The following step-by-step narrative sets forth the general order of the necessary procedures that comprise Costpoint's payroll processing function. You must take these steps each time you process the payroll from the employee's timesheets. We recommend that you review the related topics for Costpoint Labor and Leave in conjunction with this step-by-step narrative.
Before entering timesheets and creating payroll, it is important that you make entries in each of the screens in the order listed below. For current employees, verify that the information is accurate and up-to-date. The most important information relates to rates of pay and withholding claims and allowances. You can run the Print Employee Setup Report to aid you in this task. The required screens in the order in which they must be entered are:
Before the payroll can be processed and amounts paid to employees, you must enter a timesheet for each employee.
If you are using Costpoint Leave, compute leave at this time.
The timesheet must be accurate. Review it by printing the Timesheet Edit reports. Make any necessary edits on the Manage Timesheets screen. If edits are made, reprint the Timesheet Edit reports. All of these functions are located in Costpoint Labor
Computing payroll calculates each employee's gross pay and related tax withholdings and other deductions. These amounts are used in Costpoint Payroll when the employees are paid.
After payroll has been computed, you can access the gross pay, withholding, and other deduction information for each employee through the Payroll Edit Report or through the Manage Payroll Records screen. We suggest that you first print the Payroll Edit Report (Print Payroll Edit Report screen). This provides the easiest way to review each of the records in the Manage Payroll Records screen. When reviewing the report, verify that the employee is receiving the proper amount of gross pay and that the withholdings and deductions were properly computed based on the information you provided in the above tables (Step 1) and based on the number of hours reported on the timesheet. Review leave accrued and taken. Mark corrections as you find them so the corrections can easily be made in the Manage Payroll Records screen. If you discover any payroll variances (for example, gross pay does not equal the total of the pay type amounts), correct them before printing paychecks.
After you have determined the corrections that must be made to the payroll, enter these corrections on the Manage Payroll Records screen so that the withholding amounts are correct for each employee's paycheck. The most common corrections are those relating to tax withholding and other deduction amounts.
You may find that gross pay is incorrect, due to either an incorrect rate of pay on the Manage Employee Salary Information table or an incorrect timesheet. Make these types of corrections (that is, to gross pay) only by entering correction timesheets; see Correction Timesheets for more information.
If you made changes in the Manage Payroll Records screen, or if you entered correction timesheets and reprocessed timesheets, reprint the Payroll Edit Report.
If corrections have been made to timesheets and leave is accrued based on hours, you must recompute leave.
After verifying the timesheets are correct and the payroll is correct, post the labor distribution. If you fail to Post the Labor Distribution before printing paycheck or direct deposit advices, leave taken in the timesheet period does not appear on the paycheck for direct deposit stub.
After timesheets are correct and leave has been accrued and verified, post the leave accrual.
After you have reviewed the payroll and made all of the necessary corrections, you are ready to print the paychecks. Always print a test check first to make sure the checks are properly aligned in the printer.
If you are using the Direct Deposit feature, you can perform the direct deposit steps at this point. Please refer to the Direct Deposit of Payroll topic for procedures on Direct Deposit.
After each payroll is processed and before you can create payroll for the following pay period, you must print the Payroll Journal and post it to the General Ledger. In addition to posting the withholdings and amounts paid to employees in summary form to the General Ledger, Costpoint also posts, by employee, the amounts paid and the leave taken and accrued to the Employee Earnings table. Fringe benefits (such as employer FICA, FUTA, SUTA, and Employer contributions) are also posted to the General Ledger and to Employee Earnings at this time.
After posting the Payroll Journal to the General Ledger, you can close the pay period. We generally recommend that you leave the payroll period open until you are ready to enter or create payroll in the next pay period.