Frequently Asked Questions

This article lists commonly asked questions about all aspects of the payroll system. You can scroll through the page or click on the below links in order to be taken to the specific section:

• Clock Me In
• Employees
• Employee self service
• Leave
• Pay runs
• Rule set
• Timesheets
• WorkZone

Clock Me In

Why is the Clock Me In PIN expired already?

When you first grant an employee access to ClockMeIn we send an email with that PIN in it. We mark that PIN as expired because they need to change it when they first use it.

This means the original PIN is actually expired, because it has to be changed on the first log in. NB. The employee won't be able to login in the future if it's not changed during the first login.

Employees

How do I pay my employees (Do I still have to actually go pay my employees, ie transfer funds to them?)

The payroll system does not access anyone's bank account. Once you have finalised the pay run it's your responsibility to ensure the funds are transferred to each employees nominated bank account. (We remind you about this each time you finalise a pay run).

You can pay employees in the following ways:

• manually - ie via individual EFT from the business bank account to each employee's bank account, or use a pre-filled template in your internet banking site (contact the bank for more information if you need it). N.B: If you download the audit report from the reports button on the finalised pay run, you'll find the amount each employee needs to be paid in the Bank Payments section of the report
• using a payment file - click on this link for information on how to use this handy feature 

How do I change an employees employment type?

There are a couple of places in the employee's Employee record that you will need to make an adjustment:

• In the Employee File -> NRIC details page - change the employment type
• In the Employee File -> Pay Run Defaults page - change the Primary Pay Category if required
• You might like to check the employee's leave allowance page as well to ensure they are on the correct leave allowance template

Employee Self Service

How can I send my employees another login email for WorkZone?

Go to 'Employee' on the top menu and select 'List'. Then select the employee who you want to reactivate. Select 'Employee Portal Access' from the menu on the left hand side of the screen, under 'Employee Management' heading. Click the '(resend activation email)' link next to the employee's name. The system will resend the email to the employee's nominated email. In the top right hand corner of the screen a green box will say 'Password Activation Email sent'.

Leave

How do I adjust leave balances?

It's just a case of using the Adjust Leave option within a pay run. Once the pay run has been created

1. Click on the employee whose Leave needs adjusting to expand their record
2. Click on the Actions button within their expanded record
3. Select "Adjust Leave"

You will be presented with a leave adjustment line:

1. Select the type of leave e.g. Annual Leave
2. Decrease the leave insert a minus (-) figure of the leave
3. If there is no monies involved in the adjustment, i.e. recouping or paying of leave, do not tick the "Apply Earnings Rule" box

This article explains further... Leave Adjustments

How do I apply leave taken?

You are able to add leave taken either during the pay run or via the Leave requests. The following article will show you how to do this - Leave - Entering Leave Taken

How is leave paid in the pay run?

It is expected that a permanent/non timesheet employee will be paid the "usual" number of hours in the pay run whether they worked them or not (because they are entitled to leave) so make sure you have included leave hours along with ordinary worked hours in the first instance, then:

1. Click on the Actions button within the employee's record in the pay run
2. Select Take Leave
3. Select the leave type
4. Enter the amount of leave being taken

The system will reduce the employee's leave balance and separate out the leave hours being paid (for reporting purposes) by adding

1. One earnings line to deduct the leave from the ordinary hours being paid
2. Another earnings line to pay the leave using a different (leave taken) pay category
   The net effect of the two earnings lines added is $0 so, for a permanent/non timesheet employee, you must always remember to include leave hours in the total number of hours being paid prior to taking leave.
3. The leave balance is reduced by the "Leave taken" line that's also added

An employee who is set to use timesheets (on the pay run defaults page) will not need earnings in place first - when you use the 'Take leave' option from the 'Actions' button within the employee's pay run record the system will simply add an earnings line and reduce the leave balance.

Please follow this link to an article that illustrates... Leave - Entering Leave Taken

My employee should have been accruing leave and wasn't. How do I adjust their leave balance to what it should be?

To adjust for leave that should have accrued to date:

1. Run the pay categories report (an option on the Reports tab) for the required pay category - filter the report for a period that covers all pay runs prior to the current
2. Extract the total number of hours paid
3. Multiply the total hours worked by the per hour accrual rate in place on each employee's leave allowances page. You can view this by clicking on the calculator next to each leave type.
4. Then, in the next pay run, click on the Actions button within the employee's record
5. Select Adjust leave
6. Select the leave type and enter a positive adjustment to add to the leave balance - be careful NOT to apply any earnings rules (NB. do this for each type of leave)

How does the system predict employee's leave balances?

A leave request will predict the leave balance as at the date of the leave request if you have entered "normally works" hours per week on the employee record, pay run defaults page. The leave request then predicts the balance by:

• Looking at the current leave balance
• Adding any leave that is expected to accrue up to the date of the leave request
• Deducting any other approved leave requests already in the system (NB. the date of other approved leave requests is not significant, ALL approved leave requests will be deducted, even if they are for after the current leave request date).

