Frequently Asked Questions

Copy is intended to work within the same company to make it easier to add new employees, that is the new employee will be similar to existing employees in the same company. It removes all of the employee's personal information – such as employee number, name, address, bank accounts and leave accruals. It keeps details such as employment condition, department, pay points, standard hours and rates, templates, default pay items, deductions and super funds.

Import, on the other hand, is intended to be used when an employee is moving between companies. Import is run from the destination company, and allows you to search for the employee in the source company. It terminates the employee in the source company and transfers any leave balances with the employee details. YTD figures are left in the source company. It also transfers personal details such as employee name, addresses, characteristics, Tax info, standard hours and pay items, however it loses employment conditions, pay defaults and some other detail

No, you cannot automatically re-use the employee number of an archived employee. If it needs to be reused on another employee, you will need to change the employee number of the archived employee to a new number. This then frees up the old number to be reused.

An employee will be archived at year end if they were terminated in the year that has ended. They will have a termination date specified in the termination screen.

No, this function is not yet implemented.

The system remembers the previous 25 searches. You cannot clear it, but it only stores the last 25 searches, the 26th search will drop off the list.

In the Employee-Deduction screen you specify the Rate that the deduction will be deducted at, along with the initial balance. HR3pay will reduce the Balance by the Rate when each pay is updated. The deduction will finish when the balance is $0.

In the Employee-Deductions screen you specify a Commenced and Final date. The deduction will only be deducted from the Employee's pay if the Commenced date or Final Date falls wholly or partly within a payrun pay period range.

This is known as a Tax Variation. To implement the variation, open the Employee screen, then select the Tax tab on the right hand side. Select the Tax Variation checkbox, enter the date range for the variation in the Start and Finish boxes and finally enter the % rate in the Rate box e.g. 20% = 20. Do not edit the rate stored in the Tax Scale, nor change which tax scale the employee is set to, as once HR3pay reaches the end of that date range it will need to revert back to their original tax scale.

You need to set the User Security levels . Security levels are from 1-9. Employee levels are 0-9.

In the security section, user level 5 means that that user will able to see employees whose employee levels in the master file has been set between 0 and 5.

An employee level of 0 is the default when creating an employee record, since the minimum user level is 1, an employee at level 0 can be seen by everyone.

User levels are set in User Maintenance, employee level is set at step 3 of the Employee Creation Wizard or on the security tab of the employee file.

It is possible that an employee level has been set to a particular level, such as 5 but the user level for that employee has been set to 4. Therefore that user will not be able to access their own details.

If an employee is exempt (i.e. they have lodged the required paperwork (Flood levy exemption declaration NAT73797) to claim a Flood Levy exemption), you have two options:

One option is to not make any changes in HR3pay for that employee, and they will receive a rebate in their tax return (if applicable). Alternatively, add a tax rebate into their master file for the amount of the levy using the ‘X02 – Additional Tax $ Based’ Pay Item. For employees between $50,000 and $100,000 per annum this ranges from zero to $250 and should be expressed as a negative amount per pay (e.g. $-4.80 per week for $250 per annum).

If doing the tax rebate option, you’ll need to add this to Deductions in the employee master file. Hrs/Units should be ‘1’, the rate will be the negative value required, and the dates will be 1/7/11 to 30/6/12.

• Taxable income refers to the total taxable payments
• Non-taxable refers to any post-tax payments (does not show deductions)
• Gross pay refers to the total taxable and non-taxable (does not show deductions)
• Tax withheld is as calculated
• Deductions refers to post-tax only
• Net refers to taxable income + non-taxable – tax - deductions

The payrun locking mechanism prevents a second user adding, amending or removing an employee who is being edited in the payrun by another user.

There are three possible reasons:

1. Employee has been terminated previously
2. Employee is suspended (for example, maternity leave)
3. Employee is on leave, meaning that the finish date of their leave is greater than the period ending date of the current Payrun. May not be incorrect – depends if they have been paid in advance or not.

