TBA Specialist: HR and Payroll · about 10 hours

After this lesson you can #

• Set up time tracking, leave and overtime, and approve timesheets.
• Take a pay run from draft through approval and export to closing, and say what each stage does.
• Use pay plans, benefits, labor burden and deductions correctly.
• Say what TBA does and what your payroll service does, and how results come back.

Why it matters #

Payroll mistakes reach people’s paychecks. TBA tracks time, pay and cost; it is not the system that withholds taxes or pays employees, so a specialist knows exactly where TBA’s part ends.

Read #

• HR/Payroll Overview, Personnel Overview and Personnel Groups
• Timeclock and Kiosk and Time Tracking Calendar
• Timesheet Approval
• Leave Types and Policies, Leave Requests and Leave Balances
• Pay Codes Setup, Work Types Setup and Overtime Rules Setup
• Pay Runs
• Pay Plans and Benefits and Labor Burden
• Importing Payroll Results and Closing a Pay Run
• Labor Cost by Work Type Report, Timesheet Report and Payroll Summary
• Payroll Walkthrough

People, time and leave #

Employees clock in at the kiosk page without signing in (badge QR scan or manual entry, with an optional PIN), or are clocked in automatically when they sign in while Out. The In/Out board shows who is in. Pay rates are kept on the personnel record, effective from a chosen date. Overtime rules say when hours beyond a threshold are paid at a premium.

Timesheet approval has an administrator mode and a manager mode. A timesheet that was approved but whose hours have changed shows Changed, so it is approved again. Leave is earned under accrual policies, requested through TBA, and approved by the manager before the balance reflects it.

Pay runs #

A pay run goes Draft, Approved, Exported, then Closed. Create it for a period (at most about three months, and never overlapping another run), and TBA calculates the lines: time lines from hours, salary lines for salaried people, plan lines from pay plans, and employer-cost lines. Manual lines are your own and are never changed by a recalculation; only manual lines can be removed. Employer costs are shown but are not pay and never form the gross.

Approving locks the pay period so the hours and rates behind the run cannot change. If nothing has been done with it, a run can be reopened with the permission to do so, but not once the payroll service’s results have been imported. Only a Draft can be deleted. A company can switch on a warning when a run includes hours from timesheets that are not approved; it warns and leaves the decision to you.

Pay plans, benefits and deductions #

A pay plan adds commission, bonus or per-job pay to a run, and can be assigned to individual employees or to personnel groups. Benefits and labor burden are employer costs, calculated as a flat amount, a percent, or an amount per hour; labor burden is the extra cost of employing someone beyond wages.

Deductions are recorded for information, as a flat amount or a percent of that person’s gross on the run, and are capped at what the person earned. They are not lines of pay: the payroll service applies and remits them. TBA takes a snapshot of the deductions when the run is approved and drops it if the run is reopened.

The payroll service, closing and posting #

The payroll service calculates and withholds taxes, pays employees and files the returns. A court-ordered garnishment is withheld and remitted there, and TBA records what the service reports back. TBA exports the run’s pay lines in the format of the chosen interface; employees’ payroll service IDs are held on each person, and a template and import can fill many at once.

After the service runs payroll, import its results, then close the run. Closing compares TBA’s estimate with the actual results (for employees whose results were imported) and records a true-up. A closed run’s ledger entry cannot be voided, because the true-up depends on it. The Labor Cost report shows what labor cost, including employer costs.

Try it #

1. Set up a pay code, a work type and an overtime rule on a test company.
2. Record time for two people, approve their timesheets, and create a pay run.
3. Add a manual line, recalculate, and see that the manual line stays.
4. Approve the run, then reopen it and see what changes.
5. Add a percent deduction and a flat one, and check the cap when pay is small.

Check yourself #

Explain to a colleague what each stage of a pay run does, which jobs belong to the payroll service and not to TBA, and why a closed run cannot simply be edited. A Specialist exam is planned for a later release; the areas it will cover are the four sections above.