Before you are able to process payroll, you must first create payroll groups to assign your employees into. These are essentially the payroll frequencies (bi-weekly, semi-monthly, etc.) that your company uses to pay your employees. Each employee can only belong to one payroll group at a time, but they can be moved. Once a payroll group is created, it can still be modified until you have any history in that payroll group. Afterwards, it cannot be deleted and the periods that have been processed into history will remain locked.
Note: Moving employees between payroll groups will affect ROE and tax calculations. We do not recommending moving employee's between payroll groups unless it is the start of a new year, the employee has no history, or it absolutely necessary.
You will need to assign the following sections:
- Code: The unique identifier for the payroll group. It uses alphanumeric characters.
- Name: The name of the payroll group. Typically it is the type of employee (hourly, salary, etc) or the pay frequency.
- Take home Salary %: The percentage at which a warning is triggered for employees' net salary when payroll is processed. If the employee's net pay falls below the set percentage of their earnings, then this will trigger in the payroll process.
- Pay Frequency: How often an employee gets paid. This is used to generate the payroll calendar.
- Proration Mode:
- First pay period end date: The last day of your first pay period for the year. It will be used to generate the calendar for the rest of the year. Keep in mind, this is not the next pay period, but the first period of your fiscal year. Even if you are creating a new payroll group in the middle of the year, you will need to have this set assuming the group started from the first period of the year.
- First pay period payment date: The payment date of the first pay period for the year. It will be used to generate the calendar for the rest of the year. Keep in mind, this is not the next payment date, but the first period of your fiscal year. Even if you are creating a new payroll group in the middle of the year, you will need to have this set assuming the group started from the first period of the year.
After all of these have been set, you can click on generate calendar to generate the calendar for the year. You can then review the individual periods and make any edits as needed towards the bottom of the screen.
If employees have been created, are active in payroll, and have not been assigned to another payroll group yet, then they will be available in the list to add to the payroll group.