Payroll

Saasu is a comprehensive payroll system for micro to small businesses. It’s designed and manages companies with up to 500 employees. Currently our Payroll module is designed for Australia but is modified and used in other countries as long as you accept the limits to Saasu payroll in those countries.

Payroll is managed in two ways:

• As individual Payroll transactions – The employee details are set up from the main menu by selecting View > Employees and then clicking Add. A Payroll transaction can then be created by selecting Add > Payroll.
• As Pay Runs using Pay Groups – A Pay Group needs to be created. Employees can then be added to the Pay group from their Employee Details screen by selecting View > Employees.

Pay Items

Pay items are the components that make up a person’s pay. These parts include tax, take home pay, health benefits, pension amounts, union payments, etc.

The Pay Item list screen shows you a list of the default pay items you get when you sign up for Saasu. You can add and remove from this list but bear in mind that certain pay items will be required for each zone in order to generate the correct payslips and required tax teports.

Custom pay items

Saasu allows you to set up custom pay items for things such as custom overtime rate, uniform allowances, car, and travel allowances.

You will need to establish with your advisor if the pay item taxable and what tax code if any apply. You will also need to decide whether to include this pay item when calculating certain entitlements or employer contributions. In some cases, you may want to exclude certain wage and salary components when calculating particular entitlements and employer contributions.

To set up custom pay items, select Settings > Payroll > Manage Pay Items. Once you have set these up, you can use them in the default pay and in your payroll transactions.

Exclude Pay Items from the Calculation of other Pay Items

Examples:

1. You have just set up a uniform allowance wage and salary Pay Item and you want to exclude this from Employer Contribution > SGC Super calculation, which is calculated as 9% of gross pay.
2. You have just set up a custom overtime rate (eg Overtime 1.25x) and any overtime that falls in this category must be excluded from leave entitlements and SGC Super.

To exclude these pay items:

1. Select Settings > Payroll > Manage Pay Items.
2. Open each of the pay items you want to apply exclusions to. (In the example above, Employer Contribution > SGC Super, Entitlement > Annual Holiday Leave, Entitlement > Personal Sick Leave).
3. Click Exclusions when the pay item is open.
4. Tick the pay items that you want to exclude. (In the example above, they would be Uniform Allowance and Overtime 1.25x).
5. Click OK to close the dialog.
6. Click Save.

Pay Items dependent on other Pay Items

Some Pay Items like superannuation, pensions, or health care may need to use other Pay Items in order to calculate. A common example is pension or superannuation payments that relate to a percentage of Wages and Salary Pay Items. Ensure you don’t include the selected Pay items in these calculations if you don’t want to – To see the exclusions for a pay item:

1. Click Payroll in the main menu.
2. Click Setup Pay Items.
3. Click the edit (pencil) icon to access the Employer Contribution pay item.
4. Click the Exclusions link to access the list of pay items that are available for exclusion in the pay item’s calculation (those ticked are excluded).

Emailing Payslips

See the Templates Guide for detailed instructions on creating or modifying the Payslip Template used to print and send Payslips, .

Entitlements

Entering Leave

Consider the example below where an employee works 173 hours per pay period. Usually when you do a payroll entry for this employee, the payroll screen would show 173 hours for their Base Pay. If this employee takes 20 hours of Annual Leave and you want to enter this in their next payroll:

1. Deduct the 20 hours from the total hours for the pay period – The total number of hours worked will be 153.
2. Add a new Wages and Salary pay item.
3. Select Annual Leave Pay from the pick list.
4. Enter 20 into the Hours field – The amount will be calculated automatically.
5. Click the comment icon beside the leave pay item to add notes relating to the dates and times leave was taken. (Alternatively you can create an entry in Timesheets entitled Leave for this employee. To do this, select View > Timesheets > Add link.)

