Payroll Settings - Pay Schedule (New Zealand)

Pay Schedules are used to set up pay runs. The pay schedule's settings are used each pay run to calculate what to pay employees. 

There is no limit to the number of pay schedules you can create and they can be configured for any combination of pay frequencies so you can have multiple weekly, fortnightly and monthly pay schedules all running at the same time.

The settings for pay schedules can be accessed and updated by going to Management > Payroll > Payroll Settings  - then choose Pay Schedules.

Adding a Pay Schedule

To add a pay schedule, click on the "Add" button located on the top right hand side. You will then be required to configure your pay schedule settings as follows:

• Name: Add a name for the pay run here. This should be easy to identify and understand by the staff who are doing the pay runs.
• Frequency:
  • Weekly: Pay period covers a 7 day period and period start/end day are always the same each pay run. Employees get paid 52 (or sometimes 53) times each tax year. 
  • Fortnightly: Pay period covers a 14 day period and period start/end day are always the same each pay run. Employees get paid 26 (or sometimes 27) times each tax year. 
  • Half monthly: Employee is paid twice each calendar month (24 times per tax year). The first pay of the month starts on the 1st and covers a 15 day period. The second pay of the month starts on the 16th and ends on the last day of the month.    
  • Monthly: Pay period covers a month period, with the period start date always being the same each month. Employees get paid 12 times each tax year.  Refer to the end of this article for an additional setting relating to monthly pay frequencies. 
• If you choose Monthly above, the Monthly payment mode field will appear.
  The purpose of this setting is to calculate an average number of hours per month for employees with advanced standard work hours setup in their profile, as opposed to paying the specific hours per month based on the number of days in the month (thereby calculating/paying different hours each month). This setting will follow the same principal as basic standard hours, for eg if an employee is set to work 19 hours per week, the monthly calculation of hours will be 19 x 4.33333 and this amount will not vary each month.
  If this setting is not selected, the calculation used to determine the employee's monthly hours will be dependant on the days the employee works and how many of those days are contained in the specific month, thereby the employee's monthly hours could vary from pay period to pay period. 
  
• Includes employees:
  • None: Choose this option for ad-hoc pay runs, such as to process back pay or bonuses/commissions. 
  • Employees with this pay schedule as their default: This is the most common setting. Use this for regular pay runs, to pay all associated employees. This gives you the flexibility to set up, say, a fortnightly pay run for rostered employees, and a monthly pay run for salaried employees, across all locations.
  • Employees with timesheets in the following locations: Choose this option to pay according to location. If an employee works in more than one location and this setting is chosen, the employee could potentially be processed in more than one pay run at the same time, which means that tax, superannuation and other benefits may need to be manually adjusted. If you select this option, you must then enter the specific location/s for this pay run.
• Pay slip message: Add a note here which will appear on all employees' pay slips for the pay run.
• Pay run warnings: By default, all triggered system warnings will be displayed in the pay run. If you do not wish to show all warning, you can configure them here. Uncheck any pay warnings that you do not want to appear for this pay run.
• Pay run finalisation settings: The following preferences can be configured to apply to all pay runs in a specific pay schedule. Once these finalisation settings have been configured, if you set up pay run automation, those settings will flow through to the pay run automation wizard.
  • Journals: This option will only appear if you have API-integrated journals set up. It will not appear if you use file import journal services e.g. MYOB. 
  • Publish pay slips: Choose to publish immediately, manually or choose a date
  • Employee notifications: This option will not be displayed if you have chosen to publish pay slips manually. Choose to send / Don’t send. 
  • Report packs: This option will only show if you have report packs configured. Immediately / Date & time picker / Do not run. If reports are configured to run, you are able to select the report packs from the available checkboxes. 
• PAYE Payments: Enabling this setting allows you to pay the PAYE amount for a pay run directly to a nominated bank account via the payment file. Upon ticking the "Pay PAYE via payment file to a nominated bank account" checkbox, the following fields will appear:
  • • Account Name: this is a required field. The name to be entered here is the name of the bank account the PAYE funds will be paid to, for eg Inland Revenue.
    • Account Number: this is a required field. The account number entered here is that of the bank account the PAYE funds will be paid to (ie the account number relating to the account name above).
    • Reference: this field is optional. Whatever is entered here will be displayed on the payee's bank account/statement (as opposed to the recipient's bank account/statement).
• Pay Run Automation: This setting allows you to choose what components of a pay run you want automated, that is run in the background automatically, and what components are to be processed manually. If the pay run is to be processed manually from start to end then no setting needs to change as manual processing is the default setting. For details, see this article on pay run automation and this article on how automation interacts with leave requests and expense claims.

Edit an existing pay schedule 

To edit a pay schedule, simply click on the name of the pay schedule. This will expand the details of the pay schedule where you can then make the appropriate changes. 

Delete a pay schedule 

To delete a pay schedule, click on the trash icon next to the pay schedule.

Clicking on the red cross will trigger a delete confirmation. Click Delete to confirm.