Generating pay for your employees

When processing payroll or navigating the Pay page, there are a few key areas and items to understand. We will go through a few of those areas below. 

Icons

When processing pays, multiple icons can be displayed against an employee's payslip. These icons can be helpful in ensuring your employee is paid correctly. They also highlight important information you may need to know, both before processing payroll and post-payroll when reviewing paid data. 

If any of the conditions associated with those icons are met, they will be highlighted in bold next the the employees' Draft or Generated payslip

The icons that can apply to a payslip are:

• Comments - A comment has been applied to the payslip or timesheet.
• Leave - Indicates that the employee has leave entitlements paid on the payslip. 
  
    Hot tip: If your employee is being paid Leave Loading, the icon will be highlighted in Orange.
• Employee/Workforce Notice - Indicates whether any workforce conditions have been applied to the employee. 
  • For example, if the employee is under 18, their profile has been terminated, or the employee has been archived.
• Financial/Taxation - Indicates whether any financial conditions have been applied to the employee.
  • For example, the Super percentage doesn't match the system default, the maximum Super Guarantee cap has been met, or no TFN was supplied after 28 days or not yet 28 days. 
• Deductions - A deduction has been applied to the employee's pay.
  • For example, child support or uniform payment deduction.
• Email - This icon appears only on the Generated payslips tab and, when highlighted, indicates that the employee has been emailed their payslip. 

  Hot tip: Hover over the icons on your Pay page to see further details about what they are regarding.

Filtering payslips

When viewing data on your Pay page, you may want or need to narrow your view to view payslips based on certain conditions. When you have filters in place, a red dot will appear above the Filters icon in the top right-hand corner.

  Hot tip: Any filters you apply here, will remain in place if you navigate to the Payroll Variance report. 
 

Your pay page filters are broken down into three categories, those are:

• People
  • Employees - Select individual or multiple employees to view just their variances. 
  • Employment types - View variances based on individual or multiple employment types.
    • Archived
    • Casual 
    • Full-Time
    • Part-Time
    • Salaried
  • Employee conditions
    • Restriction
    • Special condition
    • Suspended
    • Workcover
  • Tag group and Tags
• Location & Roles
  • Office Codes - View individual or multiple paying entities.
  • Operation - View employees based on their associated Operation.
  • Awards and Positions - View employees with certain Award and Positions assigned to their profiles. 
• Payslip Details 
  • Payslip conditions - View your employees based on conditions applied to their payslips.
    • Adjustments made
    • Leave Taken
    • Manual edits
    • Overtime
    • Payslip comments
    • Payslip warnings
    • Termination
    • Withholding Variation
  • Income types - View your employees based on the income type assigned to their profiles. 
    • Foreign employment income
    • Salary and wages
    • Working holiday maker

  Hot tip: If you have multiple pay periods across your platform, e.g. Weekly & Fortnightly, you can use the Filters to view the payslips for just the individual pay period. 

Viewing payslip totals

If you want to view your payslip totals quickly, you can do so by viewing the totals at the bottom of your Pay page. 

You have the option to view the totals for your:

• Draft or Generated payslips
• All payslips (no filters)
• Or, use your filters to view the totals for your relevant Employment Types, Office Codes or Operations

  Hot tip: Hover over the hours total next to an employee to view a quick breakdown of their hours. 

Payslips contain a wealth of information, and sometimes your employees may have questions about the calculations on their payslips.

  See our Understanding Payslips guide for further information on: 

• Where the payroll data is pulled from.
• Examples of a typical payslip and a detailed payslip.
• How Gross pay and Net pay are calculated.

  Looking for a resource link you can share with employees on Understanding their payslips? See our guide in the Employee App here.

Sometimes, just like your payroll, your day-to-day can be unpredictable. This means that occasionally, you may be unavailable to process your employees' pay, or you may need to process payroll before the pay period ends. In these cases, there are multiple options available to assist you.

Some example scenarios are:

• Your payroll officer is sick or on leave.
• You want to pay employee bonuses separately from the normal payroll.
• You have an employee who needs to be back-paid or reimbursed.
• Holidays are coming up and you want to avoid bank processing delays.
   

