Mastering Payroll Week by Week: A Comprehensive Guide to Preparation and Execution
In the dynamic realm of business operations, managing payroll is a crucial task that demands precision and efficiency. This comprehensive guide is crafted to empower you with the knowledge and strategies needed to seamlessly prepare and run your payroll on a weekly basis. Navigating the intricacies of payroll processing is essential for ensuring accurate and compliant financial transactions within your organization. Whether you are a seasoned professional or navigating payroll for the first time, this article will provide you with step-by-step insights, tips, and best practices to streamline the payroll process, making it a manageable and error-free aspect of your weekly routine.- Before you can close your payroll for the week, you must ensure the information in the Week Details screen is correct and up to date. Please review this information carefully before proceeding to the next step.
- Ensure that you have set any leavers for this week before proceeding with the next steps. The leaving date can only be set in an open payroll in the last two weeks. This will create a holiday, bank holiday and lieu shifts to pay out any balances.
For help updating the Week Details Screen, click here!
For help setting your employee as a leaver, please click here!
- Once you are satisfied with the hours and additional payments being paid out for that week for your employees you will need to ensure that the overall daily sign-off has been completed for each day of the week. You can see an overview of this on the Sign-Off Monitor.
For help using the Sign-Off Monitor, click here!
- Once your daily sign-off has been completed in full for the week, you will need to navigate to "Week Costs" using the mega menu. Here you can access the Payroll Data for processing.
- Open the Payroll Data tab
- Change dates to the previous week using the calendar function in the top left of your screen.
- Download the Time Sheet Audit. This will show all hours worked/rostered to be sent to payroll.
- You will be directed to the Timesheet Audit Preview File screen, where you can see the progress of your download. This will also provide a breakdown of the site name, period start and end dates, payment frequency, file created at and file updated at time and date stamps for your reference.
- Once generated, click "Download Timesheet"
For more information about the Time Sheet Audit, click here!
- Once you have downloaded the Timesheet Audit you will now be able to generate and download the payroll export which is located under the Timesheet Audit Report.
- You will be directed to the Payroll Export screen, in this case, we are using MicroPay as an example of a payroll system. This will also provide a breakdown of the site name, period start and end dates, payment frequency, file created at and file updated at time and date stamps for your reference.
If a "Tips Statement" should be issued for this payroll period, you can leave the checkbox ticked. If you do not need to issue a "Tips Statement", make sure you uncheck the tick box!
- Once the export has been generated, an export button will appear. Click on the "Export" button
- Do NOT open the file as it may alter the data
- Follow the steps in Payroll Software to finalise payroll
Please be advised that your payroll provider's name will appear before "Export". In this example, the payroll provider is Mircopay.
- Lastly, if you wish you can download the Cost Analysis file for reference.