It can also happen that the leave dates have been incorrectly entered and even though the employee has returned to work, they won’t appear as the dates are wrong. Check their leave dates in the master file, leave history – if the dates are incorrect, you can edit them here.

Also check the last leave finish date on the balances screen. If a payrun was reversed, this date is not changed as part of the reverse (HR3 can’t tell if it was entered as part of the reversed payrun or not so doesn’t change it, previous value is not stored anywhere).

If, for example, an employee is paid fortnightly and in this payrun is also receiving two weeks annual leave paid in advance; then you change pay period quantity to two so they are taxed over four weeks. This can be changed during the Payrun for a particular employee. In the Master tab or on the Leave window adjust the pay period quantity figure. Enter the total number of weeks covered by the pay.

Applying a change in master tab also changes the leave tab and vice versa

Go to Maintain company details | preferences | payrun preferences

If possible perform the cheque payment as a separate payrun. Otherwise enter the bonus as normal and then include a deduction after tax for the full amount of the bonus.

This is deliberate – there is an issue with the current firebird database which causes the payrun not to update when the / or \ is in this field. It may not be an issue with later releases but for the moment use the – character as date separator.

In the employee file you can apply a protected earnings amount to a deduction, which specifies the minimum net pay they must receive. This is commonly used with child support or other garnishee wages. A deduction with protected earnings must be an after tax deduction and must be placed at the top of the list if there is more than one deduction. You must place the protected earnings amount only on the deduction you wish to reduce. If in the payrun the net pay falls below the PE amount, the deduction will be reduced accordingly.

To process a payrun/adjustment where the net pay is negative, the employee must be added to the payrun as an Adjustment. To do so, at the top right hand side of the Payrun ‘Employee Pool’ screen, click on the down arrow next to the Add to Payrun button and select Add as Adjustment.

In addition, as you cannot pay a negative EFT, the pay method for this payrun must be changed to either Cash or Cheque. Select Payment Method from the Master tab, on the right hand side of the screen.

Do you have the latest tax scales installed ? HR3 issues changes to the tax scales as required by the ATO, usually coinciding with the end of the financial year. If you are concerned that your tax scales are not up to date, please do not hesitate to contact HR3pay support.

HR3pay implements the rules set out in the Australian Taxation Office’s ‘Statement of Formulas’ to calculate tax deductions (NAT 1004). There can be a difference between the tax calculated using these formulas versus the published Fortnightly and Monthly tax tables due to rounding issues. You cannot use the Fortnightly or Monthly tax tables directly, you must use the Weekly tax table with the employees equivalent weekly income amount.

If you would like to confirm that HR3pay is calculating the correct amount of tax, use the formula provided in NAT 1004 for the relevant financial year from the appropriate scale for that employee.

If your pay cycle is not weekly, you will first need to convert the earnings amount to a weekly figure. Next, round the weekly income figure to the next whole dollar amount before processing the calculation through the formula. You will then need to convert back from weekly to whatever the employee’s pay period is to complete the tax calculation.

HR3pay gives you the ability to reverse the last payrun updated which is not necessarily the highest payrun run number. Eg: Payrun number 3 might have the highest payrun number and latest date, but payrun number 2 was actually updated after payrun number 3. In this case the ‘Reverse a Payrun’ option will only be available for Payrun run number 2.

Have you selected the appropriate HECS tax scale or just ticked the HECS checkbox? You need to do both. In most cases, the Tax Free Threshold Claimed + HECS Tax scale is the appropriate scale.

If this is set correctly, you will need to check the gross income level. For the 2008/2009 financial year an employee does not start to repay HECS/HELP until their gross income reaches $799 per week.

The amount of extra tax deducted by HR3pay for HELP is built into the tax scales in HR3pay. It is not shown separately on the payslip because the HELP debt for the financial year is not actually finalised until the employee lodges the tax return for that financial year.

• If there are payments to be made then enter these on the termination tab during a payrun, and add the termination date and reason.
• If there are no payments to be made, such as in the case of casuals, then you can terminate them in the master file.

