Detailed Description of PAY-PACK

Detailed Description of PAY-PACK

A shorter Overview of PAY-PACK is available.

Multiple Pay Periods. PAY-PACK lets you keep on the same payroll employees who are paid weekly, fortnightly or monthly. PAY-PACK handles Public Service payrolls where the number of pay runs per year is fractionally more than 26. PAY-PACK can do bi-monthly and four-weekly pays.

Hourly Rates. For each employee you can set up a base hourly rate with different factors for overtime and penalty rates. An employee can work at several different rates of pay for different duties. You can do separate groupings of hourly rates paid for special purposes such as public holidays or workers' compensation.

Piece Rates. In clothing or farm industries, employees are sometimes paid per unit of production rather than per hour. PAY-PACK handles this similarly to hourly wages. The unit of production is printed on the pay slip.

Allowances and Deductions. PAY-PACK can calculate the amount of each allowance or deduction according to any of the formula types:

Fixed amount per pay;
Amount per unit (of shift, kilometre, etc);
Amount per hour worked;
Percentage of regular pay;
Percentage of actual pay.
Percentage of gross (useful for garnishee payments)

PAY-PACK recognises whether the allowances are taxed or not. There is no limit to the number of hourly rate combinations and allowances per employee.

For deductions that are either loans or savings, PAY-PACK can keep total of the amount owing or saved.

Superannuation. PAY-PACK does all payroll aspects. It calculates the employer contribution according to any formula in the above paragraph. A report comparing the actual contribution with the guarantee, alerts you to any unintended shortfall, and can help prove that you have complied. PAY-PACK lets you easily handle the case when employees earn less than $450 per month. Employee contributions are treated as deductions. Pay slips show both types of contribution.

Holiday Leave and Accrual. Records can be kept in days or hours. When the employee takes leave, PAY-PACK calculates the holiday pay. For the overwhelming majority of the workforce, the same amount of holiday leave is accrued each week, even when the employee takes holidays. For a weekly employee with 20 days annual leave, PAY-PACK will accrue 20 divided by 52 (0.3846) days each week.

Some part-time workers and some construction employees work an irregular number of hours each week, and PAY-PACK accrues one-twelfth of the ordinary time hours actually worked. A further alternative used in nursing awards is for an annual entitlement.

Leave Loading. This is calculated by PAY-PACK when the employee takes holidays, usually at 17.5%, and is itemised on the pay slip. Many other variations are handled such as different percentages for different employees, or a maximum amount paid.

Sick Leave. Records can be kept in days or hours. PAY-PACK calculates the sick pay, and prints a separate item on the pay slip. At a specified time, usually the anniversary of employment, PAY-PACK prompts you to amend the employee's sick entitlement. You can even choose to have the sick leave accrue each pay.

Long Service Leave. PAY-PACK accrues Long Service Leave for eligible employees.

Rostered Day Off. With the 38-hour week, many factories and building firms work 8-hour days and the employee takes a rostered day off every four weeks. PAY-PACK accumulates the number of hours of RDO time for each employee. When the rostered day off is taken, the pay slip contains a separate line of detail. PAY-PACK handles many RDO and flexi-time variations: the whole firm closes one day every few weeks; each employee takes off a different day; employees accruing RDO beyond four weeks.

Unpaid Leave. PAY-PACK allows for an employee taking a few hours or days of unpaid leave. PAY-PACK also caters for employees on extended unpaid leave.

Notepad. Up to 99 lines of free-form narrative comments can be stored about any employee. Very useful for recording personnel history and salary changes.

Pay Run Process. In PAY-PACK there are several stages in the pay run:

(a) The initial run-through. For each employee there is one screen which prompts for all the information that is likely to vary each pay, such as the number of hours for each penalty rate.

(b) Edit of the pay details. Enter details of leave pay, adjustments, termination. Any details can be changed.

(c) Pay slips can be printed and/or displayed.

(d) Pay run reports.

(e) File the pay run to update the PAY-PACK data files.

Step (a) must come first and (e) last. Steps (b), (c) and (d) can be done any number of times in any order. It is also possible to exit from the pay run process, and then resume at a later time, with all pay run information still intact.

Pay Run Reports. These can be printed and/or displayed. Of all the reports available you can make a selection (either permanently or temporarily) of the reports you want included. The reports available are:

Detailed report of each allowance, deduction or direct deposit;
Report of Leave and One-Off Payments;
Report of RDO accruals, showing each employee's accrual before and after this pay;
Cheque List;
Cash Dissection Report, showing note and coin break-up for each employee. It is possible to have a different cash dissections for different locations.
Taxation Report;
Receipt of Pay;
Grouping of Hourly Rates;
Grouping of Allowances;
Superannuation Guarantee Report;
Dissection by Department, summarising the pay, employees being printed in department order.

Tax Calculation. PAY-PACK calculates the tax for each employee. It takes into account:

whether general exemption applies;
dependant rebates;
HECS;
Family Tax Assistance;
taxed and untaxed allowances;
the special rules for leave loading and lump sums.

You can override PAY-PACK's tax calculation. There may be some employees who want to pay more tax than required, and the package lets them overpay tax.

One-Off Pay Adjustments. This can cover back pay and bonuses. The adjustment can be an increase or decrease. A description of the adjustment will appear on the pay slip.

