Pay Employees (pay runs)

Pay Employees is where you pay people. Each pay run covers one pay period for everybody on one pay frequency. You open the period, SeroBooks calculates each employee's gross pay, deductions, employer contributions and net pay, and then you approve it, post it to the ledger and record that the money has gone. Each step is its own button because each one commits you to a little more.

Open it

• Employees ▸ Pay Employees
• Home Page ▸ Employees band ▸ Pay Employees

Before your first pay run

• The five payroll accounts are mapped in Company ▸ Accounting Setup. See Accounting Setup.
• Your employer account is entered in Employees ▸ Payroll Setup. See Payroll Setup.
• Every employee is set up in the Employee Centre with a province of employment, a pay frequency, a rate and their TD1 (or W-4). See Add or edit an employee.

The pay runs list

The screen is titled Payroll, with the number of pay runs as its subtitle. Its note reminds you that every deduction comes from the tax tables for the payment date of each run, not today's, so a run looked at years later shows the figures the employee was actually paid.

Runs are listed newest payment date first. Double-click a row, or select it and press Enter, to open the run. The list has the usual search, sorting, filters, Columns, Email and Export controls.

When Open a pay period is disabled

If a red No tax year is loaded or amber The tax year has not been checked banner shows above the list, the payroll tax tables for the current year are not ready for your company, and SeroBooks will not calculate deductions it cannot trace to the government's published tables. Open a pay period stays disabled until they are. Contact SeroBooks support; the banner may include a line of technical text that tells support exactly what is needed.

Step 1: Open a pay period

1. Press Open a pay period.
2. Fill in the Open a pay period window.
3. Press Open period. The new run appears in the list with the status draft.

Messages you may see in the window:

Step 2: Open the run and calculate

Double-click the run in the list. The pay run page is titled Pay run, and its subtitle shows the period, the payment date and the status. Its note reminds you that figures are stored as they were calculated, so the run reads the same next year.

Press Calculate.

If the run includes hourly employees

SeroBooks collects their hours before calculating:

1. The Where are the hours coming from? window asks whether to use the time clock or typed hours.
   • From the clock opens the Hours from the clock review for this run's own period and frequency. It lists any punches that need fixing first. Press Use these hours when every punch is accounted for; the button stays unavailable while anybody is blocked by a missing punch or when there are no hours. See Timesheets.
   • Type them opens Hours for this period, with an Hours box for each active hourly employee on this frequency. Enter each person's hours and press Calculate.
2. SeroBooks calculates the run with those hours.

Hours from the clock are better when you have staff in Alberta or British Columbia, where overtime starts after eight hours in a day: the clock gives hours day by day, while typed hours are a period total and are priced as one.

When the calculation succeeds, a green Calculated done. message appears, the status becomes calculated, and the table fills in.

What the run shows

Four totals across the top:

The table has one row per employee:

Calculate again as often as you need

Calculating is free and repeatable until the run is approved. Corrected a salary, fixed a timesheet or assigned a deduction? Press Calculate again: the run's lines are deleted and written again. Nothing outside the run changes.

Messages when calculating

Deductions that would not fit

If an employee's net pay is not enough to take every deduction, SeroBooks takes what it can in priority order and records the rest. An amber banner on the run says how many deductions would not fit and the total that could not be taken, and lists each one: employee, deduction, amount short and the reason.

When one of them is legally mandatory (a garnishment or support order), the banner adds in red that an amount an employer fails to remit under a court order is the employer's liability, not the employee's. Contact the court or agency that issued the order before you approve the run.

Step 3: Check the payslips

Double-click an employee's row to open their Payslip. The subtitle shows the employee, the province they are employed in and the payment date. The payslip lists:

• Earnings
• Withheld from the employee
• Employer contributions — a cost, never withheld
• Net pay

Each line shows the amount and, beside it, what the rate was applied to (on $2,000.00). That basis is the figure a year-end slip reports alongside the amount, for example pensionable earnings in T4 box 26 next to the CPP in box 16.

