Summary #
Before being added to department payroll, you need to complete your tax paperwork (I-9 and W-2 forms) either at the Office of Student Employment, or online on JobX. This paperwork will only need to be filed once during your time at Princeton; for legal reasons, it can only be filed when you have a job offer.
Once your tax paperwork is filed, you can be added to the Department of Computer Science’s payroll, and start declaring hours using the TimesheetX platform.
The most common issue that new hires face is that they do not complete their tax paperwork, and they cannot be added to TimesheetX. The best person to contact for any issues having to do with payroll is Louis Riehl.
Overview #
Before getting paid by the Department of Computer Science, you need to be registered in two different places:
You need to be registered with the Student Employment Office to be added to University payroll: They will check your eligibility to work, and collect the necessary tax forms. This is a necessary step for any job on campus, but must only be done once during your time at Princeton.
Only once you are registered with the Student Employment Office, can you be added to the department’s time collection payroll. This is a step we will do for you, once you have filed your paperwork with the University and been hired in one of our jobs. Only when this step is complete are you allowed to begin work and declare your hours. If you have not completed the first step, our financial administrator will not be able to select you to be added to our payroll.
Once these steps have been completed, you will be ready to find out How to Declare Your Hours to get paid.
You will typically do Step 1 as soon as possible; if the current procedure outlined by the Student Employment Office, you should aim to take care of the paperwork in your first week on campus. Step 2 can be accomplished as needed as you are hired.
Submitting the Student Employment Office Paperwork #
Students who are not already on the payroll, can find instructions on the necessary forms to complete at this section of the Student Employment Office website. Since March 2020, the Student Employment Office has allowed these documents to be verified remotely, using video conference; it is unclear how long this practice will continue to be used. Previously, documents needed to be manually brought to the office for verification.
As part of your hiring, you will need to fill to U.S. federal tax forms:
an I-9 form, the purpose of which is to verify that you are eligible to work under U.S. employment law. This will require you to show some documents to prove your identity and your authorization to work in the U.S.;
a W-4 form, the purpose of which is to determine how much the University must withhold from your paycheck to prepay federal taxes. This amount is an approximation of the taxes you might owe, usually an over-approximation which explains why consistently over 80% of U.S. tax-payers get a federal tax refund.
Getting Added to the Department’s Payroll #
You need to complete your Student Employment Office Paperwork as soon as possible ideally, before being hired by the department.
You have or will apply for a job with the department on TigerUHR. Once you have been hired into a job, you will be added to queue that will notify our financial assistant, Elizabeth Wang, to add you to the department payroll for the corresponding job.
If you have not filed the necessary paperwork, you will not be available to be added to the department’s payroll, and an email will be sent to you to let you know that you need to file paperwork before we can take further action.
Sample Hiring Confirmation Message #
Once you have been hired, you will be typically receive an email from Louis Riehl outlining the most important aspects of declaring hours.
This is a sample message from February 2021:
This is to inform you that you have been added to the Payroll System as a XXXXXXXX in Computer Science.
Please go to https://princeton.studentemployment.ngwebsolutions.com/Cmx_Content.aspx?cpId=6 (“Student Employees” -> ”My Timesheets”) for instruction on how to enter your hours. If you have multiple roles at Princeton for which you are paid, please be sure to enter your hours associated with the correct role. For example, this includes if you are both a grader and a TA for Computer Science (we pay out these roles on different chart strings, and need an accurate accounting of each).
Please also note, if you do not enter your hours by the end of a pay period, you will not get paid on time! (Current period ends 2/21/2021.) Hours need to be entered by the Monday after every 2-week pay period in order to be logged in time for Payroll to process with regular paydays. Hours entered retroactively get paid as backpay, and are delayed. Please enter your hours by the end of every 2-week pay period!
Let me know if you have any trouble entering your hours.