This article illustrates the process... Applying for Leave

The only time the leave balance predictor won't work is if the employee is not "regularly" paid, eg.

• we will look at the employee's last pay period end date and work out when their next pay date should be, eg.
  • the employee is paid weekly and the last pay period end date was 18 November
  • the next pay run should be period end 25 November
• we will add 2 days (leeway)
• if the employee is not included in a pay run by that date (27 November in our example), we will stop projecting leave balances

Why is my employee accruing leave when they shouldn't be?

Your employees will accrue leave as per the settings in place on their employee record, leave allowance page. You'll need to check/change these on each employee record... Updating Employee Leave Allowances OR, you could apply  a different Leave Allowance template at the top of each employee's leave allowances page... Leave Allowance Templates NB. this will achieve the same result, it's just a way of applying all of the settings with one click on each employee record.

Once you have done the above, you can adjust the leave balances back to zero where required in the next pay run... Leave Adjustments

Pay Runs

How do I add another earnings line to the pay run?

If you're within the pay run itself, you can do this by

1. Clicking on the employee that you want to add the additional earnings for to expand their details
2. Clicking on the "Actions" button in the bottom right corner and selecting "Add Earnings"
3. Selecting the pay category from the new earnings line that is added to the pay run.

The following link should provide more information.. Adding Earnings Lines To A Pay Run

How do I pay me employee in advance?

There are two ways you can do this;

1. Create the "future" (Advanced) pay run to pay the employee their advances wages. Select the manually add employees option and just add the employee who is getting the advanced wages. Then in the next pay run you create just exclude that employee as they have already been paid. If they are still getting paid (just a lesser amount) include the employee as normal but change the hours field to what you need.
2. You can create an ad-hoc pay run (Pay Schedules - Set Up), and manually add the employee. Pay the advance wages. Then exclude them from the "normal" pay run next time you create the pay run (or keep them in and manually change the hours field like in option 1).

I've made a change to the employee's pay rate but the old rate is still showing in the pay run. How do I get the new rate to appear?

Changing "the past" is not something we take lightly, that's why it's not easy to retrospectively change an employee's settings in a pay run. It should be noted that you cannot change the data in a pay run where super has been paid - we prevent unlocking of these pay runs to protect data integrity - so if super hasn't been paid on the pay run you want to change, you can do it but it must be done (strictly) in this order:

1. Open the pay run in question and any subsequent pay runs
2. Go to the employee record, change the setting you are wanting to alter to something "else", hit save, then change it again to what you actually want it to be and hit save (this will make sure an actual change is recorded)
3. Go to the oldest of the open pay runs
4. Exclude the employee from the pay run (actions button, exclude from pay run)
5. Include the employee in the pay run Now the pay run is using the employee's "current" settings and you should be right to proceed.

How do I allocate an account to link to earnings in the journal?

You will first need to enable the journal settings by going to the Payroll settings > Journals page. You are able to choose to export the pay run journal as a file export or detailed file export. 

Once the journal page has been enabled, you can then go to the Payroll settings > Chart of accounts page in order to map your accounts. This article will provide more information on this - Mapping GL Accounts

How do I send pay slips?

Once you finalise a pay run you are able to publish pay slips as part of the process. Once pay slips are published, employees are able to access them via the employee portal or WorkZone. Included in this pay run finalisation process is the ability to notify your employees that their pay slips are available. The type of notification that the employee will receive is determined by the settings on their Employee file > Pay run notification page. If you have employees that prefer to have their pay slips handed to them manually, you can generate them by clicking on the “Pay slips” button in the pay run actions bar. 

If you need to generate pay slips for a particular employee, you can do this by going to their Employee file > Pay slips page and hovering over the required pay run. You'll then be able to email or download the required pay slip. 

How do I 'back pay' my employee?

You can't "retrospectively" alter an employee's pay rate, because pay runs are finalised and paid using the information on each employee's record at that point in time. What you can do is pay the employee an "adjustment" to pay any back pay owed. There are a couple of ways to do this - keeping in mind that you don't want to double up leave accruals on the hours your are back paying them for. The below article will provide instructions on how to do this - How to Process 'Back Payment'

Why can't I unlock a pay run? 

You cannot unlock a pay run if you have downloaded a CPF lodgement report for that pay run. We do this to protect data integrity once the super has been paid.

If you need to make any changes to the earnings in that pay period you'll have to do it in a second "ad hoc" pay run, created with the same period end and paid date as the original. This article will walk you through doing that... How do I process an 'Ad hoc' Pay Run

Why is the paid allowance adding to the 'total hours' worked in the pay run?

If the allowance pay category is set to use an 'hourly' or 'daily' unit base the system will include earnings paid using this pay category as part of the total hours worked/paid in the pay run.

To prevent allowance payments being included in the total hours worked go to the Payroll Settings tab -> Pay Categories (under the pay run settings heading) and click on the allowance pay category name to expand the settings - change the unit type to Fixed. Once this is done the allowance payments will show up under the 'other earnings' section in the pay run record and will not be included in the total hours.

