NZ Essentials Payroll Plan

You can add a new business by following these steps:

1. From the business menu, select Create a new business. 
2. This launches the add business wizard.
3. You need to enter the following details:

• NZBN
• Business name
• Business Legal name
• Number of employees
• Address (or International address). You can enter this manually or use the Look up address function. 

4. When you have finished, select Next Step and your business will be created.

1. Next you are asked for some contact details.

• Name
• Email address
• Contact number

2. Click on Next Step.

Fill in your Payroll Details.

• Which template payroll settings would you like to apply to this business?
• What are your standard work hours?
• When does your work week start and end?
• How often do you process pay runs?
• What industry does your business belong to?
• Promo Code
• There are a number of other settings available, but these are the key settings to review when setting up payroll.

Once your business is added, you will need to add a bank account that you wish to pay your employees from .

1. To do this go to Business Settings then select Payment files.
2. Then add your IRD number and contact details by selecting IRD settings.
3. Next select your Employer Deductions payment frequency.
4. The business will default to a weekly pay schedule so if you have fortnightly or monthly pay frequencies, you need to add new pay schedule to reflect your pay frequency.

You now have the option to Go to Dashboard or Add Employee via the add employee wizard. This wizard will be launched instantly when you click this button. 

1. Click Add Employee to launch wizard.
   
   Read more here about how to add an employee.
2. You will be asked for the following information:

• Title
• First Name
• Middle Name
• Surname
• Date of Birth (required)
• Gender (required)
• Residential Address (required)
• Email Address, if "Employee Notifications" = Email
• Mobile Phone, if "Employee Notifications" = SMS. Must be a valid local number, and any international number must include the country code - and still be a valid number. 

3. Click Next.
4. Next you will need to enter the following:

• Employee Bank details
• Kiwisaver contributions

5. Click Next.
6. Then enter the following:

• Start Date
• Employment type – Casual, Full Time or Part Time
• Primary Location
• Pay Schedule
• Pay rate – per hour, per annum or per day
• Total hours worked each week
• Standard hours per day
• Primary pay category – Salary, Permanent Ordinary hours or casual ordinary hours
• ESCT Rate
• If they are Irregular employment
• Leave allowance template – Irregular employment, No leave entitlement or standard entitlement
• When the leave year starts – Employee’s start date or a specified date

7. Click Next.
8. Next you will need to enter the following:

• IRD Number
• Tax Code
• Date Signed

9. Click Next.

Alternatively, you can add your employees via an import file. 

1. Go to Business settings and then select Data Extracts.
2. Download an Employee data template.
3. Once the necessary fields are populated in the template you can go to Employees and select List and you will see an Import option at the top right of the screen. Drag and drop your file here.

If you are transferring a business from another payroll system, you'll need to enter the opening balances.

1. Go to the Employee menu or the Dashboard and select the desired employee.
2. Then click on opening balances from the side menu.

The key items are:

• Leave Balances
• Earnings - under the earnings tab on the opening balances page, make sure you enter the YTD earnings figure.
• Deductions
• KiwiSaver & PAYE
• Historic Gross Earnings – to enter the historic gross earnings, first you will need to extract the Historic gross earnings – AWE template to populate then import.

Once you have setup your business and its opening balances, you can now create a pay run. You can read more about creating a new pay run here. 

1. From the dashboard, click New pay run in the top right corner.
2. Enter the period end date and date paid in the dialog box and click Create.
3. A pay run will then be created where you can review the pay run values for the trial pay run.
4. At this point, the pay run is in DRAFT so you can review and adjust figures, change settings and delete the pay run and this will have no impact on the payroll file.
5. Once you are happy with the figures in the pay run, you can Finalise the pay run. Finalising the pay run marks the pay run as complete.
6. Once the pay run has been finalised, you will be able to Download payment file (note this is only available if you have a bank account entered).
7. You will also have the Payday Filing tab available. connect via our Gateway services to automatically file to IRD.

You can find out more about finalising your pay run here

We offer Gateway services for uploading payday filing as part of the Essentials plan.

1. Create pay run, or find relevant pay run via the Pay Run menu.
2. Once in the pay run, click the Pay day filing button.
3. You can see the lodgement details for that pay run
4. Click the Connect button.
5. This takes you to the IRD Gateway Services login and consent page where you will need to enter your userID and password for myir.ird.
   
6. Click Submit.
7. Your account will now be connected and you can submit straight from pay runs.

The NZ Essentials plan has the capacity to set up leave allowance templates to enter leave manually into the pay runs. Payment is then calculated as per legislation.

Setup Leave allowance templates

A leave allowance template will help to manage leave for employees much easier as you can create pre-defined sets of leave accrual values by utilising the existing leave categories, which can then be applied to new and existing employees. Different leave accrual rates can be applied i.e. 5 weeks annual holidays, 15 days of sick leave.

1. Select Payroll Settings then scroll to Leave Allowance Templates.
2. To learn how to use the default templates and add new ones, read our article here. 
   

Leave Categories

This screen allows you to set up your leave categories and control which of them accrue automatically, how they will behave in the pay run, whether or not to include them in termination payments, and decide which should appear in your employee's pay slips. Although the leave categories can be changed if required, this will not be needed as they are already set to accrue leave as per the legislation.

1. Select Payroll Settings, then click Leave Categories.
2. The Essentials plan comes with nine default leave categories:

• Alternative Holiday Leave
• Annual Leave
• Bereavement Leave
• Covid Leave
• Domestic Violence Leave
• Leave without pay (Excluding annual holidays)
• Leave without pay (annual holidays)
• Parental Leave
• Sick Leave

3. Read how to implement these categories here.
4. Although you will not have the option to add a new Leave Category, different leave allowance templates can be set up if your employees need leave to be accrued at different rates i.e. 5 weeks of Annual Holidays