Pay Calc Numbering

Quite a few of you are adding benefits for your employees. Whether they’re Employee-paid, Employer-paid, or a combination, additional payroll calculations will need to be setup.

When setting up new payroll calcs, it’s as important to consider the numbering convention as it is to get the calculation rules and rates correct. For instance, if you already offer a 401k plan and have a pre-tax employee deduction, you may want to add a ROTH option (post-tax). It would be ideal to put this new employee deduction calc near the existing 401k calculations. For many of our clients, these might be in the 90-range. When we help with the paycalc setup, we usually leave numbers in between so when new options are added, there’s room to keep them together.

Similarly, you may find that you need additional garnishment or child support calcs; maybe someone has more than one child support order, or all your others are dollars/week and now you have a percent/week. Having these deductions in a specific range such as the 40’s would allow you to add a calc within the group.

For those of you with unions, when adding a new union, we recommend choosing a new number range and keeping the employer calcs together, leave a little room, then the employee deductions. Again, leave room; unions are notorious for adding new categories with their own special rules! –CMW