New Payroll Template Setup

You must have a template set up under Payroll > New > Payroll in order to process a payroll run.

You will need separate templates created for different payroll runs when certain variables are different.  Situations that may cause you to create multiple templates include, but are not limited to the following:

Employees paid under differing Pay Periods - Example:  Weekly vs Semi-Monthly

Exclusion of Pay Adjustments on Specific Checks - Example: Exclusion of Insurance and Retirement withholding items on Bonus checks.

Setting up a Standard New Payroll Template for different Pay Periods

The first time you navigate to Payroll > New > Payroll, the list will be blank.  You will need to add at least one template to this list to be able to run Payroll.  For standard payrolls in which all Payroll Taxes and Payroll Adjustments are applicable to the paychecks, you will need to create one template per payroll period used at your company.

If your company pays all employees on the same schedule, only one template will be required. An example of this is a Weekly payroll schedule that applies to all employees in the company.

To set up a New Payroll Template, navigate to Payroll > New > Payroll

This will open the Payroll List which will show all New Payroll Templates created.  From this list, you can click on Add New to create a New Payroll Template or you can double-click on an existing New Payroll Template to edit.

In our example, we will be adding a New Payroll Template for a Monthly Payroll Period.  

1. Click on Add New from the Payroll List to open a new blank template.
2. Enter the Payroll Description
3. Click the radial for the Pay Frequencies to include.  I selected Monthly in my example.
4. Enter the Hourly Paid Through Date, Payroll Period Date, and Check Date for the first payroll you will run in the template.

4. Click Save or Save and Close at the top left to save the New Payroll Template to the list.

When you choose this template to run payroll, only employees that are assigned a Monthly Pay Frequency will populate.

Setting up a specialized New Payroll Template to exclude certain Payroll Items

A specialized New Payroll Template can be used when you have periodic payrolls that will exclude specific payroll items.  The example we will review covers checks paying only Bonus Gross Pay amounts. The checks are run quarterly and will exclude all payroll adjustments normally included on weekly paychecks.

When running a separate paycheck for Bonus Pay, you can use your normal template and manually change any Gross Pay and Withholding items that you want excluded to 0.00 for each employee.  This is a time consuming process, and it is much easier to set up a template to automatically exclude these items on a Special Payroll Template.

The first step in creating a Specialized Payroll Template is to create a new standard template with the Pay Frequency of the employees to be included.  

1. The Description of the Payroll Template should fully explain the purpose of the payroll run and the specialized details.  I have named my Specialized New Payroll Template: Bi-Weekly Employees Quarterly Bonus Pay - No Adjustments

2. Set the Pay Frequency to match what is set up on the Employees who will be included in these payrolls

3. Here are some important guidelines for setting the dates for Special Payrolls.
   1. Hourly Paid Through Date: This should match the last Hourly Paid Through Date for the most recent payroll run.  It is very important that dates that have not yet been paid are not included.  Including unpaid hours in your date here will result in excluding those hours from your next standard payroll run.  This date ONLY determines which time slips to include or exclude in the payroll run, so it is ok to set the date earlier than any of the other dates.
   2. Payroll Period Date: This will be the date through which the pay is calculated.  In my example, I am paying bonus for Quarter 3, including the dates July 1 - September 30.
   3. Check Date: This will be the actual check date and the date that the employee will receive the payment.  This is also the date on which any taxes become liable.

Now that my basic template is created, I am ready to customize the template for my Special Payrolls.  To customize the template, I will need to navigate to the Payroll Items tab on the lower portion of the template.

The Payroll Items tab of the New Payroll Template lists all Gross Pay Items, Adjustments, and Payroll Taxes that are set up in your system.  They are organized into the following categories:

Entity Type: Employee or Employer

Item Type: Gross Pay Items, Adjustments, Taxes, Employer Costs, Employer Taxes

There are checkboxes to the left of each item that can be selected or unselected to include or exclude the item from payroll.

Important: Taxes and Employer Taxes should never be excluded from a payroll without rigorous review and approval by your tax professional.  If you exclude any tax item from a payroll run, there will be no tracking of this income on your tax reports for the purpose of submitting forms, reports, and payments to governmental agencies.

Excluding Items from the Payroll Template

On the Payroll Items Tab, I want to use the filters in the Item Type column to easily find the items that I want to exclude.

1. Gross Pay Items - Since my Special payrolls will only include Bonus pay, I can exclude all other Gross Pay items from this template. I will filter my list to:

Item Type equals Gross Pay Items

Description does not equal Bonus or Promo Bonus

Once filtered, I can UNCHECK the listed Gross Pay Items that will not be used during these special payrolls.

2. Adjustments and Employer Costs - I also want to exclude any pay adjustments and employer costs that will not be included in the payroll.  In my example, I want to exclude all adjustments for insurance and allowances, but I want to include all 401k adjustments and employer contributions.   I remove all prior filters and then filter my list to:

Item Type equals Adjustments or Employer Costs.

Once filtered, I can UNCHECK all adjustments that I will not want included on the Bonus paychecks.  As you can see, I left the 401K and 401K EMPLOYER adjustments CHECKED so that the amounts would be included on the checks.

3. Taxes and Employer Taxes - I do NOT want to exclude any taxes from any payroll.  I recommend that you always verify that no Taxes or Employer Taxes have been accidentally unchecked and excluded during the processes above.  I remove all prior filters and then filter my list to:

Item Type equals Employer Taxes or Taxes

I scroll through the entire list to ensure that all items are CHECKED.  This list includes all tax items for all state and federal taxes, so it may be lengthy to scroll to the bottom.  Once verified, I remove all filters one final time and Save or Save and Close my Customized Payroll Template..

Running the Specialized Payroll

When running a specialized payroll, all items that are added to an Employee Payroll Template but are EXCLUDED from the payroll will be highlighted in RED.  You may see amounts on those lines, but the amounts will be excluded from the created paychecks.

I will enter the Bonus amount on each employee's Payroll Detail, then save the record.

The paystub generated will exclude the YTD information on all excluded items.  The next regular paystub will include all YTD figures, including those from this special payroll.  Because of the exclusion of YTD figures for excluded items, you will not want to use a Customized Payroll Template for the final payroll at the end of the calendar year.

Example showing the next regular paycheck including all detail.