Payroll items comprise the wages, deductions, and benefits, etc. that are used to build the paycheck, track liabilities, and determine what accounts should be affected when paying employees.
A district payroll item (DPI) contains the default settings for the payroll item. The district payroll item is then copied to an employee position and becomes an employee payroll item (EPI), at which point it can be modified independently without affecting any other employee.
Throughout the year, payroll items will need to be updated as insurance plans change premiums, employees update their retirement contributions, the district re-organizes accounts, or mistakes need to be corrected. This article explains how to edit existing payroll items.
Whenever you edit payroll items, reference payroll item options for explanations of what each field does.
There are three types of edits to payroll items:
Edit district payroll items
When you need to change the default settings of a payroll item, start by editing the district payroll item. This step does not affect employee payroll items; it only affects the settings that will be used when adding the DPI to future employee positions. If you need to change existing data on employees, you should mass edit employee payroll items.
To edit a district payroll item:
- Go to Financials Main > Payroll > District Payroll Items
- Edit a payroll item
- Make changes as necessary
- Save or Save & Mass Edit Employee Payroll Items
Mass edit employee payroll items
The Mass Edit option is used to apply changes to many EPIs at once. It can be pushed down to employees (so that future payroll runs will be affected), payroll item templates (so that future employees whose EPIs are copied from a template will be affected), and/or existing draft payroll runs (so the payroll run you are currently working on will be affected).
When you mass edit, you must select the specific fields that you want to update. The system does not automatically push updates to all fields.
To mass edit employee payroll items:
- Go to Financials Main > Payroll > District Payroll Items
- Mass Edit Employee Payroll Items
- Select the payroll item
- Modify the fields that you want to change, if they haven’t already been corrected on the DPI
- Check “Update” next to those same fields
- Check the data (Employees, Payroll Item Templates, and Draft Payroll Runs) that should receive this update
- Save
For example, if health insurance premiums are rising, change the Amount and check “Update” next to that field. If an item should have been marked as reducing taxable income, change the Tax field to a minus sign (-) and check the box before the word Tax.
Edit individual employee payroll items
Employee payroll items may also be edited individually while looking at a single employee. This is common in scenarios such as one employee changing their voluntary retirement contributions or individual adjustments to insurance plans.
To edit a single payroll item:
- Go to Financials Main > Human Resources > Employees - Single View
- Select an employee
- Go to the Payroll tab
- Edit the item and make any necessary changes
- The default behavior is to push the changes down to affect any existing draft payroll runs. If you want the change to affect only future payroll runs, uncheck the Draft Payroll Runs to Update.
- Save