Generating payroll early

The more common case for early payroll generation is for upcoming Holiday periods when your payroll officer may be off on leave, or you simply want to alleviate the added stress for your employees and provide them with access to their wages ahead of the holidays beginning. 

  To see the process of how to do that, please refer to our guide here. This process can also be used for circumstances not surrounding holidays.
 

Out of schedule pay runs

There will be times when you may need to do an out of schedule pay run for your employees, this is typically done for items like back pays, paying bonuses, and issuing reimbursements. The process for generating these pays is much the same as processing your standard payroll, however, in this case, a manual payslip will need to be created. 

This can be done by navigating to the Payroll Pay page > and selecting Add Payslip.

  For more information and instructions please refer to our guide on Creating manual payslips and payslip templates.
 

Payroll Administration Support Service

Sometimes you need a bit of extra help, and thats okay! Our Payroll Administration Support Service team are here to support and save you time when you need it. 

For payroll support, we can assist you on an adhoc basis with:

• Processing payroll while your payroll team is on leave.
• Act as your payroll function on a long-term basis.
• Assist in creating and processing adjustments or back payments.
• Create manual payroll edits for items that are not automated.

To have a look at our Fact sheet, submit for help, or see what other services we can provide assistance on, refer to our article on Using foundU Services.

Before processing pays, you will need to make sure you have finalised all data for payroll depending on how you manage approvals. 

Before processing pays, it is best practice to:

• Make sure all leave applications for permanent staff have been approved (Time Off).
• Make sure all shifts have been approved and lock any shifts before processing pays to avoid approval changes (Approve Shifts and Lock Shifts to prevent changes).
• Use the Pre-Payroll Variance Report to ensure all employees are accounted for or to confirm any out-of-ordinary variances.
• Perform any pre-payroll reporting (Labour Management Report, Payslip Export or view the Award Test).
• Check and make any edits to your payslips (if needed) before processing.
  
    Please note: Before editing draft payslips, confirm that all platform automations have run as intended. For example, that the correct position is on the employee's profile and that all shift hours and leave applications have been approved.
• Leave notes for all employees, or comments on individual payslips (if needed).

As part of your payroll checks, you may like to check why your employee is being paid the way they are.

To do this, you're able to run an Awards Test from the Pay page to see the following for an employee:

• Ordinary hours
• Overtime hours
• Leave
• Unpaid break times
• Allowance details
   

To view the Award Test for a specific payslip:

1. In the Pay > Draft payslips tab, select the payslip that you would like to review.

2. Select the down arrow > Award test. This is a shortcut to the Award Test page for this specific employee.

   

3. Select anywhere below the heading row to expand the breakdown. Hover over any of the timeframes to see more details.

  For further information about pressure testing your award, refer to our article about the Award Test..

There will be times when you will need to create a manual payslip to pay an employee. 

Here are a few reasons why you may need to create a manual payslip: 

• When you need a second payslip for the same period ending.
• If you need to pay out an employee's leave in the same pay period that leave is redeemed.
• An employee has just started and hasn't completed registration until payday.
• And many more!

  See our Creating a manual payslip guide for more information on creating manual payslips.

There are 2 ways to communicate directly with employees via their payslip: comments and notes. Comments are applied to an individual employee's payslip, while notes are applied to every employee's payslip via the Office Code setup.
 

Comments - Individual employee payslips

A comment can be added to an individual employee's payslip in 4 ways: 

• Selecting the drop-down next to the employee's Payslip ID > Comment
• Applying unallocated hours to a draft or generated payslip
• Adjusting leave accruals on a draft or generated payslip
• Saving edits or adjustments to the employee's payslip
   

Where will the comment appear? 

• Comments added when adjusting leave accruals, it will appear in the Accruals section.
• If the comment is added when applying unallocated hours will appear in the hours breakdown on page 2. 
• Comments applied via the Payslip ID or edits/adjustments will appear on the last page of the payslip. 

