Introduction

The purpose of this process is to ensure payroll is prepared accurately and on a timely basis, wages are calculated correctly, vacation and sick time accruals are updated, taxes and other withholdings are processed correctly, and payroll costs are billed back to clients properly.

The Payroll module is payroll preparation. Once employees records have been created, designed to automatically handle much of the calculation accompanying the only data entry required is from time sheets. The process has been streamlined so much the entire payroll process takes as little as 30 minutes!

A checklist has been provided to guide you through the process, and the steps to be taken are discussed at length below.

Input Employee Personnel Data from W4 Form

This is alerting you to be sure any new employees or changes to current employee records are added to the system before beginning the payroll process. Be sure your data base is current before running the payroll!

You cannot add an employee to the system without a social security number. Be sure you have a completed, signed W-4 on hand before paying an employee. In addition, you must have an I9 form, verifying employee citizenship before adding to the system.

Input Salary Data

If new employees are salaried, you will need to add their salary information to the system so their pay will be automatically calculated during the payroll process. Once the information is added, you will not need to maintenance it unless salary or payroll period are changed.

Print & Verify Name and Data Report

This report allows the user to review a list of all the employees in the database a and their various salary, benefit and tax codes. This report should be reviewed carefully to ensure all new employees have been added correctly and any changes to existing employees were done as intended.

Print & Verify Employee Salary Report

This report is designed to allow you to review the list of salaried employees before creating salaried wages. At this point you still have the opportunity to change any records as necessary.

Enter Employee Timesheets

Information from timesheets, both wages and adjustments such as vacation or sick leave, is entered in the Create Wages Individually program. The On-Line Help function will walk you through the correct choices for most of this input. In order to speed this data entry function, wage sheets should be reviewed carefully and any questions resolved prior to sitting down to enter data. In addition, the employee should total the wage sheet and sign it. The system should come to the same totals or the discrepancy reviewed with the employee and any adjustment made before inputing data.

The program is designed to allow you to enter up to 100 wage items for an employee. The program essentially uses the hourly rate established in the employee record to calculate wages, but this amount can be overridden if wages have been earned using a different rate. In addition, the Wage Type field allows you to indicate one of two different calculations for overtime.

Create Salaried Timesheets

If any salaried employees are to be paid, you must create wage items for them from the information verified on the Employee Salary Report.

You will also need to create wage items for each payroll period you want to pay on this payroll. For example, at month-end you will run Monthly, Semi-Monthly and Weekly pay cycles. You will need to calculate wages for each cycle separately.

Print EMPLOYEE TIMESHEET Listing

You will need to "Verify Listing to Timesheets and Salary Report". This report is designed to allow you to review all wages and salary you want to pay on the current payroll process. Review carefully! If an employee is missing from this report, or if wage or salary information is incorrect, you still have an opportunity to correct things. Once the payroll process has been run, corrections may require voided checks, which will reflect permanently in bank account information, as well cause a lot of extra work.

Run Current Payroll Process

This program takes all the unpaid wages you have created, calculates employee withholdings, prepares paychecks, calculates employer taxes, bills back the employers (clients) for payroll costs, transfers the funds to the Payroll Trust account and prepares reports to forward to the bank and to file as back-up.

Print Pay Period Earnings Reports

These reports provide data about all payrolls run during the month. The tax report shows all taxes due not forwarded to the A/P module for payment.

Verify & Sign Payroll Checks

The checks should be reviewed to be sure there were no printing errors, then forwarded to signers for completion.

Entered Voided Payroll Checks

If any any problems are discovered with any payroll check, now is the time to void them, before tax invoices are created in Accounts Payable. Run the void check program, then recreate any new checks necessary (replacing all the payroll reports showing new data). Only after this step has been completed, or it has been determined no voids are necessary, should you create tax invoices.

Deliver Funds Transfers to Bank

Fax transfer letters to the bank requesting transfer of funds from client accounts to the Payroll Trust Account. This should be done before payroll checks are distributed (generally a day in advance to allow the bank to complete the transfers) to ensure funds are available to cover checks. This is critical if any checks are hand delivered since many people will try to cash them immediately.

Run ACH Settlement Process

Once the bank accepts the NACHA file from above you need to run the NACHA settlement process. This alerts the application that these items are no longer voidable nor can they be reprinted. This assures that no electronic disbursement can be duplicated or altered without proper authorization.

Create Tax Invoices

This program takes the unpaid taxes from the payroll process and creates invoices in Accounts Payable. Once the invoices are created, the tax record won't appear on the Tax Liability Report included in the Pay-Period Earnings Reports described above.

Deliver Tax Payments to Tax Authorities

The payroll process is not complete until the tax payments are made. Federal tax payments may be made through a bank depository using special deposit slips. Since these tax payments have been created in Payroll and transferred to Accounts Payable for check creation, payroll must now work with A/P to ensure checks are printed and delivered back to Payroll for timely distribution.

Especially at month-end, payroll tax invoices should be passed to A/P prior to the month-end check run, to ensure tax checks are created without requiring a special check run in A/P and to further ensure taxes are paid in the payroll month!

Distribute Payroll Checks

Only after all accounting and processing steps have been taken, funds transferred, and taxes paid, should checks be distributed. It is very difficult to correct any errors if employees have already received their checks.