Paying Allowances

Why did the deduction appear twice in the payment file?

This happens because while the system needs the bank account that a deduction is to made to recorded on the Employee record > Bank accounts page (so the deduction can be paid to it), you need to record $0 to be paid to this account on that page, otherwise, the deduction will be paid to the bank account selected AND part of the employee's net earning will be paid to the bank account as well.

​The solution to the problem is to go to the Employee record > Bank accounts page and make the payment to the affected bank account $0, hit Save then unlock and re-finalise the pay run then download a new payment file.

Rule Sets

My employee is attached to a rule set. How do I check to see what is happening for each shift?

You can check what's happening for each shift by using the rules tester...

1. Go to the Rule Sets page (under the pay conditions heading on the payroll settings tab)
2. Select the Award from the drop down menu at the top of the page (if nec)
3. Select the rule set you want to check
4. Hit the Test Rules button
5. Check the current period dates (the pay run period dates should match exactly to the current period or a previous period)
6. Click on the Import button
7. Select the employee whose shifts you want to test
8. Scroll down and hit Run Test

Once each day's earnings are displayed you can expand the day you want to check and click on the question mark (or the Rules tab at the top of the list of tested shifts) to show you the list of rules that have been triggered by that shift. Then you can go check each rule that was triggered and see how/why it has been applied to that shift - keep in mind that rules are applied in order from top to bottom so a rule that's triggered may be overridden by another rule further down the list.

NB. Click on the Edit rules button to see the actual rules, note if you're using an award you can't actually edit the rules, it's just a way to "view" them but you'll need to agree to unlocking the award in order to be able to see the rules.

How do I copy a complete rule set?

You can do this by following the below instructions:

1. Go into the rule set page
2. Click on the rule set you want to clone
3. Click on the edit button to open it
4. In the URL, change the word "rule" to the word "clone"
5. Press enter (and you'll see what looks like simple text)
6. Click on the left facing arrow to go back in your browser

Now go look at the list of rule sets in the account and you'll see a cloned rule set with the suffix " - copy" added.

Timesheets

How can I give permission for my employees to use timesheets?

In order to allow your employees to use the Employee Self Service (ESS) portal to create their own timesheets you need to:

1. Make sure the employee record, pay run defaults page is set for this employee to use timesheets
2. Make sure (business level) employee portal access has been granted to the employee
3. Make sure the (business level) employee portal access settings are set to allow employees to enter their own timesheets

Why is the data for 1 timesheet line broken up into multiple lines in the pay run?

There is no setting to make the timesheet data for one day show up on just the one earnings line in the pay run. The determining factor is whether the employee's record has them set to use a rule set to interpret the timesheet data into the pay run (any rule set) or not.

This is because using a rule breaks the timesheet data down a bit further than a normal (not interpreted into the pay run by a rule set) timesheet line.

That said, although you can't get around this in the pay run you don't have to show all of that detail on the payslip - if you go to payroll settings > payslips and make sure "show line notes" is not ticked, the detail will still be shown on the pay run screen but the employee will only see a summary of their earnings on the payslip.

How do I apply different rates when needed via timesheets?

You can use Work Types in order assign different rates to different shift conditions. When setting up a work type, you can map it to the required pay category (e.g. Saturday rate). Then, the employee just needs to select the applicable work type on the timesheet in order for the system to assign the correct rate. If no work type is selected the system will use the default pay category.

The following article will help further - Work Types - How to Set up and Use in timesheets

Can I use a template/external source to import timesheet data?

You can set up a custom file import template in order to import timesheet data from pretty much any external source as long as the source can provide the data in CSV format. This article elaborates... Timesheet Imports

How can I edit an approved timesheet?

Sometimes you may need to modify a timesheet that has already been approved. You can do this by following these simple steps:

1. Go to 'Manage Employees' and select 'Approve Timesheets'
2. From the 'Approve Timesheets' screen, ensure the status 'Approved' is selected
3. Click on the approved timesheet line and you will see the “Undo” button appear
4. Click the Undo button and it will revert to being in the 'Submitted' status (the 'Approved' will change into a 'Submitted').
5. Once the timesheet is in the 'submitted' state, you can then click on the small pencil which will open up the timesheet editor window
6. From the editor window, you can make the necessary changes to the timesheet.
7. Once you’re done, save the timesheet and you can go back into the approval screen and approve the timesheet.

WorkZone

How can I find out more about WorkZone?

Our mobile app is called WorkZone - everything that an employee and an employee-manager (approver) needs is in one application, accessible on mobile, or web-based. The following articles provide more information about WorkZone:

WorkZone - Getting Started
WorkZone - Timesheets
WorkZone - Clock in/out - for employers
Approving Timesheets in WorkZone
WorkZone - Unavailability
WorkZone - Shifts
WorkZone - Applying/Cancelling/Viewing Leave
WorkZone - Expense Requests