Notes - All employee payslips

Notes are applied via the Office Code setup and will automatically appear on every employee's payslip until removed. When setting up a note:

• You can set a custom title for your note. If no title is entered, it will appear under Additional Information. 
  • Notes appear on the last page of the payslip. 

Examples you might communicate with a payslip comment or office code note, could include:

• EOFY processes
• Explaining why payslips look different from previous periods 
• Communicating changes to pay rates following an annual minimum wage increase 
• Noting a deduction or individual pay change on an employee's payslip

Learn more about using Comments and Notes on payslips in our dedicated guide here. 

In some circumstances, you may need to reprocess the timesheets associated with draft payslips. When doing this, any manual edits that have already been made to the draft payslips may be removed or overridden. Ensure you review those edits after reprocessing. A few reasons why you may reprocess your payslips are:

• Update positions with new/updated award interpretation
• Update tax information
• Pull through new deductions or allowances. 

  Please note: Updates made to a tax declaration will only apply to a reprocessed payslip if the updated date is within the pay period.

For example, if the tax declaration is updated today (15th March) but the pay period is for last week (period ending 13th March), then it will not be updated when the payslip is reprocessed.
 

To reprocess your draft payslips:

1. In the quick menu, navigate to Payroll > Pay.
2. Ensure the Draft payslips tab is selected.
3. This page defaults to your current Period End date, to reprocess a draft payslip from another period, select the calendar date to update. Select any other filters needed to locate the desired payslip.
4. Either select the payslips to reprocess; this can be done by:
   • For an individual or selected group of employees, select the specific employee's payslips.
   • To reprocess all payslips, navigate to the checkbox in the blue bar and select Select everything from the dropdown menu.
     
       Hot tip: You do not need to increase your page size to select all payslips to reprocess. Instead, use the Select everything option as this will select all payslips, including those on other pages. 
5. From the action bar, select Reprocess.
6. The selected payslips will now be updated with the latest changes.

Each time a payslip is updated, a new line is created in the payslip version history. Viewing the payslip history can assist in investigating why a payslip is calculating as it is, by showing you a different unique version for all associated actions with the payslip in question.

All events on a payslip will show in the order that they occurred with the newest displayed at the top. Hover over the event type to see the Version of the payslip.

  Hot tip: Payslip History is non-editable and hence is a viable audit trail that can be used to conduct investigations into a payslip.
 

Understanding Payslip Events

Many actions will create a new version history of the payslip. You will see the following types of events in payslip updates. 

• Update
• Edit
• Generated

The below will display as an 'Update' in the version history:

• A shift is edited
• A shift is approved
• A shift is declined
• Leave is redeemed
• Changing position on the employee profile
• Reprocessing a draft payslip

The below will display as an 'Edit' in the version history.

• Any edits made to draft payslips.

You will see 'Generated' clearly with the date and timestamp noting when this payslip was processed.

  Please note this Screen Navigation has no sound, please watch and follow along to see how Payslip history can be used. 

Viewing Payslip History

To view the history of a Payslip:

1. Navigate to Payroll > Pay and select either the Draft payslips or Generated payslips tab, depending on what you would like to view.

2. Next to the payslip ID number, select the drop-down arrow, and History.

   

3. Here, you will see a new payslip version for each Event that has affected this payslip. The newest events will be at the top.
4. Within each line, you can see the detail around (working from left to right in the image below):
   • Payslip Event - Update, Edit or Generated.
   • Version number - Hover over the Event type.
     
       Hot tip: The version number of the payslip indicates how many updates the payslip has had.
      
   • The gross total amount of the payslip for that version.
   • The $ amount of that payslip changes between one version and the next.
   • The date and timestamp of when this change occurred.
   • Comment bubble - Hover here to see the cause of the event (admin edited, timesheets processed, Automated pay cycle).

   • PDF - of the payslip. 

     

  Hot tip: The user (system or admin) who did the edit or made the update will be timestamped against the update when you hover over the comments bubble. 

Sometimes when processing your pay you may encounter a warning or an error for an employee's payslip that needs to be checked or resolved before you generate it. 
 

