Advanced Settings

This screen allows users to configure more advanced settings that affect how certain aspects of the platform can be used.  

To view our YouTube video on Advanced Settings click here.

This screen is broken down into 2 settings:

• Top Level Locations and
• Unique External Ids.

Top Level Locations

By default, when configuring the locations for your business, you will have one main location and can then create sub-locations under the main location, for example:

There may be scenarios where a business requires more than one top level location to be configured:

• In order to be able to completely exclude certain locations (this would normally be set up as sub-locations) for reporting purposes.
• To avoid the need for employees seeing sub-locations.
• To separate one business unit from another business unit.

In this instance, you would tick the checkbox "Allow multiple top level locations".  If using the above example, the locations will now be displayed as follows:

To clarify, allowing multiple top locations does not prevent you from still setting up sub-locations. Take note, that when generating payroll reports, you have the option of grouping by 'Rollup Reporting Location'. If you only configure top level locations and have no sub-locations set up, this option will not be applicable to the business as there are no sub-locations to 'roll up' to the top level location.

Unique External Ids 

A business may use other external applications (such as HR, Time & Attendance or Expense Management Systems) that integrate with this payroll system via an API. Alternatively, data can be imported from the external system to this payroll system and vice versa. In order to ensure correct mapping between employees and other payroll settings, users can add an external id against components of the payroll system. The external id is usually generated from the external application and then added to this payroll system. This system allows external ids be added against the following:  

• Employees
• Locations
• Pay Categories
• Expense Categories
• Work Types
• Leave Categories
• Deduction Categories
• Payroll ID.

There may be instances where the external applications do not validate the uniqueness of ids generated by their system. This means that some other mechanism is required to ensure the same external id is not used against a component within the payroll system, for example, ensuring 2 employees do not have the same external id. If there are duplicate external ids assigned, this could cause issues when importing data into the system. To avoid this, users can choose for this payroll system to validate the uniqueness of external ids against the following components:

• Employees
• Pay Categories
• Expense Categories
• Work Types
• Leave Categories
• Deduction Categories
• Payroll ID.

For further information on Payroll ID's please see the following article  Payroll ID

Locations are not specified on the list above. This is because any external id added to a location is already validated for uniqueness.

If you want one or more components to be validated for unique external ids, simply click on the applicable checkbox and click on "Save". There may be instances where external ids already entered in the system are not unique - if this is the case, you will see the following example warning appear when you click on "Save":

The warning will detail who/what is affected by the duplicate external id so that it is easily identifiable to you. If this warning does appear, you will need to update one of the duplicate external ids before you can save the setting for the relevant data type selected.

Any new business created on 26 June 2020 onwards will have these settings enabled by default. You can choose to disable one or more of these settings if you so wish.

If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know via support@yourpayroll.co.uk.