Setting up Employee Payroll

During the setup process, you can use the Class Codes window to set up the codes that define up to four classes that you can use to sort or categorize employees. Then, on the Employee Payroll window, you can enter a class code for each employee for each of the classes you chose to define.

For example, assume you set up codes for British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia for Class 1, which represents the location of the home office in which an employee works. As you add each employee to the system, you can enter the code for one of the five provinces at the Class 1 field. Then, you can calculate payroll, sort paychecks, and print reports according to the home offices from which employees operate.

If you had selected the Use Cost Center Overrides option on the Payroll G/L Integration setup window, and have set up the necessary cost center information, you can set up cost center override posting at the employee level (Cost Center tab) and at the earning/deduction level when you add employees (Pay tab).

For each employee, you select a method for calculating overtime. The payroll program automatically calculates overtime based on the overtime calculation method, overtime schedule and regular hours, specified on the Employee Payroll window.

You can override the automatic overtime calculation for an employee when you enter a timecard.

Click here for more information on overtime calculation.

Before you can assign an earning/deduction to an employee, you must set up the earning/deduction record itself in the Earnings and Deduction Codes window. The frequencies of the earnings/deductions you assign to an employee must be the same as, or less frequent than, the pay frequency of the employee.

The Employee Pay tab of the Employee Payroll window allows you to associate with each employee the earnings, deductions, and other pay factors used in payroll calculation.

In addition to entering each earning/deduction code, an employee or employer override amount or percent, and the distribution code for the G/L accounts to which employee amounts should post, you can also specify default hours for each Flat, Fixed, Hourly Rate, Piece Rate Table, or Sales Commission Table earning. By entering default hours for these earnings, you can process payroll for the employee without needing to enter timecards.

Other information you can tailor specifically for an employee includes the earning/deduction start and end dates and, in the case of an accrual, the carry over date.

You can turn an employee earning/deduction on and off by entering Yes or No at the Calculate? field. If you enter No, the system ignores the earning/deduction during payroll calculation.

You can also change the workers’ compensation group and code, which default from the Classes and Schedules tab of the Employee Payroll window.

If you are assigning a nontaxable advance and its associated repayment deduction to an employee, be sure to assign the advance first. When you add the repayment deduction, the system verifies that the advance it was designed to repay is already assigned to the employee.

On the Taxes tab of the Employee Payroll window, you assign to each employee the taxes used in payroll calculation. In addition to entering each tax code, you also enter the distribution code for the G/L accounts to which tax amounts should post.

If you use cost center overrides and you have chosen to override segments of expense accounts only or expense and liability accounts, the system distributes tax amounts proportionately to the expense and/or liability cost center segments to which the employee’s taxable wages post.

On the Employee Payroll window, you can assign optional fields to an employee, an employee’s earnings/deductions, or an employee’s taxes, if you have defined employee optional fields on the Setup > Payroll > Optional Fields setup window.

On the Employee Payroll window, the EFT tab allows you to enter the employee’s bank information to enable direct depositing of the employee’s paychecks.