Your payroll categories are the building blocks of your payroll. Everything that affects your employees' pay, taxes, and others (even if it doesn't appear on their paystub) should be created as a payroll category.
There are several classifications of payroll categories in Harmony.
Payroll Category Class | Definition | Examples |
---|---|---|
Permanent Earning | Your earnings are things that add to the employee's gross pay. Its 'permanent' type means that it will typically be included in every pay period. | Overtime, commissions, vacation paid |
Permanent Deduction | Your deductions are things that subtract from the employee's gross or net pay. Its 'permanent' type means that it will typically be included in every pay period. | Garnishments, employee-paid RRSPs/benefits |
Basic Salary | Your basic salary payroll categories act like permanent earnings and there are two kinds of basic salary. These two categories are in Harmony by default and you cannot create any additional ones. This is the base pay for your employees. | Salary, hourly wages |
Permanent Benefit | Your benefits are things that do not affect your employees' gross pay, but may affect net pay, as your benefits may be taxable. Its 'permanent' type means that it will typically be included in every pay period. | Employer-paid RRSPs/benefits |
Accrual | Your accruals are things that do not affect your employees' gross nor net pay, but will be accrued or earned every pay period (or all at once). You must select an earnings or benefits payroll category as the accrual's payout. Paying it out means that it will decrease the balance in the accrual. | Vacation, PTO, sick |
Tax | Your taxes can be employee-paid or employer-paid. Employee-paid taxes are things that subtract from the employee's gross pay. Employer-paid taxes are things that do not affect your employees' gross nor net pay, but can be used for tracking purposes or to generate certain reports. | Employee-paid: Income tax Employer-paid: Workers' Compensation, Employer Health Tax |
Temporary Earning | Your earnings are things that add to the employee's gross pay. Its 'temporary' or 'variable' type means that it is taxed as a bonus and may not affect every pay period. You can assign this temporary earning to a particular pay period or a set of consecutive pay periods. | Bonus |
Temporary Deduction | Your deductions are things that subtract from the employee's gross or net pay. Its 'temporary' or 'variable' type means that it may not affect every pay period. You can assign this temporary deduction to a particular pay period or a set of consecutive pay periods. | |
Temporary Benefit | Your benefits are things that do not affect your employees' gross pay, but may affect net pay, as your benefits may be taxable. Its 'temporary' or 'variable' type means that it may not affect every pay period. You can assign this temporary benefit to a particular pay period or a set of consecutive pay periods. | COVID benefits |
Scheduled Deduction | Your deductions are things that subtract from the employee's gross or net pay. Its 'scheduled' type means that it may not affect every pay period but can occur once a month. | Union dues |
Statutory Holiday Pay | Note that this payroll category is for Canada only. Your statutory holiday pay payroll categories act like permanent earnings, and will reference the holidays in your holiday calendar in order to pay out the statutory holiday pay for your employees. Read our article on Statutory Holiday Pay for more information. | Statutory Holiday Pay |
In order for a payroll category to apply to an employee during a pay run, you must have assigned it to their master paycard. You can either assign it on a per-employee basis, or on a payroll-group basis.