The following are the most frequently asked questions about the Payroll features of ServiceCEO.
Updated on 6/29/06
The date range for my paycheck was not what I expected. How can I edit it?
1. Should I ever run the Payroll Setup Wizard after it's already been run?
A: It depends on what you need to do. Running the Payroll Setup Wizard will overwrite all of your payroll settings for all of your employees. You may not want to run the wizard again if you have customized many of the following settings:
Selected or deselected the Pay by Work Hours check box , or changed any work hours from "Available (Unpaid)" to "On Clock (Paid)" or vice versa (employee Payroll Setup tab)
Selected or de-selected the Edit Time Cards in Office Duties check box (employee Payroll Setup tab)
Changed the Pay Cycle and/or Start of First Pay Period values for your employee roles (Employee Roles)
Instead, take a look at editing individual payroll settings. For example, if you have selected the Pay by Work Hours check box for some employees and have not for other employees, running the Payroll Setup Wizard will either select or deselect this check box for all of your employees, so you may just want to edit the individual employee records.
2. What are the difference between company time codes and employee time codes?
A: Company time codes Time codes contain attributes that can apply to a particular block of time: Employee Availability, Payroll Eligibility, and General Ledger Account integration. See the Defining Time Codes section of the Implementation Manual for details. can be used by anyone in the company. Employee time codes can only be used by the employee for whom they are defined. Note, however, that time code setup is hierarchical,so that all employees will automatically inherit the company time codes unless you explicitly overwrite them.
Why is this useful? It gives you the flexibility to set up your payroll in unique ways for different employees. For example, imagine that you did not want to pay your employees for their travel time, but you did have one contractor with whom you negotiated to pay for his travel. You could set this up by selecting as Exclude from the company level Hourly Employee Setup drop-down list, but then select Include from the Hourly Employee Setup drop-down list for the employee you want to pay for travel.
3. How can I make an employee available all day (all 24 hours)?
A: You can do this easily by defining the employee's work hours to last all day (12:00 AM to 12:00 AM). This can be done in two ways:
Click-and-drag. Click and drag the work hour block to the top of the Work Orders dialog box (i.e., so that the time block starts at 12:00 AM). Next, click-and-drag the bottom border of the time block to the extreme bottom of the Work Orders dialog box (i.e., so that the time block ends at 12:00 AM at the bottom of the page).
Manually. Type "12:00 am" into both the Start Time and End Time fields.
4. What is the difference between company work hours and employee work hours?
A: The difference is this:
Company. Company Work Hours - also known as the Work Week - are defined in the Scheduling Options dialog box. Company work hours do two things:
Define default employee work hours for all new employees. In other words, all new employees will automatically have work hour time blocks that correspond to the times defined in the Work Week section of the Scheduling Options dialog box. Note that company work hours appear in a lighter color on the calendars and the employee work hours dialog boxes.
Controls the shading of the Day and Week Box view calendars as well as the employee Work Hours dialog box. The work week will be displayed in a lighter color then the hours that are not part of the work week.
Employee. Employee Work Hours control when your employees are available for work. In addition, depending on the work hours' time code, the work hours (along with the employee's role and payment type), control how the employee is paid for their time.
5. What happens when you select the Pay by Work Hours check box? What does "Pay by Work Hours" mean?
A: When you select the Pay by Work Hours check box, all of an employee's work hours using the "Available (Unpaid)" time code will be changed to using the "On Clock (Paid)" time code.
All employee work hours marked with a "Paid" time code will generate pay for the employee, based on the employee's default role's payment type. However, the employee's default role must have a payment type of Hourly in order to generate pay for these work hours; if the employee's default role is Flat Fee, Commissions, or Not Paid, no pay will be generated.
You will only see work hour pay when you generate a paycheck for the employee.
In short, to utilize the Pay by Work Hours functionality, at least one Work Hours time block has a "Paid" time code (i.e., an Hourly Employee Setup value of "Include").