You can turn off auto tax and enter manual tax for all items except ETP tax – this has to be entered on the details tab of termination window.

If the employee was terminated but still appearing in leave reports such as a casual who was not terminated in the payrun you will need to turn off the leave accruals option for that employee. Go to the employee's file and then select the Leave Balances-Details tab, deselect Accrue Leave.

You need to define the bank details in the employee masterfile.

It can be changed when generating the file in the payrun. You do not have to use the default filename, however you do need to ensure that it has the correct file extension, namely .ABA.

You cannot specify two different pay methods at once, you can however set up a deduction after tax that is called ‘Pay by cheque’ or similar.

This is stored for each company bank account under Company | Maintain company | Company Bank. It must be supplied by the bank and is mandatory if you will be paying via EFT. If you have already processed a payrun, you can add it afterwards and regenerate the EFT file.

The following process refers to reprinting a payslip for your current payrun only ! If you are trying to reprint a payslip from a previous payrun you must use the Reports – Historical – Pay Advice reprint option

To reprint a pay advice for your current payrun:

From navigator select Payroll | Payrun | Re-print pay advices

or

From Report Explorer select the Pay Advices folder - select the FinYear/Week No OR period end date OR run number.

• A global message can be added in the payrun when setting the pay period. This prints in the header of payslip.
• For an individual employee, in the Employee file under Default pay settings, or in Payrun on the Master tab – enter the text in pay advice note field. This prints on the payslip in the heading section. Once entered in the employee file it is permanent while one entered in the payrun is only for that payrun. Updating the payrun deletes the temporary entry but the permanent message stays in the employee file.
• Can have both global and individual messages.

See Step 10 Emailing Payslips.

You will only be able to email payslips if the employee has an email address set up in their employee master file. You also need to select the Email Payslip checkbox in the Default Pay Settings tab of the employee's master file.

To add a password to an attachment, go to Tools | Settings | Email preferences.

Using the Encrypt button will cause HR3 to attach emailed reports as a PDF in a zip file. You can turn this on here or on the actual email report window (recommended option)

The Best practice is to:

Leave Encrypt and System Password blank, select Employee Password for emails. Then when emailing reports, you can tick encryption and enter an ad-hoc password, such as the day of the week backwards, DDMM etc. The recipients should be aware of the convention.

‘Use employee password’ – for emailing payslips. This uses employee password created on the employee security tab when emailing. The Payslip is then received as password protected pdf.

Termination items do not attract super because the relationship with the employer has ended.

For a change of super fund, delete the pay item ONLY from the old fund but leave the fund title in the master file. Add the new fund title and the super pay item. If an employee’s old fund has been deleted, the super reports won’t balance – check the System Reports | Historical | Superannuation | Superannuation Unlinked Funds Report.

During payrun, select the employee and go to super section. Add a $ based super pay item as unit 1 and $ = additional contribution for this pay. The standard 9% contribution should also be present.

This does not affect employee’s pay because it’s an employer contribution.

Note that if you manually override a super amount to $0, you will end up with an unbalanced super historical detailed report.

If the overpayment has not yet been sent to the super fund, adjust the payrun and re-update.

If the payment has been sent then underpay the contribution in next pay run

• Check that the employee’s eligible earnings for the week are higher than the minimum threshold specified in the Company’s financial year settings (in Company | Maintain Company | Financial Years).
• Check that the pay items for ordinary hours are set to accrue super . Open the pay item and look in the accrual section.
• Check the employee master file to make sure that the super fund is included for the employee, and that the relevant superannuation pay item is attached.
• Make sure that the super fund existed in the employee master file before the employee was added to the payrun.

In HR3pay, an Allowance must be ticked as taxable if you want HR3pay to increase the employee’s taxable income. Therefore, a Deduction must be ticked as taxable if you want to reduce an employee’s taxable income (e.g. Salary Sacrifice income).

