Frequently Asked Questions

Copy Employee,akes it easier to add new employees if the new employee will be similar to an existing employee in the same company.
It removes all of the employee's personal information – such as employee number, name, address, bank accounts and leave accruals.
It keeps details such as employment condition, department, pay points, standard hours and rates, templates, default pay items, deductions and super funds.

Company Employee Importcan be used when an employee is moving between companies.
The import is run from the destination company, that is the company the employee is being transferred to, and allows you to search for the employee in the source company.
It terminates and archives the employee in the source company and transfers any leave balances with the employee details.
YTD figures are left in the source company. It also transfers personal details such as employee name, addresses, characteristics, Tax info, standard hours and pay items, however it loses employment conditions, pay defaults and some other detail

No, you cannot re-use the employee number of an archived employee.

An employee can be archived as part of the year end process if they were terminated in the year that has ended.
They must have a termination date specified in the termination screen.

No, this function is not avaiable.

The system remembers the previous 25 searches.

You cannot clear it, the 26th search will drop off the list.

In the Employee > Deductions screen you specify the Rateper pay of the deduction, along with the initial balance in the Balancefield.
Ready Pay will reduce the Balance by the Rate when each pay is updated. The deduction will finish when the balance is $0.

In the Employee > Deductions screen you specify a Commenced and Final date.
The deduction will only be deducted from the Employee's pay if the Commenced date or Final Date falls wholly or partly within a payrun pay period range.

This is known as a Tax Variation. To implement the variation, open the Employee screen, then select the Tax tab on the right hand side.
Select the Tax Variation checkbox, enter the date range for the variation in the Start and Finish boxes and enter the % rate in the Rate box e.g. 20% = 20.
Do not edit the rate stored in the Tax Scale, nor change which tax scale the employee is set to, as once Ready Pay reaches the end of that date range it will need to revert back to their original tax scale.

You need to set the User Security levels . Security levels are from 1-9. Employee levels are 0-9.

In the security section, user level 5 means that the user will able to see employees whose employee levels in the master file has been set between 0 and 5.

An employee level of 0 is the default when creating an employee record, since the minimum user level is 1, an employee at level 0 can be seen by everyone.

User levels are set in User Security > User Maintenance, employee level is set at the Personal Detailsscreen of the Employee Creation Wizard or on the security tab of the employee file.

It is possible that an employee level has been set to a particular level, such as 5 but the user level for that employee has been set to 4.
Therefore that user will not be able to access their own details.

• Taxable income refers to the total taxable payments
• Non-taxable refers to any post-tax payments e.g. Salary Sacrifice items, (does not show deductions)
• Gross pay refers to the total taxable and non-taxable (does not show deductions)
• Tax withheld is as calculated
• Deductions refers to post-tax only
• Net refers to taxable income + non-taxable – tax - deductions
  

The payrun locking mechanism prevents a second user adding, amending or removing an employee who is being edited in the payrun by another user.

There are three possible reasons:

1. Employee has been terminated previously
2. Employee is suspended (for example, maternity leave)
3. Employee is on leave, meaning that the finish date of their leave is greater than the period ending date of the current Payrun. May not be incorrect – depends if they have been paid in advance or not.

It can also happen that the leave dates have been incorrectly entered and even though the employee has returned to work, they won’t appear as the dates are wrong.
Check their leave dates in the Employee file, Leave History – if the dates are incorrect, you can edit them here.

Also check the Last Leave Finish Date on the Leave Balances screen.
If a payrun was reversed, this date is not changed as part of the reverse (Ready Pay can’t tell if it was entered as part of the reversed payrun or not so doesn’t change it, the previous value is not stored anywhere).

If an employee is paid fortnightly and in this payrun is also receiving two weeks annual leave paid in advance, you change pay period quantity to two so they are taxed over four weeks.
This can be changed during the Payrun for the particular employee.
In the Master tab or on the Leave window adjust the pay period quantity figure. Enter the total number of weeks covered by the pay.

Applying a change in Master tab also changes the Leave tab and vice versa

In the Navigator go to Company Definitions > Maintain Company > Payrun Preferences tab and tick the relevant leave boxes.

If possible perform the cheque payment as a separate payrun. Otherwise enter the bonus as normal and then include a deduction after tax for the full amount of the bonus.

We restrict the entry of certain characters in to fields where it may create issues such as STP lodgement errors or display errors in Employee Self-Service Kiosk etc.

In the employee file you can apply a PE  amount to a deduction, which specifies the minimum net pay they must receive.
This is commonly used with child support or other garnishee wages.
A deduction with PE must be an after tax deduction and must be placed at the top of the list if there is more than one deduction.
You must place the PE amount only on the deduction you wish to reduce.
If in the payrun the net pay falls below the PE amount, the deduction will be reduced accordingly.