Warnings

Warnings don't stop you from processing pay. However, it is best practice to check them and ensure that they don't need any action.

For example, a warning will appear if an under-18 employee has earned more than the threshold and will be taxed or if an employee has not provided a TFN. You can still process these employees' pay. However, a warning will appear to let you know. 

You can filter your payslips to see any that have a warning by selecting the Warning option under the Filter on the Payroll > Pay page. This allows you to quickly see what payslips have warnings and whether they need to be checked/addressed. 

Errors

Errors will stop you from processing pay and will need to be resolved for payslip generation to occur. 

Below are some of the common errors and how to resolve them:

• 'Updates have been made to the residency status on the TFN declaration, these changes are not applicable to the income type set. Update the income type to allow payslip generation'
  • The employee has made a change on their TFN that doesn't align with the income type set in their Employee Profile > Financial > Tax > Income Type. Review the changes the employee has made to their TFN and check that the employee's new TFN information aligns with the income type set via Employee Profile > Financial > Tax > Income Type. You may have to get the employee to address their TFN choices before you can process their payslip. 
• 'Duplicate shift times are detected within this payslip. These must be resolved before the payslip can be generated'
  • The employee has a shift start or end time that is overlapping with another shift. Review the employee's shifts in Time & Attendance > Approve Shifts and adjust the overlapping shift times.

Once you have completed your pre-payroll checks, you are now ready to generate your payslips.
 

To generate payslips:

1. Navigate to Payroll > Pay.
2. Under the Draft payslips tab, select the Period Ending date.
   
     Warning: If you have previously cleared the date from the picker, to view all draft payslips across all pay periods, please ensure you go back and select the correct period end date before generating. Failure to do so could result in you accidentally generating the wrong payslips. 
3. Before generating, you have the option to:
   • Preview a PDF of a payslip by selecting the Payslip ID.
   • Edit payslips details by selecting the down arrow > Edit.
   • Add a comment by selecting the down arrow > Comment.
   • View the paycycle history by selecting the down arrow > History.
   • Access the Award Test by selecting the down arrow > Award Test.
   • View timesheet data by selecting the Timesheet ID.
   • Export pay data to run checks by selecting all, or the relevant payslips > Download.
4. To process payslips select all, or the relevant payslips > Generate.  
5. Choose your Payment Date and your Batch option and select Generate Payslips. 
6. Your payslips will now be in the Generated payslips tab in a generating state and will have a status of Pending.
7. Once your payslips have finished generating you will see a Payslip ready option. Selecting this will complete the generating process and will make the payslips visible in the Employee App and produce an ABA file.
8. If you email your employees to notify them that their payslips have been generated you will need to select your employees > Email Payslips.

Once you have generated your pay:

• The payslips will appear under the Generated payslips tab.
• The ABA History is where you can view and download your ABA.
• If you need to re-create an ABA, you can do so by selecting the relevant employees > Create ABA.
• You can email payslips to employees by selecting your employees > Email Payslips. This is optional, as employees can see their payslips (once processed) from their Employee App.
  Payslips that are emailed to employees are marked with an envelope icon. Hovering over the email icon will display the email send details.
• Make sure to submit your STP submissions when you have finished processing your pay and notifying your employees.
• If you have later discovered a mistake, you can create an adjustment to fix this by selecting the down arrow > Adjustment. See the Making changes to processed pays section below for more information. 

Once payslips have been processed in Pay, an ABA file is automatically generated. You can download this file for uploading to your bank.

Once paid, you can mark your ABA file status as Paid via Action > Pay.

  See our View, download and merge ABA files guide for more information on:

• Viewing and downloading an ABA
• Regenerating an ABA for specific employees
• Merging ABA files

The process of Single Touch Payroll (STP) means that every time a payslip or adjustment is generated in foundU, an STP submission is created, ready to be sent to the ATO.

  Please note: STP submissions are not sent automatically upon payslip generation. STP submissions are required to be sent via Payroll > Single Touch Payroll. 
 

