Bulk update multiple pay rates for employees

If your business relies on multiple pay categories to pay their staff and you need to update multiple pay categories for pay adjustments, annual wage increases, etc. For example, a group of employees normally get paid based on their primary pay category but could then have different pay categories for allowances, outside normal hours of work or working a different job.

When these pay categories need to be updated for a group of employees, it means that you would have to go into each employee's record and update each pay category rate one at a time. With the below new export/import file, it will allow you to input the new rates for each affected employee and pay category and then do a bulk import into your payroll platform.

To export the file

Click the Business Settings menu followed by the Payroll settings option. Then click the Data Extracts button and set the Data type field to the employee pay rates option. Options that are available are

• Template with employee pay rates: active employees only.
• Template with employee pay rates (including terminated employees): active and terminated employees.
• Empty template: no employees.

Any employee that is incomplete, i.e. they are not already in a Pay Run, will not appear in the export file. The file will contain a column for all pay categories set up in the business, including pay categories set up by the user.

Linked pay categories will not be included. This is because linked pay categories pay rates are calculated off the loading applied to the main pay category, and so if the main pay category, which is included in the export file,  is updated then the platform will automatically update the linked pay.

Pay categories that a user cannot enter a rate against as the platform auto-calculates instead. In New Zealand, this includes all platform leave pay categories and the platform ‘public holiday not worked’ pay category. In Singapore, this includes the platform rest day and public holiday pay categories. 

To import file

Click the Business Settings menu followed by the Payroll settings option. Then click the Import Employees button. Then select the Employee Pay Rates Upload option from the Import Employees From drop-down menu. From this screen, you can also download the employee pay rates export file.

Users can delete any pay category column from the file that they do not want to update. So long as the employee Id column and one pay category column are included in the file, the file will successfully import, pending validation passes. The file will be validated before the platform starts process employee pay rate updates.