To process a payrun/adjustment where the net pay is negative, the employee must be added to the payrun as an Adjustment.
To do so, at the top of the right panel of the payrun Employee Pool screen, click on the down arrow next to the Add to Payrun button and select Add as Adjustment.

In addition, as you cannot pay a negative EFT, the pay method for this payrun must be changed to either Cash or Cheque.
For the employee select Payment Method from the Master tab, on the right hand side of the screen.

Do you have the latest tax scales installed? Ready Pay issues changes to the tax scales as required by the ATO, usually coinciding with the end of the financial year.
If you are concerned that your tax scales are not up to date, please do not hesitate to contact Ready Pay support.

Ready Pay implements the rules set out in the Australian Taxation Office’s ‘Statement of Formulas’ to calculate tax deductions (NAT 1004).

Ready Pay gives you the ability to reverse the last payrun updated which is not necessarily the highest payrun run number.
Eg: Payrun number 3 might have the highest payrun number and latest date, but payrun number 2 was actually updated after payrun number 3.
In this case the Reverse an Updated Payrun option will only be available for Payrun run number 2.

Have you selected the appropriate STSL tax scale or just ticked the HELP or SFSS checkbox?
You need to do both. In most cases, the Tax Free Threshold Claimed + STSL Tax scale is the appropriate scale.

If this is set correctly, you will need to check the gross income level.
You will need to check the financial year threshold as an employee does not start to repay STSL until their gross income reaches the threshold.

The amount of extra tax deducted by Ready Pay for STSL is built into the tax scales in Ready Pay.
It is not shown separately on the payslip because the STSL debt for the financial year is not actually finalised until the employee lodges the tax return for that financial year.

• If there are payments to be made then enter these on the Termination screen during a payrun, with the termination date and reason.
• If there are no payments to be made, such as in the case of casuals, then you can terminate them in the Master file.

You can turn off auto tax and enter manual tax for all items except ETP tax – this has to be entered on the details tab of termination window.

If the employee was terminated but still appearing in leave reports such as a casual who was not terminated in the payrun you will need to untick Accrue Leavefor that employee.
Go to the employee's file Leave Balancesscreen. In the Details tab, untick Accrue Leave.

You need to enter the bank details in the employee Masterfile Banking screen.

It can be changed when generating the file in the payrun.
You do not have to use the default filename, however you do need to ensure that it has the correct file extension, namely .ABA.

You cannot specify two different pay methods.
you can set up a deduction after tax that is called ‘Pay by cheque’ or similar so it is not included in the EFT file.

This is stored for each company bank account under Company Definitions >Maintain Company > Company Bank.
It must be supplied by the bank, is specific to your company and is mandatory if you will be paying via EFT.
If you have already processed a payrun, you can add it afterwards and regenerate the EFT file.

The following process refers to reprinting a payslip for your current payrun only.
If you are trying to reprint a payslip from a previous payrun you must use the report in System Reports > Historical > Pay Advice reprint.

To reprint a pay advice for your current payrun:

From the Navigator select Payrun Processes > Re-print pay advices

or

Form the Ribbon Bar click the drop down onPayrun > Re-print pay advices

or

From Report Explorer select the System Reports > Pay Advices - select the FinYear/Week No OR period end date OR run number.

• A global message can be added in the payrun when entering the pay period dates. This prints in the header of the payslip for all employees.
• For an individual employee, in the Employee file in Pay Items > Default Pay Settings, or in Payrun on the Master tab – enter the text in Pay Advice Note field.
  This prints on the payslip in the heading section. Once entered in the employee file it is permanent while the message entered in the payrun is only for that payrun.
  Updating the payrun deletes the temporary entry but the permanent message stays in the employee file.
• You can have both global and individual messages.
  
  

See Emailing Payslips.

You will only be able to email payslips if the employee has an email address set up in their employee master file.
You also need to select the Email Payslip check box in the Default Pay Settings tab of the employee's master file.

To add a password to an attachment, in the Navigator go to Tools and Settings > System Settings > Email > Email preferences tab.

Using the Encrypt Attchments button will cause Ready Pay to attach reports as a PDF in a zip file.
You can turn this on here or on the actual email report window which is the recommended option

The Best practice is to:

Leave Encrypt and Use a default passord blank.
When emailing reports, you can tick Encrypt Attachmentsand enter an ad-hoc Encryption Password, such as the day of the week backwards, DDMM etc.
The recipients should be aware of the convention.