The Pay by Work Hours feature considers both the employees paid work hours and the time spent on work assignments (jobs A unique occurrence of a service. Also the record of the specific service created by schedule. Note that the term Job is customizable. For details, see the Defining Vocabulary section of the Implementation Manual., tasks An action that needs to be performed outside of the scope of a job or schedule., etc.) in calculating the employees pay. Work hours are used to calculate a base pay for the employee, which will be overridden when working on a job or task level. For example, let's look at a sample schedule. For simplicity, we'll assume the employee's default role is $50.00 an hour, she's working a different role on her jobs (a rate of $20.00 an hour), and that she earns $10.00/hour working on tasks.
|
Time Block |
Time Code |
Pay Rate |
|
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM |
Available (Not Paid) |
n/a |
|
9:00 AM - 9:30 AM |
Job |
$20.00 |
|
9:30 AM - 10:30 AM |
On Clock (Paid) |
$50.00 |
|
10:30 AM - 11:00 AM |
Task |
$10.00 |
|
11:00 AM - 11:15 AM |
On Clock (Paid) |
$50.00 |
|
11:15 AM - 12:00 PM |
Job |
$20.00 |
|
12:00 PM - 12:30 PM |
Lunch (Unpaid) |
n/a |
|
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM |
Job |
$20.00 |
|
2:00 PM - 2:30 PM |
Task |
$10.00 |
|
2:30 PM - 3:00 PM |
On Clock (Paid) |
$50.00 |
|
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM |
Job |
$20.00 |
|
Total |
|
$192.50 |
Note that if you pay a Pay by Work Hours employee a non-hourly pay rate, the employee may end up being paid twice for the same time block. See this question for a discussion of this scenario.
A: The employee's default pay rate will always determine the rate at which the employee is being paid. This is true even if the employee is working on jobs under another role with another pay rate or is a "Pay by Work Hours" employee.
2. I want to pay my employees for most of their travel time. However, I do not want to pay them for some travel time; for example, I do not want to pay them for their travel back to the office or home (i.e., travel after their last job of the day). How would I configure ServiceCEO to do this?
A: There is no way to automatically pay an employee for some travel time and not for other travel. You can, however, simply remove the time you do not want to pay the employee from the employee's time card. To do this:
By default, no
employees are paid for any travel, so the first step is to select Include
from the Hourly Employee Setup drop-down list for either the company level
time code (to pay all employees for their travel time) or for an individual
employee's time code (to pay only individual employees for their travel
time).
See the discussion of Company Time Codes vs.
Employee Time Codes, above.
Open the employee's time card. You will see that travel time has been inserted automatically between all jobs and tasks for this employee for the length of the employee's work hours.
Click Manually Edit Travel.
Highlight the travel time for which you do NOT want to pay the employee.
Click Delete Time Block. The time block is removed from the time card.
|
|
Note: |
A: No.
2. If a job is completed, can I edit any of the job information in the Time Card dialog box?
A. Yes, because in the Time Card dialog
box, you are never editing the job's actual data, only how the employee
will be paid for that job. So if you have a completed job on a time card
from 8:30 AM to 12:00 PM and you edit it to be 8:30 AM to 1:00 PM, you
are only changing the amount of time for which the employee will be paid
(from 3.5 to 4.5 hours). If you save and process the time card with this
change, and then display the job on the calendar, you will see that the
job is still scheduled from 8:30 AM to 1:00 PM.
Note that this is different then Team Check In, where changing a job's
information DOES change the information on both the job and the employee's
payroll.
|
|
Note: |
3. I've just realized that I need to edit a submitted time card. Can I do this?
A: Yes, you can edit an employee's payroll information at any time before the item is inserted onto a paycheck. For example, after you submit a time card, you can edit the employee's payroll information in two ways:
Reopen the time card from the employee record, change any information you need, and resubmit the time card.
If the job has not yet been completed, you can edit the employee's payroll on the Payroll page of the Completion Wizard.
Once a payroll item is located on a paycheck, it is locked down and cannot be edited.
4. Why would I ever edit a job's time in the Time Card? Wouldn't I want to edit the actual job, instead?
A. It's important to remember that in the Time Card dialog box you are
only defining how long the employee actually worked on a job. For example,
let's say that three employees went onsite for a job with an eight hour
duration (8:00 AM - 4:00 PM). However, after four hours, one employee
felt sick and was sent home. You would only want to edit the time card
for the sick employee to reflect how much the employee actually worked.