Your screen should now look like the one captured in this screenshot:

Entitlements not calculating

If you find that entitlements are not calculated for an employee when you do a payroll entry, the most common reason behind this is that the number of hours have not been set for the employee’s base pay item (wages and salary). The following example demonstrates an employee whose entitlements will calculate automatically:

1. To see this screen in your file, select View > Employee.
2. Open the Employee Details screen with the pencil icon – You will be in the Main tab area.
3. You may expect the number of hours for the pay period you have entered under Employment Detailsabove to be taken into account when calculating the entitlements, but this is not the case. You need to set the number of hours for the base pay item either in default pay or when you are doing the payroll entry, as shown below.
4. The next time you do a payroll entry for the employee, you will see that the entitlements have been automatically calculated, as demonstrated in the screenshot below:

Entitlement Accrual Rates Default

Saasu has calculators attached to pay items. These are used to work out the hours of entitlement accrual for holiday, sick, and other types of leave for employee pay transactions. The default setting is 10 days for Personal Sick Leave and 20 days for Annual Holiday Leave. Modifying these percentage rates doesn’t alter historical transactions.

Changing Employee Entitlements to Hours

If you have accidentally entered employee entitlements (i.e Annual Holiday Leave, Personal Sick Leave) in days rather than hours, follow these steps to make the necessary corrections:

1. Select View > Payroll to access the payroll list screen.
2. Select the employee from the employee list.
3. Set the date range with the start date going way back to the employee start date (or even before that) and the end date being today (or any future date).
4. Click Show – This will load all payroll entries for that particular employee.
5. Locate the very first payroll entry (this is the very first one at the bottom) > Click the pencil icon.
6. Under entitlements, if Auto Calc is ticked for both Annual Holiday Leave and Personal Sick Leave, untick these checkboxes.
7. Manually calculate the annual holiday and personal sick leave in hours, based on the number of work hours per day for that employee (i.e. Number of Annual Holiday Leave days * Number of work hours per day).
8. Enter the calculated hours in the Annual Holiday Leave and Personal Sick Leave fields.
9. Click Save And Close – This will change the annual holiday and personal sick leave entitlements back to hours for that employee.

Hourly Rates

There are two ways to set hourly rates for employees in Saasu:

1. Set the individual employee hourly rates using the Employees Details screen.

These rates are used in payroll transactions when the Hourly Ratepay item is set to be the product of a multiplier and the regular hourly rate (eg: 1 x regular hourly rate from the Employee Details screen).

2. Set up hourly rate using an hourly rate pay item.

In the Pay Item screen you can set up your pay item to use a fixed hourly rate for all employees using this pay item. Importantly, the Employee Details screen hourly rate is ignored if one already exists when you use this pay item.

My employee’s hourly pay rates have changed but new pays don’t show the change – Why is this?

Here are some possible causes:

• If you are tracking pays via a pay item hourly rate, then this needs to be updated. Just updating the Employees Details screen won’t affect the pay item because several employees might use the same pay item in payroll transactions.
• If you are tracking pays using the hourly rate in the Employees Detailsscreens, ensure your pay item (eg Base pay Hourly) is set to an hourly rate such as 1 x regular hourly rate. From the Setup Pay Items screen, click the Base Pay Hourly pencil icon to edit this.
• Duplicating old pays and just changing the hours will carry over old pay rate details. You need to create the payroll transactions afresh using the Add Payrollscreen and selecting the employee from the dropdown list.
• If you are using a pay item that takes hours from timesheets, ensure the pay item has had its rate updated. Alternatively, if you are relying on the hourly rate in the individual Employees Details screens, you can have this set to Hourly and 1 x regular hourly rate. You can also update the fixed hourly rate ifyou are using this option.

Salary Packages

There are several situations where you may need to create payroll transactions for particular Salary Packages, Enterprise Agreements, Employment Contracts, Salary Packages, and more. In Saasu, pay items help you create a Salary Package. Before doing this you need to know the accounting treatment for the Salary Package components. We recommend you consult an advisor to:

1. Establish what the accounting entry looks like.
2. Set up the required pay items in Saasu (if they don’t already exist) against the employee default pay.

How does Saasu calculate tax when multiple pay items are used?