For emailing payslips ticking Encrypt Attachments uses the employee password created on the employee security tab, when emailing. The Payslip is received as password protected pdf.

The only items that do not attract super are termination items because the relationship with the employer has ended.

For a change of super fund, enter a Ceased Date on the old fund, this will remove the pay item so no further calculations will be made against the old fund.
Add the new fund in the Employee's Superfunds screen, which will then add the super pay item.

During the payrun, select the employee and go to Super Employer screen.
Add the Employer $ super pay item as unit 1 and $ = additional contribution for this pay.
The Employer % pay item can be deleted.

This does not affect employee’s pay because it’s an employer contribution.

If the overpayment has not yet been sent to the super fund, adjust the payrun and re-update.

If the payment has been sent then you can underpay the super contribution in next pay run

• Check that the pay items for ordinary hours are set to accrue super.
• Check the employee master file to make sure that the super fund is included for the employee, and that the relevant superannuation pay item is attached.
• Make sure that the super fund existed in the employee master file before the employee was added to the payrun.

In Ready Pay, an Allowance must be ticked as taxable if you want Ready Pay to increase the employee’s taxable income.
Therefore, a Deduction must be ticked as taxable if you want to reduce an employee’s taxable income in the case of Salary Sacrifice income.

• In the Employee file check the Leave Balances screen has Accrue Leave check box selected for all employees that you want to accrue leave.
• Pay items should have Leave checked in the Accruesection.
• In Pay Items, for those items which accrue leave, check the Leave Definition tab to make sure the leave will be accrued on the correct items
• In Payroll Framework check the Employment Conditions have an Increment/Hour value.
• In the Employee file check the Entitlement Date in the Leave Balances screen. This should be the next anniversary date of the employee’s hired date after the current date.

Create a Leave Non Accrual pay item as Leave without paywith a Pay Factor and SGC Super Factor of 0zero.
In the Payrun, add a line with this pay item and specify the number of hours, there will be no dollar value calcualted.

Leave loadings are defined under Employment Conditions. If there is a value against the Loading % field on the Annual Leave tab, the employee with that condition will get leave loading.

• First set this up in Payroll Framework > Pay Items select the Leave pay item that you want to deduct from ordinary hours and tick Reduce Normal Time.
• In Company Definitions > Maintain Company select the Payrun Preferences tab and the Payrun Preferences section tick the check box against Auto balance leave trans to Emp Std Hrs (Std Hrs >0 only)
• During the payrun, when leave is entered Ready Pay will reduce Normal hours by the number of leave hours to ensure the employee is paid the total standard hours.

Flexitime is like an irregular RDO. For an employee to accrue Flexitime, they must have Accrue Flextime checked in the Employee > Leave Balances screen.
Typically the employee will work some extra hours during a pay period (e.g. 44.00 instead of 38.00).
In the payrun, their ordinary hours are entered as 44.00, and, using the LFL – Flexitime Leave non Accrual pay item, an entry of -6.00 is entered.
This -6.00 is then added to the employee flexitime bank and the employee receives their normal 38 hours in the payrun.

The reverse is true when flexitime is paid out: ordinary time would be entered as the normal standard hours and LFP - Flexitime Paid flexitime as 6.00. If Auto balance leave trans to Emp Std Hrs (Std Hrs >0 only) is checked Ready Pay will reduce Normal hours by the number of leave hours.

To set up and start using Flexitime please refer to Flexitime Set Up and Use

Leave accrual Pay Items are those that accrue an entitlement and therefore have a leave balance behind them.
These would be Annual Leave, Personal (sick) Leave, Long Service leaveand the like.
Leave non-accrual Pay Items are those that do not accrue an entitlement but are more of a granted leave. Some examples include Jury Duty, Compassionate Leave etc.

Note: Both leave accrual and non-accrual pay items can themselves accrue or not accrue leave.
For example, Compassionate Leave is a non-accrual item but an employee being paid Compassionate Leave would still accrue leave on the hours entered against Compassionate leave.

Pro Rata stores the current year’s accruals from the anniversary of the employee’s hired date up to the last day they were paid (Pro Rata date).
Once the next leave entitlement date is reached, the balance in Pro Rata is added to the Entitled balance, and the Pro Rata balance is set back to zero.

Some awards provide for different settings in terms of payments of leave entitlements, hence Ready Pay stores these balances separately.

For example, an award may specify that loading is payable on Entitled leave upon termination but not upon Pro Rata, other awards may specify that the Pro Rata leave cannot be taken.
Ready Pay makes this easy by storing separate balances for each.

There are a couple of possible reasons for this.