You would not want to edit the job itself, since the duration of the job
did not change.
See also the answer to question 2, above.
1. Why is travel time being paid in my paychecks?
A: The Travel time code's Time codes contain attributes that can apply to a particular block of
time: Employee Availability, Payroll Eligibility, and General Ledger Account
integration. See the Defining Time Codes section of the Implementation
Manual for details.
Hourly Employee Setup is defined as Include, meaning
that all Travel time blocks for hourly employees will be paid in paychecks.
To remove this hourly time from all employee paychecks, open the company
Time Codes dialog
box and select Exclude from the
Hourly Employee Setup drop-down list for the Travel time code. To remove
this hourly time from an individual employee paycheck, open the employee
record, click Time Codes and select Exclude
from the Hourly Employee Setup drop-down list for the Travel
time code.
For more on time codes, see the Defining
Time Codes section.
2. I've run a paycheck for a "Pay by Work Hours" employee and it appears that the employee is being paid twice for the same chunk of time; they're being paid for their work hours and a flat fee for a job on which they worked as a non-default role. Why is this?
A: Defining a Work Hour time block as "Paid" affects only
employees with an hourly pay rate for their default role. Employees will
not be paid for work hours if their default role's payment type is not
Hourly. However, you can configure eligible roles to be paid in alternative
methods (Flat Fee, Commissions, etc.) and then use the Dispatch
Board to change the employee's role for a particular job. The catch
here is that if you pay a Pay by Work Hours employee using a non-hourly
Payment Type, ServiceCEO doesn't know how many hours to remove from their
work hours, so the employee could be paid twice for a time block.
We suggest two actions to help avoid this problem:
Only use Hourly Payment Types for Pay by Work Hours employees.
If you need to pay a Pay by Work Hours employee using a non-hourly Payment Type, you can use a Payroll Item to adjust their payroll to prevent the duplicate time block payment. See the Creating a Payroll Item section.
3. I've configured an Overtime rule but when I complete a job that should generate overtime pay for an employee, I don't see the overtime. What am I doing wrong?
A: Overtime will not appear in a job's payroll during completion; any overtime pay will be created and calculated during paycheck creation. See the Payroll and Overtime section.
4. I generated a paycheck for an employee, but now need to edit an item that was included on the paycheck. Can I do this?
A: Unfortunately, no. Once an item is on a paycheck, it is locked down. What you can do is create a payroll adjustment item that will adjust your employee's pay on the next paycheck accordingly. For details, see the Creating a Payroll Item section.
A: You can easily enter a reimbursement for an employee by creating
a payroll item. For details, see the Creating
a Payroll Item section.
As for the non-taxable part, there is currently no method of marking any
payroll as taxable or non-taxable in ServiceCEO. You will need to do this
after exporting your payroll to a third-party accounting package.
A: Paycheck date ranges are controlled by the employees default role. You can define a pay cycle and when the payroll starts in the Employee Roles dialog box.
6. The date range for my paycheck was not what I expected. How can I edit it?
Note that you'll want to make sure that the Start of the First Pay Period works with the Pay Cycle. For example, if you set up a Monthly pay cycle and set your first pay period to start 4/8/06, your paychecks will always range from the 8th of the month to the 7th of the next month, so it would be a good idea to select the first or last date of a month as the Start of the First Pay Period value for a monthly pay cycle.
1. What exactly is an odd-man?
A: An "odd-man" employee is an employee in the Team Check In window who meets any of the following conditions:
Unavailable override work hours for that day (e.g., entered via the Dispatch Board, Calendar, or employee work hours)
Time blocks A block of time that indicates the employee's status for that time. Each time block is associated with one time code. that are different then the rest of the team.
Odd-men are distinguished by the 
icon in the Employee
section of the Team Check In window.