STP Events without pay data

Under certain circumstances, your foundU platform will send STP data to the ATO even if no money was paid to an employee during a pay period. These are referred to as STP 'Update' events.

Circumstances that your platform will generate an Update event will include:

• STP category changes to allowances, deductions or paid leave types
• Changes to an employee's Income type
• Child support obligations (protected earning deductions) that cannot be met for a pay period the employee has no pay for that pay period
• Changes to pay entities
• Reporting Fringe Benefits
• STP Finalisation

These Update STP events will automatically be submitted to the ATO with no gross changes for the employee and no need for an admin to generate a $0 payslip. 

  See our STP Submissions guide for more information on submitting your STP submissions. 

There are 2 ways you can make manual changes to payslips, these are either via edits, or adjustments. You can only edit a payslip while it is still in draft. However, for any errors or issues you discover after the payslips have been generated will need to be managed through an adjustment. 

The 2 most common reasons for needing to make an adjustment to generated payslips are:

• Underpayments - When the employee was paid less than intended.
• Overpayments - When the employee was paid more than intended.

When making an adjustment to resolve these items, a 2nd payslip will be created while the original is kept intact. This provides a clear audit trail of adjustments made for you, the admin, and your employee. 

  If you are new to making payroll adjustments, don't stress! This action is made easy in your platform. Check out our dedicated guide to Edits, adjustments and overpayments, for more information.

Sometimes, you might need to update your employees' generated payslips to show changes in the office code, company logo, and business details.

To ensure these effects are applied to generate payslips, reload the PDFs using the process below. The most common reasons to do this are as follows:

• Rebranding your logo
• Updating payroll officer's contact details
• Updating an employee's historical payslips after changing their office code

To update details on generated payslips:

1. From the quick menu, navigate to Payroll > Pay.
2. Ensure the Generated payslips tab is selected.
3. Using the calendar date picker, find either the relevant Period end, Pay date or select Range to capture multiple pay cycles at a time.
   • When selecting Range, you then also have the option to choose from pre-set options rather than setting your own. From the drop-down arrow that appears you can choose from:
     • This month
     • Last month
     • This quarter
     • Last quarter
     • This financial year
     • Last financial year
     • All time
4. Add any filters needed to refine your search. 
5. Either select the payslips to update; this can be done by:
   • For an individual or selected group of employees, select the specific employee's payslips.
   • To update all payslips, navigate to the checkbox in the blue bar and select Select everything from the dropdown menu.
     
       Hot tip: You do not need to increase your page size to select all payslips to update. Instead, use the Select everything option, as this will select all payslips, including those on other pages. 
6. From the action bar, select Reload PDF. The selected payslips will now be updated with the latest changes.

After you have generated your pay, you may want to export your payroll data for your post-payroll checks. 
 

Payroll Export

The first report is the Payroll Export. This option allows you to generate a custom report by exporting selected information directly from the generated payslips. 

To do a Payroll Export:

1. Navigate to Payroll > Pay. 
2. Select all or the relevant payslips you would like to export. 
3. Select Download. You then have the following options to select from:
   • CSV - Export as a CSV file.
   • Payslips - Export the PDF payslips.
   • Timesheets & shifts - export the associated uploaded timesheets against the payslip.
4. Choose one of the above options to export.  
   
   

  Hot tip: You can save your chosen CSV export options for future exports by selecting Additional Options > name your export description > Save. 

Post-payroll reporting

You may like to run a payroll activity report after processing payroll for your post-payroll checks.

  See our Payroll Activity Report (Standard and Advanced) guide for more information on reporting post-payroll.

To pay your employee's super, you can do this in one of 2 ways:

• Upload the super stream file to your clearing house, or,
• Pay your employee's super in the foundU platform through Beam.

 See our Pay Superannuation guide for more information on paying your super. 

If your business invoices, you will be able to invoice your clients once you have generated your pays. 

Invoicing is a 3-step process:

1. Generate pending invoices
2. Review and edit invoices
3. Issue and send invoices

 See our Invoicing guide for more information on invoicing.