Step 4: Approve

When the figures are right, press Approve. The Approve this pay run? window explains that approving adds this pay to each employee's year to date, which is what every annual ceiling (the CPP and EI maximums) is measured against, and that it cannot be undone and the run cannot be recalculated afterwards.

• Approve approves the run. The status becomes approved.
• Not yet closes the window.

SeroBooks refuses to approve a run that is not calculated, or one with no lines.

Step 5: Post to the ledger

Press Post to ledger. SeroBooks writes one balanced journal dated on the payment date and the status becomes posted.

Posting the same run again replaces its journal lines rather than adding to them, so a retry never doubles a payroll.

Step 6: Pay people and mark the run paid

What to pay everybody

Once the run has been calculated, a What to pay everybody button appears above the table, with a line saying how many payments are checked and ready and their total, or how many problems would make the payment unsafe to send.

Press it to open Paying run number. The page shows:

• A banner: either every account validated and the total reconciled to the run's net pay, or the number of problems. Nothing should be paid until the problems listed under the banner are fixed.
• A table of payments: Employee, Institution, Transit, Account (masked) and Amount. People with no bank details on file are not in the table.
• The bank file card. SeroBooks does not produce a CPA 005 direct deposit file, because each bank lays out the file differently. Use this table to make the payments through your bank, and to reconcile the totals.

Press Back to return to the run.

Mark paid

When the transfer has actually gone, press Mark paid on the run. The Mark this run paid? window explains that this clears the net pay out of the liability account, dated today, and that you should do it only when the money has actually left.

• It has gone records it. SeroBooks debits net pay owed to employees and credits the bank account payroll is paid from, and the status becomes paid.
• Not yet closes the window.

If SeroBooks replies that no bank account is mapped for payroll, the account payroll is paid from has not been set for your company. Contact your administrator or support.

Reversing and correcting a pay run

Once a run is approved it cannot be edited or recalculated, only reversed. Use this when a run turns out to be wrong after approval.

1. Open the run and press Reverse (shown for approved, posted and paid runs).
2. In the Reverse this pay run? window, type Why (for example a wrong timesheet or a missed deduction). If you leave it blank, SeroBooks records Corrected.
3. Press Reverse.

SeroBooks takes the pay back out of every employee's year to date and, if the run was posted, writes a reversing journal dated today, because the original period is usually closed by the time the error is found. The original journal stays in the record beside it.

If the run had been marked paid, the payment is not reversed: the money genuinely left. What remains is a debit balance in net pay owed to employees, which is what an overpayment is. When the corrected run posts, the difference left over is what is owed to or by the employee.

To pay the corrected figures:

1. Open the reversed run and press Re-issue corrected.
2. SeroBooks creates a new draft run for the same period and frequency and opens it. Its payment date is today, so the correction's deductions use today's rates and land in the current remitting period rather than one you may already have filed.
3. Fix whatever was wrong (the employee's setup, the hours, a deduction), then Calculate, Approve, Post to ledger and Mark paid as usual.

Permissions

Each step needs its own permission under Payroll ▸ Pay Runs, so different people can do different steps:

If your role lacks one, SeroBooks asks someone whose role has it to approve that action. See Roles and permissions explained.

Reports

• Payroll Register lists every pay line in a date range: gross, each deduction, net and employer cost.
• Payroll Summary by Employee rolls the same pays up per person; it is what a T4 is reconciled to.

See Employees & Payroll reports.

Common problems

• An employee is missing from the run. They are inactive, on a different pay frequency, or not on the payroll yet. Fix their setup in the Employee Centre and calculate again.
• Net pay looks too high or too low. Open the payslip and compare each line's basis and amount. Check the TD1 claim amounts, the province of employment and any benefits or deductions assigned.
• CPP stopped part way through the year. The employee reached the annual maximum; this is correct. Approving a run is what counts pay towards the maximum, which is why approval cannot be repeated.
• The Net pay owed account has a balance after everybody was paid. A posted run has not been marked paid, or a reversed run left an overpayment. Check the runs with status posted and reversed.

Related articles

• Timesheets
• Employee Centre
• Payroll Items (benefits and deductions)
• Pay Payroll Liabilities (remittances)
• Vacation and banked time
• How each transaction posts to the books