Timecard Entry Codes

When paying employees through timecards, you need to define the various ways that employees can be compensated, using Timecard Entry Codes. These codes will be used with Payroll Departments and Employee records, which in turn are used to determine defaults on new Timecards. Entry codes can also be added on the fly when editing a timecard. The list of Timecard entry codes can be opened from the top Payroll menu -> Timecard Entry Codes.

Create a code for each way that you would pay employees, with default hours, amounts, accounting and tax consideration.

Code – The unique alpha-numeric value to identify this entry code, up to 20 characters.
Description – A text label for the code, which will be used for entering and printing timecards.
Pay Type – This selection categorizes how employees are paid, and determines the tax rules applied to this entry code. You can create multiple entry codes that use the same Pay Type, with different default amounts.

• Salary – All withholdings charged
• Regular – All withholdings charged
• Overtime – No vacation pay in Alberta and Manitoba
• Commission – All withholdings charged however the annual amount goes in box 42 on T4
• Vacation – Vacation pay release
• Advance – No vacation pay
• Sick – All withholdings charged
• Premium – All withholdings charged
• Other – No vacation pay
• Bonus or retroactive pay increase – When added to a timecard along with regular pay, the tax on the bonus is annualized, and should be added after regular or salary codes on the timecard. The best use of bonus timecard codes is on irregular timecards, after the regular timecard for the given period has already been entered and posted. On irregular timecards for bonuses, a flat tax rate will be used to deduct federal tax up to a threshold as per CRA regulations. Larger bonuses will have zero federal tax deducted so you can decide what tax is appropriate to deduct, perhaps using the PDOC calculation for bonus payments. Very large bonuses over another threshold as per CRA will have federal tax deducted based on a rate over that threshold.
• Statutory Holiday – All withholdings charged
• Blank Pay Type – Not select a Pay Type will all you to define which of the tax withholding rules are applied (see note below). Amounts included on timecards using codes that don’t have a pay type will be excluded from Earnings and T4 calculations unless the Tax rule is selected.
  

!Note – If the withholding rules are incorrectly set, then the proper taxes etc will not be charged and the employer may be responsible to pay them at year end. Employee T4 amounts would also be incorrectly accumulated.

Rules – Which withholdings are applied to a timecard entry code, for Tax, Canada Pension Plan (CPP), Employment Insurance (EI), Workers Compensation Board (WCB) and Vacation. These settings are determined specifically from the selected Pay Type, and cannot be edited unless you leave the Pay Type field blank. If the checkbox displays a square instead of a checkmark or blank, this means that the withholding is dependent on the employee’s province.

Defaults

Each of these fields are used as default values for Timecards and Payroll Departments, and can be edited in those areas when necessary.

Hours – Number of hours for the pay period.
Rate – Hourly rate of pay.
Amount – Total amount for the pay period. This will override any defaults for both Hours and Rate values, thus this should be used only when not using hours and rates.
Account – The expense General Ledger account where the pay will be posted. If you leave this field blank, then the default account for generated timecards will be the Salaries & Wages account from the employees Payroll Department.

!Note – If the timecard is an Irregular pay, Spire follows the CRA irregular/bonus pay deductions for CPP, EI and tax regardless of what Rules are set on the Timecard Entry Code. These fields can be edited as required if the Irregular pay is a correction and not a bonus pay.

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