• In Maintain company click on the General Ledger tab on the right.
  Check that the Enable General Ledger Payrun Transactions check-box is selected.
  If this is switched on, then you may not have entered any G/L debit and/or credit codes against your pay items.
  See General Ledger for more information on setting up your general ledger.
• In Maintain Company > General Ledger a structure may not have been defined .
  See General Ledger for more information on setting up your general ledger.
  

Things to check:

• Have any new departments or pay items been added that have not been given a G/L code?
• Are the correct debit and credit codes in place?
• Do you have payment, leave, and termination pay items set up as debits and deductions, tax, net pay etc setup as credits?
• Do you have employer SGC contributions setup as both debit/credit?
• Try rebuilding your GL chart, refer to the section General Ledger Maintenance See General Ledger.
  
  

Check the Report Explorer > System Reports > Historical > Superannuation > Superannuation – Unlinked Funds Report. The employees may appear here.

If so, check if:

• An employee recently changed funds. The old fund needs to remain in the master file without a pay item attached.
• Have any employees recently been imported into the company from another company?
  The system may not have been able to match the super fund in the new company.
  In the employee file, make note of the joined date, member number and codes. Delete and re-add the fund.

This can be generally resolved by either reselecting this employee’s Title (Mr, Mrs etc.) on the employee screen or by placing a tick in the Preferred check-box on one of this employee’s addresses.

Alternatively, the report could be limited to return only a specific range of data.
Re-run the report, taking note of what Filter criteria you are setting in place.
Things to consider: the employee is not in that department, the employee is terminated but terminated is not checked and so on.

You printed the payslip using the normal System Reports > Pay Advices report instead of the System Reports > Historical > Pay Advice Reprint report.

Not all reports in Ready Pay are exportable to .csv format.
As the .csv format is designed to export rows and columns of data to Excel, only reports that are formatted in rows and columns can be exported using this format.
Complex reports that contain multiple sub-reports (e.g. Employee Details) cannot export via .csv.
In the case where you have exported a report to .csv and the report is blank once opened, use the Excel export format as an alternative to .csv.

If an employee is setup for Tax Averaging as well as a Tax Variation, the Tax Variation will take precedence.

The weekly value of an employee's standard core hours, including any amounts that may be salary sacrificed.

As an example: Weekly Hours are 38, Hourly Rate is $35.75. Standard weekly Earnings = 38hrs x 35.75 = $1358.50

Do not include any non-cash pay items which may be part of standard pay.

Do not include any allowances paid as part of standard pay.

Do not include any overtime, etc. that may be paid as part of standard pay.

The number of weeks in the year is counted from the days your pay period ENDS on.
If your pay periods end on a Thursday, enter the number of Thursdays in each month.

To create a financial year calendar see Setting up the financial year.

To check how the calendar has been set up, go to Company Definitions > Maintain Company > Years.

Select the calendar year you want, and drill down to the calendar.
Here you can see how many weeks have been defined in each month, if you have set something up incorrectly.
For example there are five weeks defined in May instead of four, click on the last week in May, and click the down arrow in the Tool bar.



This will move that week out of May and into June.

• Select the Workers Comp tab on the pay item.
• Tick the Workplaces where this pay item is included in the remuneration figure for workers compensation premium calculation.

The employee's workplace is based on their Home Department.

Ready Pay uses Australian short date format: d/mm/yyyy.

If you get an error message (Token unknown) on date fields when entering min/max dates in enquiry filter (reports), check the correct date format in the Region settings of the computer.
Change the date settings to short date d/mm/yyyy and run the report again.

Deletion of Positions needs to be enabled by unchecking the Positions Only box under Navigator > Tools and Settings > System Settings > Human Resources node.

Before a Position to be deleted from the Organisation Chart several criteria need to be met;

• There can be no current incumbents in the position

• If this is a Reporting Position, any positions that report to this position must either
• be re-assigned to report to another position or
• have no current incumbents and must have a Redundant Date.

If the criteria is met the Position can be deleted.
Select Positions on the left pane of the screen, on the right pane click on the Position and select Delete.

If you were required to switch off Positions Only in the first step above, switch it back on now.

To speed up employee selection, Ready Pay maintains a local search cache of employees on your local PC or workstation.
Occasionally, new employees entered on another workstation may not synchronise into your local search cache.
This has not impacted your data in anyway. To refresh these files, log out of Ready pay, wait a few minutes and log back in.

If it is not clear from the error messages what you need to do next, we suggest you take screen shots of the message and email it to Ready Pay Support (support@HR3.com.au) or call Support while the message is still on the screen. If the message says 'Terminate', we strongly recommend that you click Terminate then restart Ready Pay.