• In Leave Balance, the Accrue Leave checkbox should be selected for all employees that you want to accrue leave, for example your casual employees may not accrue leave.
• Pay items should have ‘leave’ checked in the accruals section.
• In Pay Items, for those items which accrue leave, check the leave definition tab to make sure the leave will be accrued on the correct items
• In Payroll Framework check the employment conditions for increments / days per year.
• In the Employee file check the entitled date. This should be the next anniversary date of the employee’s hired date after the current date

Create a pay item as ‘leave without pay’. In the Payrun, add a line with this pay item and specify the number of hours, then put the dollar value as zero.

Leave loadings are defined under Employment Conditions. If there is a value under the Loading field on the Annual Leave tab, the employee with that condition will get leave loading.

• First set this up in Payroll Framework: select the leave pay item that you want to deduct from ordinary hours and tick Reduce Ordinary Time.
• During the payrun, enter some leave.
• Then in the Details tab in (P)ay Items, right click anywhere in the blank space – and select the Reduction of Ordinary Time option. If the option is not enabled, then either the ‘Reduce Ordinary Time’ option has not been selected correctly for the leave pay item (in Payroll Framework) or there is no leave transaction entered. Alternatively it may not be displayed if Auto balance leave trans to Emp Std Hrs (Std Hrs >0 only) has been activated.

Flexitime is like an irregular RDO. For an employee to accrue Flexitime, they must have the Flexitime option in Employee – Leave Balances switched on. Typically the employee will work some extra hours during a pay period (e.g. 44.00 instead of 38.00). In the payrun, their ordinary hours are entered as 44.00, and, using the LFL – Flexitime pay item, an entry of -6.00 is entered. This -6.00 is then added to the employee flexitime ‘bank’ and the employee receives their normal 38 hours in the payrun. The reverse is true when flexitime is paid out: ordinary time would be entered as 32.00 and flexitime as 6.00.

Leave accrual Pay Items are those that accrue an entitlement and therefore have a leave balance behind them. An example is annual leave. Leave non-accrual Pay Items are those that do not accrue an entitlement but are more of a ‘grant’. Some examples include Jury Duty, Compassionate Leave etc.

Note: Both leave accrual and non-accrual pay items can themselves accrue or not accrue leave. For example, Compassionate Leave is a non-accrual item but an employee being paid Compassionate Leave would still typically accrue their leave entitlements as if they were being paid ordinary time.

Essentially pro rata stores the current year’s accruals from the anniversary of the employee’s hired date up to the last day they were paid (ProRata date). Once the next leave entitlement date is reached, the balance in ProRata is added to the Entitled balance, and the ProRata balance is set back to zero.

Some awards provide for different settings in terms of payments of leave entitlements, hence HR3pay conveniently stores these balances separately.

For example, an award may specify that loading is payable on Entitled leave upon termination but not upon pro rata, other awards may specify that the ProRata leave cannot be taken, HR3pay makes this easy by storing separate balances for each.

There are a couple of possible reasons for this.

Firstly, go to Maintain company and then click on the General Ledger tab on the right. Check that the Enable General Ledger payrun transactions check-box is selected. If this is switched on, then you may not have entered any G/L debit and/or credit codes against your pay items. See General Ledger for more information on setting up your general ledger.

Things to check:

• Have any new departments or pay items been added that have not been given a G/L code?
• Are the correct debit and credit codes in place?
• Do you have payment, leave, and termination pay items set up as debits and deductions, tax, net pay etc setup as credits? Do you have employer SGC contributions setup as both debit/credit?
• Try rebuilding your GL chart by going to Payroll | General Ledger | Maintain GL Codes in the Navigator, and selecting Chart Load for each of your Cost Centres.

Check the System Reports | Historical | Superannuation | Superannuation – Unlinked Funds Report. The employees may appear here.

If so, check if:

• An employee recently changed funds. The old fund TITLE needs to remain in the master file without a pay class attached.
• Have any employees recently been imported into the company from another company? The system may not have been able to match the super fund in the new company. In the employee file, make note of the joined date, member number and codes. Delete and re-add the fund.

This can be generally resolved by either reselecting this employee’s Title (Mr, Mrs etc.) on the employee screen or by placing a tick in the ‘Preferred’ check-box on one of this employee’s addresses.

