Business Assistant/Business Assistant.iso/acctg/payr222/paycycle.stx

Text File | 1990-03-05 | 9.6 KB | 161 lines

Screenfile PAYCYCLE.SCN Screen# 01

The pay cycle is started as a menu choice from the main PAYUSA menu.  Before
running a pay cycle the employees hours will have been entered with the
employee update program (also a menu choice from the main PAYUSA menu).

There are several informational screens on the way into the pay cycle, just
press any key at those screens to pass by them once you no longer need them,
then you will arrive at the above screen for entry of current and next pay
dates.

The current pay date will default to today's date, but you can change it by
typing over it.  The date entered is the date that will be shown on the checks.
The choice of date is not critical, you may wish to use the last day of the pay
period which the earnings are for, but whatever date you use you might find it
best to be consistant each pay (example, always the last day of the pay period,
or always the day the checks are distributed, etc.).

The entry for the next pay date is when you expect to be doing this again,
example current pay date + 14 days (or whatever the pay frequency is). The next
pay date is used to set up the screens for you, it is also used to determine
when we have come to the end of the year.  If the next pay date is in a
different (higher) year than the current pay date then special year end
processing is automatically done - year to date figures are transferred to the
W-2 file and the output employee year to date is set to zeroes to start the new
year (except for sick and vacation accruals), also at year end any terminated
employees are purged from the file.  The year end processing asks you to
confirm this is a year end before it starts (in case you accidentally entered
an incorrect year in the next pay date).

The pay cycle simple reads the employee records from the input directory
(normally \PAYIN), checks the employee status and if they are Active it
calculates the pay and taxes, updates the year to date figures and writes the
results on the output directory (normally \PAYOUT).  It does not immediately
overwrite the original data on \PAYIN in case you notice any major entry errors
(example, somebody was given 400 hours instead of 40 hours, etc) that you might
want to fix and re-run. However, it does set a switch in the configuration file
that says there are now two versions of the employee file so that you can be
automatically prompted to decide if it is O.K. to copy the employee file from
\PAYOUT to \PAYIN to make the effects of the pay cycle permanent before you
start making hours entry or any other changes for the next pay cycle.

The pay cycle also produces current and year to date accounting extract files
which are also written on \PAYOUT and are used to print checks or payslips,
payroll register, journal, etc.  As it runs, the pay cycle prints a status
report showing the results of the various edits that are applied to employee
data.

Screenfile PAYCYCLE.SCN Screen# 02

The pay cycle creates the files that the reports are printed from.  Once
created those files remain on the disk until the next pay cycle is run so you
can print the reports any time you wish before that next pay cycle. Conversely,
if it is pay day and you print reports without first running a pay cycle then
you will print whatever was created by the previous pay cycle.

The above menu is from the program that prints reports. It is accessible as a
choice from the main PAYUSA menu.  One choice we have people calling to ask
about is "F3 Set YTD or CURR as input file for F4/F6" because it appears to do
nothing but return to the above menu after displaying a sub menu for which file
to use.  Please be re-assured that even though no bells ring and nothing
special lights up on the screen it does in fact make that file choice and if
you select, for example, "F4 -  Print Payroll Register" after selecting the
year to date file with F3 then what you will get is a YTD Payroll Register.

Screenfile PAYCYCLE.SCN Screen# 03

The above screen is the sub menu that will appear if you select "F6 - Export
Files, Lotus, dBASE, PCF, NV" from the print report menu. Instead of printing a
report these choices will produce files that can be used by the programs listed
on this sub menu.  Essentially the same information that is printed on the
payroll register is put into those files.

