In this post, we’ll be introducing 3 new features to EI’s payroll solutions released in February and September 2018 – automatic calculations of pro rata hours, email trigger notifications and pay inclusions reporting.
Pro rata hours are now automatically calculated in the pay run
This is exciting news for anyone processing payroll as it speeds up the time it takes to process your pay run and will greatly reduce those errors that occur when performing manual calculations.
Before this enhancement, any auto pay employees who started in your business (or left) in the middle of a pay period required a manual adjustment to their pay. By default, the hours displayed for the employee would be for the whole pay period, regardless of when they started. These default displays also increased the risk of overpayments if employees were terminated in that pay period.
So instead of displaying the hours for the whole pay period, what you see now is the hours automatically calculated in the pay run. For a new starter the system will take the employee start date and the last date of the pay cycle to calculate hours that are to be paid. For terminated employees, the system will look at the pay cycle start date and the termination date and calculate hours accordingly. Magic! In addition, the system will highlight new and terminated employees for you so you don’t have to rely on notes. The hours are still editable in case further adjustments are required.
For the new functionality to work, the employee’s pay detail set up should be as follows:
- Enter in details of the employees basic standard hours (can’t be set at ‘0’); and
- Enable “Pay these earnings by default in a pay run”
Email trigger notifications
Full access users can now set up to receive email notifications when any of their employees update their personal details, bank account details or super fund details. Restricted users can also set up notifications but only for any changes to personal details. These notifications are switched off by default but can be activated via the ‘My Notifications’ screen.
You can also choose to send email notifications to the employee when they change their details with a link to direct them to the relevant screen so they can review their information.
Payroll inclusion reporting
Earlier this year in February, Payroll Inclusion Reporting was also released. This new report enables you to generate and download all pay run inclusions and additional earnings that have been set up against each of your employees, making it easier to manage your employees’ ongoing and one off deductions, voluntary tax and super contributions.