There are a number of reasons new Pay Groups may need to be created, for example:
- A new group of employees is joining the company
- You wish to separate out the executive team into a Pay Group with restricted access
- The company currently has a Fortnightly Pay Group paying 1 week in advance and 1 week in arrears, and wishes to change to two weeks in arrears
The main restriction with creating separate Pay Groups is that each company within DataPay can only use a single IRD number. This means that multiple legal entities cannot operate within one DataPay company - if a new group of employees need to be paid via a different IRD number then a new Company within DataPay will need to be created.
Clients are not able to create Pay Groups or Companies within DataPay - this is restricted to the Support Team. We are typically able to create new Pay Groups within roughly 2 - 3 working days, and do not charge for this service. Creating a new company is significantly more involved and will need to be scheduled in as project work either with the Support Team or the Professional Services / Implementations team depending on the circumstances.
Note: The Support Team will create an empty Pay Group shell and set up the banking options. As the client you will be required to perform some minor configuration before the Pay Group is ready for use.
Pay Group Creation
To request a new Pay Group you will need to send through the below details to the Support Team:
- Pay Group Name
- Pay Group Code (if required)
- Pay Frequency (Weekly, Fortnightly, Monthly)
- Banking Option
- ANZ or BNZ Direct Banking
- Datacom Banking via AMSL / ASB
- Other - Bank File emailed to you to then upload into an online banking portal / website to pay.
- None
- Bank File Type (if the above option is 'Other')
- Bank Account number - (Registration Number if using Datacom / AMSL banking)
- The Pay Period End Date of the first Pay Run for this Pay Group - Note that this cannot be changed once set
- Main Contact and Courier Address - used primarily for printed payslips.
Pay Group Configuration
After the Support Team has created the empty Pay Group shell and configured the banking, you will be required to do some minor configuration before being able to use it. Some of the below items may not require any change depending on your company setup and how this pay group will differ.
Leave Rate Options
Depending on where your Leave Rate Options are currently set in the company you may need to select a value for your new Pay Group. If your current value is coming from Company Scope level and this is also valid for the new Pay Group then no change should be required. If however this Pay Group requires a different setup, you will need to select one to avoid the risk of paying these employees incorrectly.
An example of this is where a company had previously only had Salaried / Auto Paid employees, and is now setting up a Pay Group for some Timesheet employees. A typical BAPS Leave Rate Option for Salaried employees is RDP, which is likely not suitable for the Timesheet setup Pay Group - so a different option may need to be entered at Pay Group Scope.
An easy way to tell where your existing employees are currently receiving their Leave Rate Option values from is to check inside their Pay Packets. Hovering over the Leave Rate Option field inside one of the components (generally the Liability component for the Leave Type) will identify which scope level the value is coming from. in the below example we can see that the value of Standard Hours is coming from Company scope:
To get a broader picture, you can request access to and run the Leave Audit (CUSTOM10004) Custom report which will list the Leave Rate Option and Scope Level it is assigned at for each Leave Type for every employee. We do not charge for access to this Custom Report.
Warning Thresholds
Each new Pay Group will require four Warning Thresholds to be set up, which are used for the Error & Warnings report. Without these every Pay Packet will be Incomplete and missing these values.
To set these values, simple head to the Components Setup screen at Pay Group scope, and navigate to the Tax Details component. The four Warning Threshold values are down the bottom of the screen, and the values should be customised depending on company preferences:
Leave Units
Leave Units (e.g. Days, Hours, Weeks) should be checked and set (if required) for the new Pay Group. This should be done for each Leave Type the company uses, however the main ones are Annual Leave and BAPS.
To check what is currently being used, you can open up the Leave Summary screen for some employees, and the Leave Units will show on the right hand side of the leave table. To see where this value is being fetched from, you can check within the Pay Packet similar to the Leave Rate Options section above. A somewhat commonly seen scenario is for employees to receive their Leave Units value from their Default Units & Warnings Employee Group setup - information on which can be found here.
Timesheet Templates
If your company uses Online (ESS / DA) or Excel timesheets, you will need to create the templates for these before they are able to be used. Instructions on this process can be found here.
If you use one of the default CSV timesheet templates provided by Datacom, then these do not need to be set up.
Report Distributions
By default Pay Groups have no report distributions set up, so you will need to first add Users to the Reporting tab, then assign reports for both Authorisation and Final distributions. By default only a sub section of the Standard and CSV reports are assigned to a Pay Group, so any that you are used to using but cannot be found simply need to be added / assigned to the Pay Group before use. This can be done by navigating to the Reporting tab and right clicking on the Pay Group name in the left most column and selecting 'Add / Remove Reports'
If this new Pay Group is to use printed Payslips please let the Support Team know, as we will need to set this up on your behalf.
Note: If no reports are added to the Final Distribution when the Pay Run is Finalised then Online Payslips will not be generated
More information on this process can be found here.
Note: If you receive a Bank File via distribution to upload to an online banking portal, you will also need to set this up to go to the desired users.