Why bother, well you may be a keen dBASE programmer and you want to write a
dBASE program to print on a special check form that your company has used for
years because you happen to have 5000 checks sat in storage that you want to
use up, or you may be a spreadsheet user that wants to do some statistical
analysis, sorting, graphing, etc. on the current or year to date payroll
figures. Lotus spreadsheet programs can read .DIF but they must first translate
it to a .WKS or a .WK1 file for 123 or a .WRK or a .WR1 file for Symphony (see
your Lotus Utility Menu). If you prefer to use Borland's Quattro, or Quattro
Pro, to Lotus then select the "F2 dBASE III format" from the above menu as
Quattro can directly read a .DBF file right into a spreadsheet, just include
the file's .DBF extension when you retrieve it with Quattro.  With any
spreadsheet the data is loaded into individual cells but some fine tuning of
column widths and display formats may be needed to make it look attractive. You
may also want to reduce the size of your spreadsheet after it is first loaded
by deleting any rows or columns that are not needed for whatever it is you are
doing.

Screenfile PAYCYCLE.SCN Screen# 04

The above screen is the sub menu that will appear if you select "F8 Print
Employee Basic Info. and Labels" from the print report menu. Employee Basic
Info. is the first 3 screens of the employee record printed on standard 8 1/2 x
11 inch computer paper, one sheet per employee, and Employee Mailing Labels are
printed on standard 3 1/2 x 15/16 inch one wide computer labels.  It is all or
nothing, individual employees cannot be selected, but terminated employees can
be optionally excluded.

Screenfile PAYCYCLE.SCN Screen# 05

Printing of Government reports is started as a menu choice from the main PAYUSA
menu, but it is available to Registered Users only. This is not a part of the
ShareWare release because of disk space considerations (for marketing reasons
the ShareWare release has to fit on 2 diskettes) and also because it might
persuade you to Register to obtain these Government print programs.  The
information you need for these reports is built up from each pay cycle no
matter if it is the ShareWare or Registered User version that you are using.

If you do NOT wish to Register then most of the figures for the above forms can
be obtained in a more roundabout way from the YTD payroll Register (if you
print YTD at the end of each quarter and subtract the figures from the previous
quarter of the same year then the difference is for this quarter) but it will
involve you in more manual effort to do it that way.  In any event, you will
eventually reach the point where Federal Taxes change substantially, or where
the expiry date of the program is reached, and if you like the program you will
probably Register then to get the updates. So, you might as well do it now and
save yourself the effort of hand calculating figures for Government forms.
Early registration means you are already on our mailing list for tax updates
when the end of the year arrives so you will receive them just as soon as they
are available.

January is a very busy month with last minute Registrations. Delays shipping
disks can occur then due to the increased sales volume, plus regular mail from
Canada can take 7 to 10 days to reach you. New users who have delayed until the
last minute and are just then Registering sometimes find themselves having to
pay an additional $20.00 overnight shipping fee to be sure of receiving the
programs in time for their first pay. It helps both you and us to spread those
Registrations more evenly around the year.

Note that the program author receives nothing from ShareWare sales if the user
does not subsequently Register after he has tried out the program.  ShareWare
is a source of try before you buy programs, it is not a source of almost free
programs.  If you like the program and feel it will save you more in time,
error correction, and manual labour than it costs then the right thing to do is
to Register.  One of the worst headaches in any office is payroll, if $149.95
will make that headache any easier then it is well worth the cost.  Compared to
the cost of your time doing payroll $149.95 is a drop in the bucket.

Screenfile PAYCYCLE.SCN Screen# 06

If you are printing the 941 (Quarterly FICA/Fed.Tax) report or the Quarterly
State Unemployment report you can select which quarter (of quarters that have
been processed by PAYROLL USA) you wish to print. Normally you only need the
most recent COMPLETE quarter (the most recent quarter will be at the top of the
menu but it may not yet be complete, example 1990, Quarter = 1 is not complete
because at the time of writing this, in February 1990, only part of that
quarter had been processed).

Screenfile PAYCYCLE.SCN Screen# 07

If you are printing the 940 (Annual Fed. Unempl.) report you can select which
year (of years that have been processed by PAYROLL USA) you wish to print.
Normally you only need the most recent COMPLETE year (the most recent year will
be at the top of the menu but it may not yet be complete, example 1990 is not
complete because at the time of writing this, in February 1990, only part of
that year had been processed).