About Payroll Timecards

• Enter hours or earnings that vary from paycheck to paycheck— for example, overtime hours or earned tips.
• Enter earnings/deductions that are unique to a particular paycheck, such as bonus pay.
• Record compensatory/banked time earned, override vacation and sick time accruals, and enter vacation, sick, and compensatory/bankedtime taken.
• Enter sales amounts on which to calculate commissions.
• Supply piece counts for piece rate work.
• Enter employee earnings that are not EI insurable for all weeks in a pay period.
• Override system-generated tax amounts.
• Override system-generated overtime pay.
• Override cost center accounts to which payroll results are posted.
• Override Employer contributions to deductions with Flat calculation methods.

You make a timecard reusable by selecting the Reuse Timecard check box at the top of the Timecards window. Timecards marked for reuse are not associated with any pay period end date. They are processed each time you calculate payroll. They acquire the pay period end date entered in Calculate Payroll.

The system does not clear reusable timecards, as it does non-reusable timecards, when you approve paychecks. Instead, it clears from each reusable timecard any dates associated with the earnings/deductions on the timecard and retains the timecard for the next payroll processing. To prevent a reusable timecard from being processed, clear the Active check box.

You can turn a timecard’s Reuse option on and off. If you turn the Reuse option off, you must then enter a pay period end date for the timecard.

To indicate which timecards to use in payroll calculation, you set each timecard’s status to Active or Inactive. Only active timecards are eligible for processing.

Use the Calculate Payroll function to process the detailed Payroll timecard. When you calculate payroll (with the timecard "separate check" option turned off), any active timecards for an employee will override information set up for that employee in the Employee Payroll window. The system uses information from the eligible timecards for earnings/deductions and taxes that you have entered on timecards, and uses information from the Employee Payroll window for all other eligible earnings/deductions and taxes assigned to the employee.

Eligible means that you have entered or selected the correct pay period end dates and frequencies for calculation to occur.

Suppose, for example, that an employee record has five earnings/deductions (A, B, C, D, and E) to be processed in a pay period, and you override two of them (A and C) on a timecard. When you calculate payroll, the system processes the two earnings/deductions (A and C) according to the information entered on the timecard, and the three (B, D, and E) according to the information in the employee record, and normally produces a single check.

An exception to this scenario occurs when you enter a timecard and choose the Print A Separate Check option. When processing a timecard with that option selected, Payroll will generate a separate check that's based only on the earnings/deductions entered on the timecard. In addition, Payroll will generate another check based on all the eligible earnings/deductions on the employee record and on any other timecards for which the option is turned off.

So, in the earlier example, if you selected the Print A Separate Check check box, Sage HRMS Payroll would produce a check for A and C using the timecard information, and also produce a check for all five earnings/deductions A, B, C, D, and E (assuming they were all eligible) using the employee record information.

If any of the earnings/deductions on the timecard are subject to tax, the system calculates the tax as well. You can override tax information on the timecard.

• You can edit timecards at any time until you print and approve paychecks. (The information you enter on timecards selected for payroll calculation is cleared when you print and approve paychecks.)
• If an error occurs during payroll calculation because of a mistaken timecard entry, and you have not printed and approved paychecks, you can use the Timecards window to either correct the erroneous timecard or to enter additional timecards with the same period end date, and then run Calculate Payroll again to reprocess employees.

When you calculate payroll again, you have the option of clearing calculated payroll data and replacing it with the current calculation or merging the new and corrected timecards with the results of the last calculation.

Print and review the Pre-Check Payroll Register immediately after calculating payroll to catch any payroll mistakes as early as possible.

You can enter as many timecards as you need for an employee.

On each timecard you can enter an unlimited number of earnings/deductions and tax overrides.

You can distribute an earning/deduction to multiple cost centers. To do so, repeat the earning/deduction entry for each cost center to which it should post, apportioning the total (dollar amount, number of pieces, number of hours, or other quantity appropriate to the calculation method of the earning/deduction) among the cost centers.

The sum of all your entries should equal the earning/deduction total.

Apportioned amounts may be calculated differently.

Keep in mind that, depending upon the calculation method of the earning/deduction you are entering, the system may calculate apportioned amounts differently than it would the full amount of the earning/deduction.

For example, total earnings that are based on the piece rate tables can vary depending on the number of timecard entries used to report the earnings. In calculating five entries of 30 pieces each, the system could arrive at a different earning amount than it would in calculating one entry of 150 pieces.

Unless you indicate that a timecard should be saved for reuse, a timecard exists only for the pay period in which you enter it. Once you process a timecard for an employee and print and approve the resulting paycheck, the timecard is cleared from the system.

The next time you process payroll for the employee, you make a fresh start: you can generate the employee’s payroll data directly from the employee record or you can enter a new timecard.

The system does not clear reusable timecards when you print/post paychecks.