Alternatively, the report could be limited to return only a specific range of data. Therefore, re-run the report, taking note of what Filter criteria you are setting in place – perhaps the employee is not in that department, perhaps the employee is terminated but terminated is not checked and so on.

You printed the payslip using the normal ‘System Reports - Pay Advices’ option instead of the ‘System Reports – Historical – Pay Advice Reprint’ function.

Not all reports in HR3pay are exportable to csv format. As the csv format is designed to export rows and columns of data to Excel, only reports that are formatted in rows and columns can be exported using this format. Complex reports that contain multiple sub-reports (e.g. Employee Details) cannot export via CSV. In the case where you have exported a report to csv and the report is blank once opened, use the Excel export format as an alternative to CSV.

The earnings history data in Winpay only contained a summary of the payrun details and therefore did not contain the same amount of detail as the equivalent earnings history in HR3pay. There is a specific report designed to print Winpay historical data in HR3pay which can be found in System Reports | Historical | Employee Based | Classic Earnings History.

If an employee is setup for Tax Averaging as well as a Tax Variation; the Tax Variation will take precedence.

The weekly value of an employee's standard core hours, including any amounts that may be salary sacrificed.

Do not include any non-cash pay items which may be part of standard pay.

Do not include any allowances paid as part of standard pay.

Do not include any overtime, etc. that may be paid as part of standard pay.

If the employee was terminated this financial year you need to select Terminated Employees when printing Payment Summaries.

Does the employee have any YTD figures for the financial year? If they have no YTD figures, a Payment Summary will not print.

The number of weeks in the year is counted from the days your pay period ENDS on , so if your pay periods end on a Thursday, then enter the number of Thursdays in each month.

To create a financial year calendar see Setting up the financial year.

To check how the calendar has been set up, go to Company | Financial Years.

Select the calendar year you want, and drill down to the calendar. Here you can see how many weeks have been defined in each month, if you have set something up incorrectly, for example there are five weeks defined in May instead of four, click on the last week in May, and click the ‘down’ button on the menu. This will move that week out of May and into June.

Leave loading is automatically included in Gross and does not need to be shown separately.

1. Select the Workers Comp tab on the pay item
2. Tick the Workplaces where this pay item is included in the remuneration figure for workers compensation premium calculation

The employee's workplace is based on their Home Department.

HR3 uses short Australian date format: dd-mm-yyyy.

If you get an error message (Token unknown) on date fields for example when entering min/max dates in enquiry filter (reports) then check the correct date format in the regional settings of the computer – go to Windows Control Panel / Regional and Language Options / Regional Options / Customise / Date. (Please note that this may vary depending on the version of Windows you are using.) Change the date settings to short date DD-MM-YYYY and run the report again.

First of all, deletion needs to be enabled by unchecking the Positions Only box under Navigator | Security | System Preferences.

Then, for a position to be deleted from the org chart several criteria need to be met;

1. There can be no current incumbents in the position
2. If this is a Reporting Position, any positions that report to this position must either
• be re-assigned to report to another position or
• have no current incumbents and must have a ‘Redundant Date’

Now you can delete the position, select ‘Positions’ on the left hand side of the screen directly above the position you want to delete, then on the right hand side select the Position and select Delete.

If you were required to switch off ‘Positions Only’ in the first step above, switch it back on now.

To speed up employee selection, HR3pay maintains a local search cache of employees on your local PC or workstation. Occasionally, new employees entered on another workstation may not synchronise into your local search cache. This has not impacted your data in anyway. To refresh these files, select ‘Rebuild Search Files’ from the ‘Search’ menu at the very top of the screen in HR3pay.

If it is not clear from the error messages what you need to do next, we suggest you take screen shots of the message and email it to HR3 Support (support@HR3.com.au) or call Support while the message is still on the screen. If the message says 'Terminate', we strongly recommend that you click Terminate then restart HR3pay. Continuing to work after this type of message may corrupt your database.