2. Does Team Check In treat "odd-man" employees differently then regular employees?
A: No, "odd-man" employee time cards are submitted and jobs
and tasks are completed in the same manner as non-"odd-man"
employees. The only difference is that the values on the odd-man's time
card (and thus their payroll information) will be different then what
is displayed on the Team Check In window.
Basically, the "odd-man" warning is there to warn you that the
values for that employee will be different - that's all.
3. Why does the icon appear outside
of the Employee section of the Team Check In window?
A: This icon also indicates if a job's customer has an existing payment that has not yet been applied to a job. To apply a payment to the job, click in the Amount field to display the Payments page of the Completion Wizard.
4. What happens when I remove a time block from the Team Check In window?
A: The time block A block of time that indicates the employee's status for that time. Each time block is associated with one time code. is not included in the Team Check In processing. It is important to note that you are not deleting this time block from ServiceCEO; you are only deleting it from Team Check In. For example, let's say that you open the Team Check In window for Team X. Three jobs appear in the selected date range. Since you only want to complete two of the jobs at this time, you can highlight the job you do not want to complete and click Delete Time Block. The job would not be completed, nor would employees be paid for that job. You would need to either complete the job and process its payroll separately, or open Team Check In at a later date and process the job.
5. Why do I see the red warning icon: 
?
A: This warning icon is displayed when certain information is missing, including:
A job with missing inventory
A payment type of Check but no defined Check Number
An expired credit card
Define the missing data and the warning icon will disappear.
6. What does the Description field display?
A: It depends on what is being displayed:
Jobs. For a job, displays "Job number - Customer Name - Job summary".
Tasks. For a task, displays "Task summary - Description"
7. Why would I use Team Check In rather then a Time Card?
A: The quick answer is that you would use Team Check In rather then a time card if you wanted to complete jobs and tasks at the same time as you entered employee time. However, there are some additional differences between the two:
|
Time Card |
Team Check In |
|
Employee Payroll only |
Both Job/Task Completion and Employee Payroll |
|
One employee |
Multiple employees (all employees on the selected team) |
|
Can only edit time blocks |
Can edit time blocks as well as job/task information |
|
All changes are submitted |
Changes are submitted to all non-odd-man employees |
A: You must be using ServiceCEO's MobileTech feature
to enter data into ServiceCEO. When an employee enters a time block via
MobileTech, the job's duration in ServiceCEO is changed in favor of what
was entered in MobileTech. The job's duration will be changed to go from
the earliest Start Time to the latest End Time for all employees assigned
to work on the job.
Employee time blocks entered in MobileTech, either for a specific job or
for the employee's time card, only appear in two places in ServiceCEO:
In both places, data entered or viewed in MobileTech will be identified
by the MobileTech icon: 
2. What is the difference between the Job/Task/Adjustment History report and the Payroll report?
A: The Job/Task/Adjustment History report displays all jobs, tasks, and adjustments in the selected date range. It does not include any information about paychecks. This report was known as the Payroll report in versions of ServiceCEO before 6.0.
The Payroll report summarizes all information for an employee's paycheck(s) in the defined date range, details all paid items (including jobs, tasks, adjustments, time blocks (if being paid by work hours), and overtime) as well as corresponding monetary information. This report is designed so you can easily export this information into a third party accounting application via XML (our Accounting Integration module).
3. I would like to pay my employees a bonus based on their performance. How can I set this up?
A: The only way you can automatically configure a bonus is to use ServiceCEO's Bonus Commission feature, which enables you to pay your employee's based on the revenue that they generate. For more, see the Defining Bonus Commissions section.
4. How can I withhold my employee taxes from their paycheck?
A: ServiceCEO is not designed to be the system of record for your payroll.
As such, there is no way to withhold taxes from your employee paycheck.
What ServiceCEO can do is enable you to export your employee paychecks
to a third-party accounting package, so that you can use these programs
to withhold the necessary taxes before cutting the actual checks. Typically,
this is done by configuring ServiceCEO's Accounting Integration. Doing
so will enable you to export your paychecks to an XML file (Extensible
Markup Language). You can then import these XML files into your accounting
package.
Note that you will need someone with programming knowledge, preferably
in the .NET programming languages to build an integration layer so that
you can import the XML files into your accounting package.