Leave Payments. In the pay run edit you can enter holiday pay, leave loading, sick pay, long service leave, rostered days off, and other pay such as compassionate leave.

Termination. PAY-PACK can automatically calculate unused annual leave and long service leave. PAY-PACK calculates tax on these lump sums depending on the different rates for leave accrued before August 1978 and August 1993. You can enter details of other lump sums such as severance, redundancy and superannuation payouts. The lump sum will appear in the appropriate position on the Payment Summary. For Eligible Termination Payments, PAY-PACK prints the ETP PS.

Bonuses, sales commissions and other irregular payments are treated by PAY-PACK. For such payments you can opt for tax averaging taking into account the total earnings and tax paid for the year-to-date.

Holiday Shutdown. For many companies the most complicated pay run of the year is just before Christmas when all or many employees are taking their annual leave. PAY-PACK has a special easy-to-use pay run just for this situation. It allows for different employees taking different periods of leave.

General Reports. Apart from the pay run reports, PAY-PACK has a wide variety of reports that can be done at any time. Each report can be printed or displayed on the screen. For most of these reports there are many options. The reports include:

Individual Employee Report showing all information.
Detailed Employee Report. It can print all information or be restricted to partial information such as leave details, allowances or pay details. It can print provisions for the various leave accruals: holiday, long service, sick, RDO and leave loading.
Ad Hoc Employee Report. You can make your own report choosing those details you want printed.
Report of Leave.
Report of Lump Sums.
Hourly Rate Reports.
Reports of Allowances and Deductions.
Pay Run Summary, also called Totals of Pay Report. This is useful for monthly group tax remittances, or for calculating payroll tax and workers' compensation premiums.
Monthly Reports of Departments; Deductions and Allowances; and Employees.
History Reports. All information from pay runs is stored, letting you recover information from missing reports, or to satisfy enquiries about workers' compensation or by Social Security. The history reports can be by Employee; Pay Run; Department; or Grouping.
Superannuation Guarantee Report.
Training Guarantee Report.

When wage rates change. If there has been a National Wage adjustment, PAY-PACK lets you change all hourly rates by either a percentage or by adding a fixed increment to each rate. It is also easy to change the wage rate for an individual.

When tax rates change. Custom-Made Software Pty Ltd sends instructions on how to change the rates to each maintenance service customer. It takes between five and ten minutes to make these changes.

Other Tax Scales. PAY-PACK can accommodate other tax scales such as flat tax rates for prescribed payments or non-working directors.

End of Year Processing. The end of the financial year is one of the most trying times for payroll administrators. PAY-PACK handles this in a very effective way. By a simple menu option, you create a second set of PAY-PACK data files for the new year. All present employees are included in the new files and all year-to-date values are set to zero. The files for the old year are still available so that you can print Payment Summaries and reports at your leisure.

Payment Summaries (the replacement for Group Certificates). These can be printed for all employees or for an individual. PAY-PACK can itemise those allowances that an employee may claim for, such as travel or clothing. All untaxed allowances are itemised, PAY-PACK printing the amount and a description. For terminated employees PAY-PACK prints lump sums in the appropriate boxes. PAY-PACK prints a separate Payment Summary for ETP’s.

PAY-PACK offers two alternatives for printing group certificates:

Directly onto the Australian Taxation Office forms. Because these are very flimsy, PAY-PACK has extensive procedures to cope with the practicalities of lining up, paper jams and paper breaks.
Self-print, onto plain paper. Each employee is printed on a separate A4 page with the original and the employee's copy. PAY-PACK produces a diskette for the ATO. This can be done for Laser printers. and PAY-PACK for Windows can also do this for inkjet and Bubblejet printers.

Labels. There are three occasions when PAY-PACK lets you print labels:

Labels for pay slips;
Labels for time sheets;
Labels for Payment Summaries.

Non-employees (such as Voluntary Agreements). You specify a percentage tax rate for each sub-contractor. PAY-PACK prints the Payment Summary form for each payee at the end of each year.

Installing PAY-PACK. To install the package simply insert the distribution diskette. A screen will prompt you to specify the disk drive you are copying from, and the location you are copying to. Normally this takes about one minute. You are then ready to load information about employees. When assistance is required you can refer to the manual or telephone Custom-Made Software Pty Ltd.

PAY-PACK Manual. Various topics are arranged in alphabetical order with a comprehensive index. There is a section on installation.

Earnings for the Year-to-Date. Before the first pay run, PAY-PACK lets you enter the current year-to-date values for each employee for earnings, tax, allowances and deductions; and lump sums for ex-employees. After the first pay run, you can only alter the year-to-date values by a pay run that can be audited. Any payroll package that lets you change these values without audit is prone to manipulation.

Audit Features. Any change to annual salary or wage rates will be reported in the next pay run. A summary of all pay runs can be printed at any time.

Passwords. PAY-PACK lets you set up three passwords that give different levels of access. Before starting a PAY-PACK session you must enter a valid password.

Power Interruptions. If there has been any interruption to your computer while PAY-PACK is in progress, there is a menu option called validation of data which checks whether the PAY-PACK data files have been damaged.

Backup & Restore. There are menu options to backup and restore the data files.