Payroll

The Payroll system performs the following functions:

•Automatically reverse a voided check, including all applicable changes made to Job Costing, Payroll, and entries made to Cash, Accrual and Deduction Accounts in the General Ledger.

•Provides user changeable tax rates and tables. Enter any number of Withholding Rate Tables per state and track wages in any number of states for an Employee.

•Provides the entry of Multiple Pay Rates and Worker's Compensation Rates for the same employee in the same pay period.

•Provides user definable Standard Repeating, Tax-Deferred, and Unique Deductions for each Employee.

•Provides entry of multiple timesheets at the same time from different terminals.

Payroll Overview

Employee Information

The Payroll maintains employee record information. A large amount of information is tracked for each employee. This information includes personal data, earning and withholding tax data, standard deduction data and State W-2 data. The payroll maintains a complete file of historical earnings transactions for each employee. An audit report of all employee earnings within a specified range of limits may be produced at any time.

Multi-State

The payroll also has multi-state capability. All states may be defined for the company and an employee may be assigned multiple states.

Flexibility

The payroll will automatically calculate State, Federal, and most Local taxes. Tax rates and tables may be easily changed.

Rate of pay, union, craft and other information can be changed as often as necessary during each pay period. Special timesheets have been developed to accommodate different types of taxable or non-taxable pay such as bonus, travel, and subsistence pay.

Repeating deductions may be set up for each employee. Specify whether individual deductions should be a flat amount (based on the hours worked), or a percentage of the gross or net wage. Differing deduction rates and deduction limits may be specified for each employee. This is particularly useful for handling employee purchases, garnishments, and advances. Deductions may also be flagged as being exempt from federal, state and/or FICA tax. In addition to the standard deductions, any number of ‘one time’ or special deduction entries may be entered with the timesheets.

Unions

Fringe benefit tables may be set up for unions. Unlimited fringes may be set up for each union. Fringes may be a flat amount, an amount based on the hours worked, an amount based on the hours paid, or a percentage of the gross wage. The payroll automatically handles the fringes whether they are paid by the employee or by the employer. If paid by the employer, they may be either taxed or not taxed. The fringe name is selected from a dictionary of fringe names common to all unions. The payroll maintains a file of union fringe information from which monthly reports for each union may be produced.

Integration

Payroll is fully integrated with the General Ledger, Job Costing, and Equipment Costing modules. Any timesheet or one time deduction may be assigned to any valid cost account whether it is a general ledger account, a job cost code, or an equipment cost code.

Overhead

Various methods of overhead allocation are supported. Accruals such as FICA, FUTA, SUTA, Worker’s Compensation, Union accruals, and an additional miscellaneous accrual are all automatically calculated by the payroll during payroll posting. The preferred method of allocating overhead is specified when the accounting software is installed. The possible methods of allocating overhead include a) assigning overhead to the same cost account as the gross wage, b) assigning overhead to a ‘payroll taxes’ control account on each job, or c) assigning overhead to a general ledger ‘payroll taxes’ control account. Distribution of Field Payroll (time charged to job cost codes) accruals may be assigned independent of the distribution assignment for office payroll (time charged to General Ledger overhead accounts) accruals.

Other Features

Hand-written checks may be entered into the payroll at any time and be posted along with the standard timesheets or in an individual posting. Voided checks may be easily backed out of the payroll including all union and non-union accruals.

Check printing may be readily modified to print on many type of check forms. After payroll is printed, the Check register can easily be printed.

Certified Payroll Reports which adhere to Davis Bacon requirements may be produced.

5-Step Entry/Posting Cycle

Please see Making the 5 Step Entry Process a Habit. Before printing paychecks, make a backup of the posting itself as the final stage of the entry cycle. Whenever information has been gathered and corrected for any reason, it is good to make a backup of the information. Occasionally, a power surge, a power failure, a discharge of static electricity, or other event can cause a loss of input material. A backup in many instances will save hours or days of work.