Wage and Salary and Deductionpay items are taxable. Saasu will calculate tax on the sum of the pay items set as Taxable. To change or check the tax status of pay items:

1. Select Settings > Payroll > Manage Pay Items.
2. Tick or untick  the taxablecheckbox as required.

How will the various components of a salary package be displayed on a payslip?

In a payslip, pay items will always display separately. As you add new and additional pay items to a salary package, these will display separately so the employee receives the detail comprising their payment(s).

Business-related Expenses

Some employers adopt an approach of paying business-related expenses to staff through their payroll transactions. Before adopting this approach, please refer to your adviser regarding the suitability of payments to employees where tax isn’t being withheld from payments on business-related expenses.

The following example is a Paytransaction where the employee gets paid for business-related expenses in their pay that the employer has decided aren’t taxable. In Saasu, you can create your own pay items, set these if they are taxable, and decide whether to exclude them from other pay items that rely on calculations for tax, pensions, or superannuation.

Note: Depending on your accountant’s advice, you may prefer to run the Expenses-Related pay item as a Wages and Salaries pay item.

1. Set up a pay item for the expenses by selecting Settings > Payroll > Manage Pay Items.
2. Click the Wages and Salaries link to load and create the pay item.
3. Set up the employee’s default pay to include the expenses. Note that the tax setting is turned off because in this example these are business-related expenses where you are advised by your accountant not to withhold tax on this portion of the pay. Additionally, when you set up the pay item above you may have set it to nontaxableby default.
4. 

Opening Balances for Payroll

1. Select Add > Payroll from the main menu.
2. Enter the date to be the start/changeover date for your file.
3. Select the employee from the Employee pick list.
4. Ensure Auto Calc is NOT ticked for the Wages and Salary, Deductions, Tax Withheld and Employer Contributions pay items.
5. Manually enter the figures from the previous accounting system into the fields for each of these pay items.
6. Similarly, ensure Auto Calc is NOT ticked for the Entitlements pay items.
7. Enter the number of hours from the previous accounting system into the fields for each of the Entitlements.
8. Click Save and Close.
9. Repeat the above process for all employees.

If you are entering opening balances for accounts via the Setup Opening Balances screen, you may want to run the General Ledger Detail report to see the postings for these payroll entries and make adjustments to your Asset, Expense and Liabilityopening balance entries accordingly.

Opening Balances for Entitlements

When you move to Saasu from your old accounting system you may wish to capture historical accrued leave. This help note covers this scenario.

1. Select Add > Payrollfrom the main menu.
2. Enter the date as the start/changeover date for your file.
3. Select the employee from the Employee pick list.
4. Remove any default pay items for Wages and Salary, Deductions and Tax Withheld that are already set for the particular employee.
5. Ensure Auto Calc is NOT ticked for the Entitlements pay items.
6. Enter the number of hours from the previous accounting system into the fields for each of the entitlements.
7. Click Save and Close.
8. Repeat this process for all the employees.

Novated Leases

1. Set up a Liability Account called Liability: Novated Lease Agreement.
2. Enter a pay transaction including a pay item for the amount of the novated lease which should be deducted from the gross pay:
3. Enter a journal for the net salary amount of the novated lease:
4. Enter a purchase for the full amount with the novated lease company. In this example, $1,514.33 which is coded to the Liability: Novated Lease Agreement account.

Pay Runs using Timesheets

If you use pay groups, you can use timesheets data to produce employee payroll transactions automatically. If you don’t have multiple employees, you can still use this feature by setting up a pay group and adding just one employee to it for processing a pay run.

1. Select View > Payroll > Setup Pay Item.
2. Add a new Wages and Salary pay item called Base Pay Hourly from Timesheet (for example).
3. Tick Auto-fill hours from timesheet when creating payroll entry.
4. Apply this new pay item to each employee where you wish to use timesheet data in Saasu to generate their pay transaction – When you do a pay run for the pay group it will take the timesheets from the pay period date range.

FAQ’s

• Extra Pay Period
• Leave Accrual
• Other Payroll Providers
• Pay Run Adjustments
• PAYG Payment Summary
• Payslip won’t update
• SGC Superannuation
• Split Pay
• Time in Lieu