PAY2PAY Process Best Practices Guidelines

PAY2PAY Process Best Practices Guidelines

GOAL: To provide a wholistic overview of best practices to improve workflow, increase accuracy and efficiency within board entity from Pay to Pay. Detailing way to set the board up for success in each pay period. 

PROCEDURAL OVERVIEW

The recurring theme of the procedural best practices is to run processes ahead of time, as much as possible. 

STEP 1: As soon as the current pay is out of the door, this is now HR’s window for the new 2-3 Business Days to enter changes. 

HR changes should be compiled in a ‘HR Change Log’ for each period to ensure all updates are well documented and timestamped by Pay Period for ease of access. 

STEP 2: As soon as HR changes are complete, Payroll should begin running Entitlements around a week in advance to begin reviewing and authorizing the changes made. 

Should there be any issues, users can always Unauthorize a singular record. 

Note: The record can only be unauthorized before the next Entitlement Run.

Un-authorization Use Case:

STRATEGY: If you run 100 people in a group, however 1 in change is unwanted (you don’t want the employee’s change running in this pay, or it should be sent back to HR to correct), then you can unauthorize the single record.

TIMING: When a board want the employee’s change to be paid in the next pay period; 

You can’t delay an Entitlement to a future pay period, so when the entry is inputted with an effective date that falls within the current pay that is being processed. But if the user doesn’t want this change to be processed, then the HR needs to remove the change entirely and pay it next pay.  

SITUATION: Board has already had entire pay ready and finalized but HR sent another 30 changes through. 28 of them are correct but 2 weren’t supposed to happen until the next pay period, and be retroactive.

The 28 were expected and I’ve already set up deductions, etc. for these employees, but the 2 others cause more work at the very last second.  

This can happen frequently with most employers in all industries.

Key Objective: Minimize the delay between HR inputs and Entitlements being reviewed, while maximizing lead time to upcoming Cheque Date.

Boards and Districts should aim to increase the frequency of running Entitlements, so that last second ‘surprises’ are minimized before Pay Run.

• Minimum: Entitlements run with frequent intervals according to the size of operation (More often is better)
  1. Increased frequency makes the workload marginal every run
  2. Increased duration between entitlements can cause extensive workload in reviewing changes

Note: Boards should aim to spend a day or two verifying Entitlements and Authorizing

STEP 3: Once Entitlements are reviewed and authorized, run a test pay by submitting Pay Run and Aborting back.  

Allowing Payroll to spend a few days reviewing authorized changes under the generated Pay Register at least a week in advance of upcoming Cheque Date to allow for enough time to setup payroll-related employee maintenance and troubleshoot any issues, as well as make the required corrections.

Example: Non-Statutory Deductions, Benefit Overrides, etc.

This allows Payroll to become familiar with what values to expect for this pay period.

Pay Register Items to review;

• Verify Tax & CPP amounts
• Confirm Statutory Deductions
• Confirm Board Share Amounts
• Other Payments
• Benefit Overrides

STEP 4: Peer Review + Final Changes

At this point the board should be roughly 1 week into the pay period with the bulk of HR changes processed, entitlements and authorization complete – along with a preliminary review of Pay Register.

This means the boards should have roughly one week to allow for internal review and any final changes before the Cheque Date.

Plenty of time to add final touches, run pay and review the marginal changes

CHANGE MANAGEMENT

The goal of organized Change Management procedures is to document what has happened in each pay period, and to provide ease of access to relevant, yet critical information in reverse engineering the origins of Pay Run issues. 

Since the Pay 2 Pay workflow essentially begins with HR entering new changes following the previous pay going out the door, it is integral to document the Who, What and Why of these changes. 

Edsembli recommends the use HR Change Notices > Employee Notes within the system to track changes made in each working period. 

Alternatively, an ‘HR Changes Log’ file can be used outside of the system, based on board preference. 

The below document outlines a sample format to document Employees, the change, notes and any old vs new values. 

**Employee, Field, Notes & Old/New Values are noted for ease of access**

Example: New Employees, setup in X group, at X rate or EID ____ Changed from Grid Step A to Grid Step B.

HEALTH CHECK

This stage allows the user to get an idea of where you are at and can be conducted at any point internally. 

The Health Check can define certain items from a payroll perspective that are worth troubleshooting, revisiting and reconciling to improve the integrity of data and allow for efficient workflow.  

When the pay is being pre-run (in advance of the upcoming Cheque Date), have the appropriate Employee Groups scheduled, Pay Run and navigate to Process > Completed > ‘Message Log’ to review discrepancies and understand the reconciliation required. 

Note: Ensure Abort back the Pay Run if this is a preliminary pay run to begin review period.

The Message Log outlines configuration and mapping warnings such as

• Missing Deductions
• Code Mapping
• Employees without EI & CPP setup