The setup of pay periods and pay period groups (PPGs) has many impacts on various aspects of payroll. Careful consideration must be taken when configuring these settings at your district. This article outlines the implications you will want to consider as you decide how many pay periods to build, how to name them, and how to pick the start and end dates.
Pay Period Descriptions
Multiple Sets of Pay Periods
Crossing Fiscal Years
Hourly Employees
Salaried Employees
Stipend Pay, Bonus Pay, etc.
(IL) TRS Considerations
(MO) Summer Pay
Effects on Attendance and Substitutes
Pay Period Descriptions
We recommend that all pay periods be renamed with a description that includes the pay date on which the pay period will be used.
For example, if you pay 12 times per year, on the 20th of every month, you should have pay periods named something like July 20th, August 20th, September 20th, etc. or 7/20, 8/20, 9/20, etc.
The exact description is entirely internal, displayed only to other Financial Users. It does not show on pay stubs.
Multiple Sets of Pay Periods
It is very common to have multiple sets of pay periods when different employees are paid either with different frequencies (e.g. some monthly, some semi-monthly) or on the same dates but for different days worked.
For example, salaried employees may be paid in “real time” (e.g. the Sept 15th pay date covers days worked from 9/1-9/15), while hourly employees may be paid on a “deferred” schedule (e.g. the Sept 15th pay date covers days worked from 8/16-8/31, with a two-week “lag” between the end date and the pay date).
In that case, a school with semi-monthly pay will have 48 pay periods instead of 24. The two Sept 15th pay periods may be called something like “Sept 15th Salary” and “Sept 15th Hourly.”
Employees on timesheets usually have very clear pay period start/end dates, but salaried employees can be trickier to figure out. See Salaried Employees for an example of a common scenario in which Administrators and Teachers may need separate sets of pay periods.
Crossing Fiscal Years
The list of pay periods in a single fiscal year describes all the pay received in that year, regardless of which year’s contract is being paid. This means that the earliest possible Pay Period Description should have the date July 1st, and the latest possible Pay Period Description should have the date June 30th.
This rule remains true even in cases such as:
- Teachers are getting paid in July for their previous year’s contract
- Hourly employees are getting paid in July for work done in June
In all cases, the Description should show a pay date that falls within the July-June fiscal year that you are setting up.
However, the pay period Begin Date and End Date may fall outside of the fiscal year, especially in cases with deferred pay. For example:
| Description (Pay Date) | Start Date | End Date |
| July 15 | 6/16 | 6/30 |
| July 31 | 7/1 | 7/15 |
Hourly Employees
Hourly employees are usually the most straightforward. They fill out timesheets that cover a specific date range, so the start date and end date should match the timesheet.
For example, you pay your hourly employees for an entire month at a time. In that case, you may have pay periods set up along these lines:
| Description (Pay Date) | Start Date | End Date |
| July 20 | 6/1 | 6/30 |
| Aug 20 | 7/1 | 7/31 |
| Sep 20 | 8/1 | 8/31 |
Salaried Employees
Salaried employees can be trickier because a year’s salary is divided evenly across a certain timeframe (usually a full year or a school year) and does not necessarily correspond to specific dates worked; there is no timesheet to reference.
To determine the schedule that makes sense for each group of employees, think about:
- What is their first day of work?
- What is their first pay date for a brand new employee?
For example, if a new superintendent begins work on July 1, and that their first semi-monthly pay is on July 15th, then their pay periods should probably look something like this:
| Description (Pay Date) | Start Date | End Date |
| July 15 Admins | 7/1 | 7/15 |
| July 31 Admins | 7/16 | 7/31 |
Meanwhile, if a teacher’s first day of work is on 8/16 and their first pay is Sept 15th, then their pay periods should probably look something like this:
| Description (Pay Date) | Start Date | End Date |
| July 15 Teachers | 6/16 | 6/30 |
| July 30 Teachers | 7/1 | 7/15 |
| Aug 15 Teachers | 7/16 | 7/31 |
| Aug 31 Teachers | 8/1 | 8/15 |
| Sept 15 Teachers | 8/16 | 8/31 |
| Sept 30 Teachers | 9/1 | 9/30 |
Notice the July 15th pay period for Admins covers different dates than the July 15th pay period for Teachers.
This discrepancy between admins and teachers is common. Admins usually have no lag between their pay period end date and their pay date; teachers sometimes (but definitely not always) do have a lag.
Some employees may even get paid for work they haven’t done yet. If the semi-monthly pay is received on the 5th and 20th of the month, the list of pay periods for a superintendent may start out like this:
| Description (Pay Date) | Start Date | End Date |
| July 5 | 7/1 | 7/15 |
| July 20 | 7/16 | 7/31 |
In the above situation, if the superintendent quits at the end of the year, their last pay will be on June 20th even if they work until June 30th.
On the other hand, they could be set up like this:
| Description (Pay Date) | Start Date | End Date |
| July 5 | 6/21 | 7/5 |
| July 20 | 7/6 | 7/20 |
In this case, the superintendent who quits on June 30th will get a final pay on July 5th of the next year.
Remember, when you have some salaried employees with a lag and others without a lag, that requires two sets of pay periods. Refer back to Multiple Sets of Pay Periods.
Stipend Pay, Bonus Pay, etc.
One-time stipends and bonuses received by regular employees can generally use the same pay periods as the employee’s main pay. The pay period group may be different (see Stipend/Bonus/Extra Duty Payment Options and Stipend/bonus pay period group), but they usually use the same pay periods already created for regular pay situations.
(IL) TRS Considerations
In order to properly report Days Paid, the pay periods at the beginning or end of the contract may need to be adjusted to match the beginning of the school year. A common setup mistake at schools with semi-monthly pay might involve the following pay periods:
| Description (Pay Date) | Start Date | End Date |
| Aug 31 | 8/1 | 8/15 |
| Sept 15 | 8/16 | 8/31 |
If the new contract’s first pay is received on 9/15, but the first paid work day for teachers is 8/14, then two Days Paid could go missing from reporting.
The Aug 31st pay date would be posted for the prior year, so it has no work days. This is correct.
The Sept 15th pay date would be the first reported in the new year. The number of work days reported from 8/16-8/31 would be reported, but 8/14 and 8/15 would not be reported. At the end of the year, this would leave your teachers 2 days short of the contracted amount of days.
The solution is to break your typical pattern to make sure that the first day of work for teachers is included in the first pay of the contract.
| Description (Pay Date) | Start Date | End Date |
| Aug 31 | 8/1 | 8/13 |
| Sept 15 | 8/14 | 8/31 |
(MO) Summer Pay
In Missouri, the pay received in July and August is typically posted to June so that all expenditures will be posted in the same year that the work was done. The typical setup for teachers is to have a 12-period group that goes from September to June, with the pay periods in June. If typical pay is on the 20th, then the list of pay periods in their group would be:
- Sept 20th
- Oct 20th
- Nov 20th
- …
- May 20th
- June 20th
- June 29th (July 20th)
- June 30th (Aug 20th)
Of course, July 20th and Aug 20th pay periods will still need to be created for employees whose contract starts in July, but they won’t be added to the Teachers PPG.
Effects on Attendance and Substitutes
Remember that only absences and substitutes with posting dates on or before the pay period end date get imported into the payroll register. If there is a lag between the pay period End Date and the Pay Date, absences and time off posted during the lag time will not be imported.
For example, if the Oct 15th pay date covers work done 9/1-9/30, an absence or substitute record posted on 10/1 will NOT be imported into the Oct 15th payroll register. The substitute would need to wait six weeks, until Nov 15th, to get paid for the work performed on 10/1.