Differential Shift Premium Policies

Topics brought up by the TimeTrex open source community.
Post Reply
blake
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:06 pm

Differential Shift Premium Policies

Post by blake »

I am trying to configure a Differential Shift premium policy so when a employee clocks in under a different department a different wage group gets applied.

However, instead of the wage group being directly applied it averages their "default wage group" wage with the "department wage group" wage. If their default wage is 10 and the department wage is 20 the actual wage applied would be $15. instead of $20.
blake
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:06 pm

Re: Differential Shift Premium Policies

Post by blake »

I played with the setup more and I think I understand what is going on.

If you try to override a pay formula on a pay code using premium policy it averages the two pay formulas. The only way I could get it to work with out averaging is to use a separate pay code all together. This is undesirable for me because I wanted to export just regular time pay code but with a different rate.

Is it a feature or a bug?
shaunw
Posts: 7839
Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:22 pm

Re: Differential Shift Premium Policies

Post by shaunw »

Please include a screenshot of the Pay Formulas in question.
blake
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:06 pm

Re: Differential Shift Premium Policies

Post by blake »

I have attached all related setup pages for what I'm trying to accomplish. When someone clocks in under the banquet department they receive a different wage. I setup a differential shift premium policy that uses the banquet pay formula and the regular time pay code. The banquet pay formula is configured to use the banquet wage group. allowing all employee's to have two wages depending on if they work banquets or not. Thanks for you help!
Attachments
This is a differential shift premium policy meant to override regular time if someone clocks in under the banquet department. Should apply the Banquet pay formula using the regular time paycode
This is a differential shift premium policy meant to override regular time if someone clocks in under the banquet department. Should apply the Banquet pay formula using the regular time paycode
This is the stanrdard policy for regular time
This is the stanrdard policy for regular time
Regular time policy uses the default wagegroup
Regular time policy uses the default wagegroup
regular_payformula.PNG (11 KiB) Viewed 8913 times
banquet policy should use the banquet wagegroup
banquet policy should use the banquet wagegroup
banq_payformula.PNG (11.22 KiB) Viewed 8913 times
blake
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:06 pm

Re: Differential Shift Premium Policies

Post by blake »

As it is configured now If I have a default wage of 10 and a banquet wage of 20 then the wage applied is 15. ( (10 + 20) / 2 ) I would like the default wage to be completely overridden.
blake
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:06 pm

Re: Differential Shift Premium Policies

Post by blake »

After more testing I found inconsistencies in the reporting as well. Under the current config that I showed you when I create a paystub in Timetrex the banquet pay formula is correctly applied to regular time (I get the full rate with no averaging). If I run a payroll export report then the two wages are averaged.
Attachments
payroll_export_report.PNG
paystub.PNG
shaunw
Posts: 7839
Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:22 pm

Re: Differential Shift Premium Policies

Post by shaunw »

I think the issue is that you have multiple policies using different Pay Formulas assigning their time to a single Pay Code (Regular Time).

Therefore in some reports or even the TimeSheet itself, TimeTrex will only display a single line item for each Pay Code, so when multiple rates of pay exist it is forced to use a weighted average for that rate of pay as there is no other way to display it.

If you want to see the rates of pay separately, you will need to use different Pay Codes for each time category, then TimeTrex will show each Pay Code on its own line and therefore each rate of pay too.

Also keep in mind that Premium Policy time is in addition to Regular Time. So if an employee works 8hrs in day, the could have 8hrs of Regular Time, and 8hrs of Premium Time. So if the Regular Time is paid at $10/hr and the Premium Time is paid at $15/hr, the employee is getting both sets of hours (16 in total) both paid at full rates of pay. Often Premium Policy hourly rates will be the difference in rate of pay from the regular rate to the premium rate, for example the Premium Policy may be at only $0.75/hr, to give the employee an extra $0.75/hr for each hour worked.

If you want the employee to just receive an entirely different rate of pay for Regular Time when working a specific branch/department, that functionality is available in the Professional or Corporate Edition of TimeTrex.
blake
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:06 pm

Re: Differential Shift Premium Policies

Post by blake »

Now that I look at all of the screenshots, you are right, that it isn't working exactly how I wanted. Premium pay is in addition to regular pay. I can see that now they are getting payed regular time and premium time. You are right that the issue stems from using the regular time pay code instead of a separate pay code for banquet premium time. However, I still think it is a bug because two reports using the same data have separate results. I would think that if it were to average the two rates in some cases Time Trex should average the rate in all cases.

I think there is something even more off comparing to my paystub and my payroll export report.

The payroll export report when looking at regular time shows:

Regular Time - NO Dep: 21:45 @ 22 = $478.50
Regular Time - IT: 34:45 @ 22 = $764.50
Regular Time - BANQ: 7:00 @ 31 = $217
Grand Total of 63:30 @ $1460

the pay stub shows:

Regular Time - 07:00 @ 40 = 280
Regular Time - 63:30 @ 22 = 1397
Grand total of 70:30 @ 1677

So it would seem that calculations are very different when comparing payroll export report and internal paystub accounting.

You are right the differential criteria on a regular time policy would be ideal. However, I am trying to work in the confines of the free version which I think is completely acceptable thing to do.

The reason I wanted to override the regular pay code with a different pay formula would be I can set as many pay formulas as I want and just export one pay code. I am guessing to get it to work how I want I will need a pay code for each wage group. Luckily for the most part only banquet staff need two wages.
shaunw
Posts: 7839
Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:22 pm

Re: Differential Shift Premium Policies

Post by shaunw »

When using the same Pay Code with multiple rates of pay, TimeTrex will split these out into separate line items on the Pay Stub to be as clear as possible. However when running reports, it will not do this if you have any kind of group options selected on the report, as it would be impossible to do so while still performing the group operation (though, you could group by the Pay Code and Hourly Rate to mimic it). When using multiple rates of pay for a single pay code, the reports may not show the Hourly Rate that you expect, since TimeTrex does a "simple" average (not a weighted average) of the hourly rates when grouping or sub-totaling, similar to if you had a column with each hourly rate on a different row in Excel and asked Excel to calculate the average of the column. The total time and dollars would be exactly correct though.

Pay Stubs and Payroll Export reports (when exporting to a specific format) are handled differently since they can't be arbitrarily grouped, so in those cases TimeTrex will create a new line item for each different rate of pay, even if the pay code is the same.

In short, if you want to make sure the hourly rates are never averaged even when arbitrarily grouping them in reports, you will need to use a different Pay Code for every hourly rate, or always include the Hourly Rate columns in the group selection.
Post Reply