Posts Tagged Payroll
Year End Payroll Processing
Closing this year’s payroll has presented excellent opportunities. Here are a couple of items that I learned during preparation for year end:
- The GP Year End tax update required/included the service pack 4 installation
- GP 10.0 only supports preprinted W-4 forms
- Allot time to align the preprinted W-4 forms
- It’s good practice to reconcile the federal wages to the state wages. This will ensure the state and federal wages match on the W-4.
- When we ran the quarter end filing, we had to change the system date to 12/31/2009. If we left the date as current, GP thinks we are filing for current quarter in 2010!
Typically When state taxes do not match federal wages, this is caused by a new employee who recently started and their state tax card is not setup correctly. After troubleshooting, we found that the data entry for tax withhelding required tweaking. The payroll admin would input the tax information for the federal tax withholding. She would simply input the state code in the Transaction Tax Defaults field. She did not create a state tax card for the new employee. It was assumed that inputting this field on the federal tax card would default accordingly to the state tax card. This does not. This caused a discrepancy between federal and state wages for a given employee.
Has anyone experienced other types of discrepancies with trying to balance/reconcile payroll?
Southern California Payroll Focus Day
On September 17th, 2009, Systematica participated in the Southern California Payroll Focus Day. The following local chapters of the American Payroll Association, mobilized to organize this event:
• Inland Empire Chapter http://www.ieapa.org
• Los Angeles Chapter http://www.laapa.org
• Orange County Chapter http://www.occapa.com
• North San Diego County Chapter http://www.nsdccapa.org/
• San Diego Chapter http://www.sandiegochapterapa.org
• San Gabriel Valley Chapter http://www.sgvcapa.org
• Ventura County Chapter http://venturacoapa.webexone.com
• Santa Barbara Chapter http://apasba.org
The theme of Payroll Focus Day 2009 was “Working Together for a Winning Combination”. The day allowed various members (businesses located in SoCal) to come together and learn about new payroll trends. Topics included:
“Soar like an Eagle as a Payroll Professional” – Dave Wakeling
Employment Labor Law – Helene Wasserman
Unemployment & State Taxes – Michelle McElrea
Identity Theft – John Pacheco
Time & Attendance – Randy Wussick
At lunch, we had the opportunity to speak with some of the payroll attendees. We asked how the focus day was going. Their response was interesting. It is good to learn about the new trends and labour laws but it is also very frightening. According to one attendee, a lot has changed. You have to tread very carefully with regards to how you pay people in terms of fairness and consistency. She has worked in a payroll capacity for more than 30 years. She even reminisced about cutting checks by hand!
Systematica participated in the Focus Day as a Bronze Sponsor. As a team, we distributed exhibitor responsibilities. Sara and Dwight shared the morning session, while Elizabeth and I shared the afternoon session. It was very pleasant spending the day with fellow vendors and meeting the payroll attendees. We were asked quite frequently what we did. After hearing about Microsoft Dynamics GP and its capabilities with HR and Payroll, most echoed the running theme of fairness and consistency. They really didn’t know that Microsoft had such capabilities. It is always good to be out there spreading the Microsoft word!
HR & Payroll for Incentive Based Compensation Case Study
Systematica Inc. and Glidewell Laboratories have released a case study on Microsoft’s site. The study is specific on how to leverage the HR and Payroll modules within Dynamics GP to offer performance based pay incentives to production employees. Please find it here: Microsoft Case Study
Dynamics GP Service Pack 4 & HR / Payroll
So I am assuming everyone has heard that Dynamics GP SP 4 was released on August 24th. There are some very important fixes that were included as part of this release. The most visible error that is a real annoyance for customers is that the area page for HR & Payroll now displays when you click the HR & Payroll button on the left navigational pane. The workaround of having to click twice is not going to bring the house down, but a downer as far as user morale.
Please see the full list of HR / Payroll specific fixes below:
Human Resources
- HR/PR Area Page doesn’t show up first when select navigation button for HR/PR
- An error appears stating that the table is locked or another user is editing the batch after posting a COBRA manual check batch
- If you posted a COBRA payment, the manual check in Payroll doesn’t have the correct posting date if you are posting by transaction
- When you use the browse buttons, you can view all employees, including the employees that you don’t have access to when using Human Resource filters
- The mailing address information is incorrect on the VETS 100 form.
- If you have marked the Automatically Update payroll benefits and deductions option, the information that is changed during roll down is more than expected.
- Benefit and deduction setup is rolled down to Payroll as well as Human Resources.
Payroll
- A payroll lifetime maximum on a deduction is ignored after installing Microsoft Dynamics GP Release 10.0 Service Pack 3
- You may see payroll degradation during building checks if you have numerous employees setup in the company
- Multiple local taxes don’t calculate correctly for tax-sheltered annuities.
- SUTA error – A get/change operation on table ‘UPR_Distribution_WORK’ failed. A record was already locked
- Linked deductions are not included in the ACH file when the employee has a garnishment that is included in the payroll build
- Garnishment is calculated incorrectly if you use percent of earnings and tips pay codes. 50369
- A message doesn’t appear when processing checks if the Include Auto-Settle-Line option is marked in the Direct Deposit Setup window and a checkbook isn’t assigned in the Payroll Setup window
Position Control
- If you select to make a plan current, the position’s year-to-date summary amounts aren’t updated based on the budget scheduled start date for the position.
- If you make a pay rate change, you are prompted that a pay code link for the position doesn’t exist.
- If you unmark the Enable Position Control in Sample Company option in the Position Control Setup window and restart Microsoft Dynamics GP, you can’t open the Position Control Setup window.
Advanced Human Resource
- Employee Health and Wellness codes may be inadvertently deleted when choosing the clear button.
Advanced Payroll
- Transaction Auto Split may overstate employee hours if you use automatic overtime functionality in Payroll.
PTO Manager
- PTO Manager does not advance correctly to the next schedule when using accrual by anniversary date with years worked and variable maximums.
Payroll Extensions
- Payroll Integration to Payables does not populate the Remit to field in payables when a payroll is posted.
- Overtime Rate Manager incorrectly calculates the overtime rate when using a Salary pay code that is not set to unit of pay of annual.
- When you void a payroll check it does not affect deduction in arrears transactions.
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