Introduction
Base Auto Pay is a feature within Empeon Workforce that applies an employee's Regular pay automatically upon initiating a new payroll batch. This feature is used by default for salaried employees where the pay is consistent for each payroll, but it can also be enabled for hourly employees. For hourly employees who often work the same set number of hours each pay period, enabling this feature can help eliminate the need to manually enter their Regular hours within pay entry.
Setting Up Base Auto Pay
To set up this feature for an employee, navigate to their Employee Profile, and locate the Pay Info Card within the Payroll section of their profile.
The Pay Info Card is divided into two sections. The top section is where base auto pay is configured so when making adjustments to these settings, be sure to select the Edit button located in the top section and not the bottom section. From here, a window will appear with the following fields to enter, in order to configure base auto pay:
- Paid As - This setting determines whether the employee's pay is calculated by rate or by salary amount depending on which pay related field is used in the 'Bottom Section' of the Pay Info Card. Setting this to Salary will include the auto pay feature by default each time a payroll batch is initiated. Setting this to Hourly however, will present the option to turn on or off auto pay.
- Default Hours - This is the amount of hours that the employee typically works during a pay period. This field works in conjunction with auto pay feature, taking the amount entered in the Default Hours field and multiplying it by the employee's Default Rate each time a payroll batch is created.
- Auto pay hours - Checking this box will turn on the base auto pay feature. Given that base auto pay is set up by default for salaried employees, this check box is only available if Paid As is set to 'Hourly' and will only work if there is a Default Hours amount entered.
Initiating a Payroll Batch
After base auto pay has been set up for an employee, their default rate will be applied automatically toward the default hours entered, each time a new payroll batch is initiated.
There will still be the ability to manually add any applicable earning and deduction codes to the check if necessary. In cases where the employee did not work the amount of hours reflected in their default hours, Auto Pay can be disabled within Check Settings, allowing for manual entry of the employee's hours.
Please note that if Auto Pay is turned off for an employee within their profile after a payroll batch has been initiated, Auto Pay will still be applied to their check because the payroll process is already underway. In such cases, the employee's check will need to be manually deleted so that a new one can be added and entered manually.
Earning Codes: Base Auto Pay
In cases where non-worked hours need to be recorded such as PTO or Sick Time, make sure that the respective Earning Code has the setting Adjust Base Auto Pay turned on. This will ensure that any time non-worked hours are recorded on the check; it will automatically deduct from the employee's default hours. This setting is found within the Calculation Settings when setting up the Earning Code on the company level.
For example, with this setting toggled on within the Earning Code for PTO, an employee auto paid with 40 regular hours will not have 8 hours added to their check when entering 8 hours for PTO. Instead, the employee will remain at 40 total hours, and their default regular hours will automatically adjust to 32 hours with an additional 8 hours recorded for PTO.
