Below, you’ll find the answers to the questions asked during the Navigating Payroll Module Features II webinar. This webinar covered:
Processing benefits while an employee is on leave.
Terminating an employee going on leave.
Extracting and exporting employee’s Record of Employment (ROE).
Here’s the video if you’d like to watch the webinar again.
Don’t miss out on the insights shared in the presentation. Check out the slides from the webinar, which are attached at the bottom of this article.
Processing Benefits While an Employee is On Leave
Often, an employee will reimburse the benefit portion of their benefits while on leave. Here, you’ll find all the questions relating to how to process the employee’s reimbursement of their benefits.
Q: If I don’t have a code for an employee’s payment to cover benefits while on leave, does Avanti need to set one up or can I add one?
A: Great question. If you don’t have an earning code setup for this, you’ll need to create one. You can assign the earning code the number that makes sense for your organization.
Q: How are the GL accounts set on the earning code used for employees’ payments to cover their benefits during leave?
A: If the GL on the earning code is set to Basic, it uses the GL from the Employment Data tab on the Employee Profile. If you need a different GL account, you can add it to the Earning Code on the Employee Profile.
Q: Can we use a manual cheque to record the employee payment of their benefits while on leave?
A: Yes, you can process using Manual Cheques. However, you’ll need to insert all the relevant information, including the GL accounts and any corresponding auto-generated codes.
Q: What if the employee only makes partial payments to cover their benefits during leave?
A: If your employee is only making partial payments, you can still use the earning code to record the payment. Partial payments create a negative payment on the Totals tab on the Employee Profile. Once the employee returns to work, the negative payment is automatically deducted from the employee’s first pay.
Q: Why are we tracking how the employee pays their benefits during leave using an earning code?
A: Since the employee’s cheque goes towards the benefit rather than the deduction portion paid by the employee, it gets captured as an earning code in Avanti.
Q: What if you notice a mistake with the employee’s benefit payment after the pay run was updated? Can you cancel and re-do it?
A: If a mistake is made and found after updating the pay run processing for this process, it is possible to cancel the pay run for the affected employees and then re-process with the right amounts.
Q: If we change an employee from salaried to hourly to ensure they aren’t paid when processing their payment to cover the benefits during leave, wouldn’t that show up on Employment History? Instead, can we overwrite salary in Payroll Data Entry?
A: Yes, you are correct. Changing between salary and hourly is included in Employment History. Using Override Salary in Payroll Data Entry is another good option.
Q: How does Avanti know how to apply the payment for benefits?
A: If there are insufficient Earnings to process Deductions, Avanti creates a negative payment using benefit code 913. The amount is processed as a negative figure, which you can find in Totals on the Employee Profile.
Once there are enough earnings in later pays, we’ll automatically deduct the amount owing using deduction code 903, Negative Payment Retrieved.
Q: When an employee’s partial payment of benefits creates negative payment, does the deduction code decline as the employee’s payments of benefits are processed?
A: Yes. As you process pay pay with earnings to cover the negative payment, the negative payment amount decreases by the amount deducted from the employee. You can see this on the Totals tab in the Employee Profile.
Once this amount owed reaches $0, no further deductions are taken from the employee and you’ll see the full amount of negative payments recouped in the Year-to-Date on the Employee Profile.
Q: When we have taken out the termination date and code to process the employee’s benefit reimbursement while on leave, can we rehire them once they return to work using Mass Rehire? Do we have to put the date and termination code back in first?
A: Yes, you’ll need to add the Termination Date and Code back on the employee before using Mass Rehire.
Terminating an Employee on Leave & Processing ROES
Q: How should I process a salaried employee going on maternity leave?
A: Take a look at the webinar recording starting at 19:43 for more information about terminating an employee going on maternity leave.
Q: When you extract ROEs for multiple employees, are the files save as separate extracts?
A: Avanti creates a file for you to upload to ROE Web. However, all employees with extracted ROEs are included in one file.