on June 20, 2002. Of these, 4,046 payments processed successfully; the remaining two payments processed the following day. TWC has processed several payment cancellations and nightly processing of personnel transactions continues to go smoothly.

The timeframe for the remaining agencies converting to SPRS is as follows:

  • The Health and Human Services Commission, Texas Department of Health, Texas Cancer Council converted in December 2002.
  • The Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation converted in May 2003.
  • The Texas Department of Criminal Justice converted in July 2003.
  • Texas Department of Aging, Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, and Interagency Council on Early Childhood Intervention converted in September 2003.
  • Department of Human Services, Texas Commission for the Blind, Texas Rehabilitation Commission, and Texas Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and Department of Family and Protective Services are scheduled to convert in December 2003.

Refer to the SPRS Agency Status table for more information about these agencies converting to SPRS.

Phase Two

The second phase of the project will address the needs of other state agencies, excluding institutions of higher education and locally funded agencies.

Phase Three

The third phase of the project will address the needs of institutions of higher education and locally funded agencies.

Why SPRS?

As mentioned above, the greatest benefit of SPRS is a consistent system of personnel and payroll information for agencies not on USPS.

Other Benefits

  • The Comptroller and agencies will benefit from the elimination of a labor-intensive reconciliation process and the number of invalid, incorrect or over-payments will be greatly reduced.
  • Reconciliation problems for non-USPS payroll to USAS would be eliminated.
  • The support and maintenance of HRIS will be eliminated after phase three is implemented. Afterwards, HRIS would only be utilized to fulfill statewide reporting requirements and ad-hoc report requests for historical information.
  • Agencies will benefit from the next-day update of TINS by SPRS, rather than the current two-day cycle in HRIS.
  • Any internal payroll/personnel product could be accommodated by SPRS, as SPRS is not product specific.
  • While still meeting statutory requirements for payroll document approval, the new technology of electronic signatures utilized by SPRS will eliminate the need for certain paper documents.