Clarity - How to do Annual Accruals in Payroll

Definition:

An annual accrual is the accrual or entitlement of time, money, or both at a specific point of time during the year for your employees.  This will typically occur once a year at a set date for ALL employees (January 1 st for example) or at a unique date for each employee (hire or seniority date). This is most commonly used for things like Sick days, Stat days or Float days.

Solution:

Depending on what modules you have and the amount of automation you desire there can be different ways to enforce the rules in your system.

Scenario 1: Clarity with Human Resource Module

Steps:

1. Go to Setup > Payroll Settings > Payroll Categories.
2. Click the "+" button.
3. Select an accrual payroll category of type hourly.
4. Create the necessary balance and payout categories.
   Under the “Flags” there is option that says “used for Attendance”, this must be checked.
5. Go under Configuration and open the “Absence Types” window.
6. Create a new Absence Type, define the name and code as you desire, the Type must be short term.
7. Under the “Links to payroll Category” tab click the “Add category” button in the bottom left corner.
8. Select the category created in Step 1 from the drop down list that appears.
9. Set the Calculation method to “manually entered...” or “based on seniority Date”
   1. If set to “Manually entered” you are able to specify the date range in which is applied to the absence type.  Jan 1-Dec 31 st for example.
   2. If set to “based on seniority Date” then the start and end dates will automatically be set to each individual employees assigned seniority date at the time the absence is linked to the employee.
10. Set the number of HOURS to assign to the employee annually.
11. Under employees à Absence entitlements assign the absence to the employee, this defines the employee is ENTITLED to use this absence definition.

Scenario 2: Clarity Payroll – manual management

Steps:

1. Go to Setup > Payroll Settings > Payroll Categories.
2. Click the "+" button.
3. Create a regular ($’s only), Hourly (Hrs only), Piecework (Days,Shift, Minutes, or other Unit type) category.
4. Set the benefit to NOT be subject to any taxes, payroll taxes or accruals EXCEPT the accrual in question.
5. Uncheck the “show on paystub” flag.
6. Make sure the category is NOT reported to any tax form boxes.
7. Create an accrual category.
8. Follow the appropriate sub-step based on how the accrual works.
   ($) Set the accrual type to be percentage with a default of 100%.
   (Hrs) Set the accrual type to be “Subject to Hours” with a default rate of 1.00.
   (Piece) Set the accrual type to be “Script”, set the script value to be (without quotes).
   “Item.Units = Paycard.ItemUnits(‘XYZ’).
   Replace the XYZ with the category # defined in step 1.
9. Head to employees > Master Paycard.
10. Assign both Benefit and Accrual categories to the employees master paycard.
11. In the payroll that you wish to accrue the value for the employee(s) enter the amount of the entitlement into the benefit category for the employee(s)

Scenario 3: Clarity Payroll – semi-automated  (company annual accrual)

Steps:

1. Follow Steps 1-11 from Scenario 2.
2. Go to Setup > Payroll Settings > “Payroll Category Sets”.
3. Click the "+" button.
4. Create a new payroll category set called Annual Accrual.
5. Assign all categories to this category set.
6. Create another payroll category set called Regular Payroll.
7. Assign all categories EXCEPT the benefit category created earlier to this category set.
8. On each employees master paycard enter the annual amount to accrue into the default values for the benefit category.
9. When you process payroll, at the bottom right corner you can select the category set you wish to use for payroll, use the Regular payroll category set unless it is the period that you are required to do the annual accrual.

Scenario 4: Clarity Payroll – automatic with scripted categories

The final scenario involved scripted the payroll category to look at the current pay period start and end dates and to see if the date to accrue is between those dates.

Because of the # of scenarios that can occur here you must call paymate to help properly setup the scripted category rules and the script itself.