For more information on exporting paychecks to XML, see the Generating
Paychecks section. Also see question 5 - How
can I can import my paychecks into QuickBooks for more options.
5. How can I can import my paychecks into QuickBooks?
A: While you cannot import a paycheck into QuickBooks using the XML integration (due to a QuickBooks limitation), you can use two reports to send your gross payroll amounts to a third-party accounting package (like QuickBooks):
The Employee Payroll Summary report. This report includes:
Employee Name. All employees with at least one paycheck in the date range will appear.
Pay Types. The amount of payment for each payment type will appear in its own column. Payment types are salary, hourly pay, commissionable pay, flat fees, tips, and miscellaneous pay.
Total Pay. The total payment for each employee in the date range.
Grand Totals. The totals for every payment type, and total pay for all employees in the date range, appears at the bottom of the report.
The Paycheck report.
Both of these reports are located in the Employee report category. The report will display all paychecks within the report's date range (based on the date you select when creating a paycheck). Note that if a payroll item has not yet been included on a paycheck, it will not appear in this report.
Once run, you can take the information from this report and input it into your accounting package, where you can deduct taxes, etc. from it and generate the actual paycheck. You can do this in two ways:
Export this gross pay to another format and import it into your accounting package. For example, you can export the information into Microsoft Excel, and then import this Excel file into your GL program. For information on exporting Crystal Reports data, read the Exporting Report Data section.
Manually enter the gross pay for each employee into your accounting package. For example, in QuickBooks, you can manually enter gross pay by selecting Activities > Payroll > Pay Employees, selecting the employees you want to pay, and then enter the payment for those employees. For details, see your QuickBooks documentation.
|
|
Tip:
|
A: While there is no way to automatically pay your employees for their travel mileage, you can make use of ServiceCEO's Microsoft® MapPoint® integration to quickly enable you to create a miscellaneous adjustment for this mileage. Perform these steps:
Open the dispatch board.
Right-click the title bar containing the employee(s) you want to pay mileage and select Route with MapPoint. MapPoint will appear. For more details, see the Displaying Directions in MapPoint section.
|
|
Note: |
MapPoint will display the route the team travels between all of their jobs for the day. In the top line of the route details section, the Summary line will display how many miles the team has traveled for the day.
Take the mileage and multiply it by the rate at which you pay mileage.
Enter this amount as a miscellaneous payroll item for the employee. For details, see the Creating a Payroll Item section.
This mileage pay will appear in the next paycheck you generate for the employee.
A: If you generate a paycheck for an employee that includes pay for a job that has not yet been competed, not only will the job's commissions NOT be included on the paycheck, but they will not be created when you complete the job (because payroll for that employee has already been "frozen").
You'll see this in the warning message that appears when you create a paycheck for an employee with open jobs:
---------------------------
ServiceCEO
---------------------------
The following assignments have not been completed:
Worker A is assigned to Job #1133 on 6/12/2006
If you continue and save paychecks:
- You will be unable to edit the Employee's payroll, even if you make changes
to or do not complete an assignment.
- Commissions will not be paid for Employee who worked on an assignment.
---------------------------
8. What other payroll training options are available?
A: If you need additional help, use these materials:
Prerecorded
Training Classes. There are several training classes devoted
to Payroll in the Insight Direct Member Center.
To learn how to access the member center, please read the Accessing Insight Direct's Member Center document.
Once in the member center, click the Watch Pre-Recorded Training
Videos link.
Discussion Boards. You can join a community of Payroll users by participating in the Payroll and Time Tracking discussion board forum. You can access this discussion board in two ways:
Through the member center. Login to the Member Center and click the Discussion Boards link. A new browser will appear. Login using your username and password. Once logged into the member center, click the Payroll and Time Tracking folder in the Functionality - ServiceCEO section.
Directly. Click this link: http://ws3.insightdirect.com/IDBB/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=16
If you would like to contribute to a discussion about this document, please use the Payroll FAQ topic, located at http://ws3.insightdirect.com/IDBB/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=596.
|
|
Note: |
