This report is available starting in version 4.8.6 of Humanforce.
The Pay Comparison Report allows you to compare various award profiles and rates for your employees to see what employees have actually been paid and would be paid under different scenarios. The report can use award profiles and base award profiles specified on the employee records or any award profile can be selected within the report for comparison. The same goes for pay rates.
The report can be run to check if employees have been over- or underpaid when compared to an annualised wage agreement or to compare if it makes sense to move an employee to a different award (such as casual to part-time) or to a different pay rate.
The Pay Comparison Report can also be used to pull payroll data into a spreadsheet format and view the error log without running the payroll process.
Contents
Adding the Pay Comparison Report to the Reports Menu
Set Up Base Award Profiles
If you plan on comparing to a Base Award Profile that is individually selected for each employee (as opposed to comparing all employees included in the report to the same award profile), you will need to add a Base Award Profile to the employee record.
Open the employee record and navigate to the Locations, Departments, and Roles section. Open the roles you want to compare, and note what is in the Award Profile drop-down, which is used for the actual payroll:
Then scroll to the right, where you will see Base Award Profile and select the award you would like to compare to in the Pay Comparison Report.
Click Done and then Apply to save your changes.
Set Up Award Pay Rate
If you plan on comparing to an Award Pay Rate that is individually selected for each employee (as opposed to comparing all employees included in the report to the same pay rate), you will need to add an Award Pay Rate to the employee record.
Open the employee record and navigate to the Locations, Departments, and Roles section. Open the roles you want to compare, and note what is in the Pay Rate or Rate Override field, which is used for the actual payroll:
To the right, you will see Award Pay Rate where you can select the rate you would like to compare to in the Pay Comparison Report.
Click Done and then Apply to save your changes.
Adding the Pay Comparison Report to the Reports Menu
If you do not see the Pay Comparison Report in your Reports menu, this will need to be turned on in both Nav Manager and in Access Levels for anyone who will run the report.
First check the Nav Manager by going to Admin > Nav Manager.
Ensure in the Reports section that the box for Pay Comparison Report under the ESS column is ticked:
Don't forget to then scroll to the bottom of the page to click the Save button.
Starting in version 4.8.36, the permissions for the Pay Comparison Report can be found in Admin > Access Levels > Permissions tab under TimeTarget Online > View Reports > Pay Comparison Report.
In addition to deciding if the access level can run the report, you can determine if they can see all Pay Companies or only the one assigned to the user, if they can see costs, and if they can see reports from other users.
Before 4.8.36, the access was controlled by the Payroll Screen and only employees who could process payroll could run this report.
Running the Report
Once everything has been set up, to run the report, go to the Reports Menu > Payroll > Pay Comparison Report.
Click the Create New button in the top left to set up a report.
Give your report a Name and select the Pay Company you will be running the report for.
You can then choose between Selecting an existing payrun(s) and Creating a new payrun.
- Select existing payrun(s) uses data from past payruns. If the same pay period has multiple runs, you can select which payrun you wish to use with the radio buttons. You can only run this report for one payrun per pay period at a time (but you can run multiple pay periods).
- Create a new payrun can run the payroll from scratch for the report. This allows you to look at hypothetical scenarios (not related to actual payroll data) such as pay periods that are not complete or comparing two award profiles that are not necessarily on employee records.
Note: You can select multiple pay periods for this report, but each pay period
will create a separate file.
After you've made your selection, click Next.
You then select if you will run the report for All Employees in Pay Company or only Specific Employees. If you choose specific employees, you will get filters for Location, Department, Role, Employment Type, and Award Profile, or you can select employees manually.
Finally, you can select if you will:
- Preview payroll data (without comparison). This will let you view payroll data without actually running payroll and locking timesheets. You can choose between viewing period totals for the pay types or daily totals (the daily view was added in version 4.8.38)
- Compare the payrun data with a different award and/or rate details
- For awards, choose between the employee's Base Award (if set up on employee records) or to an Award profile of your choice
- For rates, choose between leaving the default rate, using the Award Pay Rate (if set up on employee records), or using a pay rate of your choice
- You can also choose the Detail or Summary Format. The detail format provides pay type details and creates a separate report for each pay period. The Summary format combines multiple pay periods into one report with each employee getting a single row (the summary format was added in version 4.8.40).
If you have selected the option to Create a New Payrun (as opposed to Selecting an Existing Payrun), you will also have an option to Compare/Show payrun results for the profile(s) below where you can pick any Award Profile and Rate (optional) from the drop down list, regardless of what is on employee records. You can run this for only one award profile, or choose to compare it to a second award profile and rate.
Click Process to run the report.
Reviewing the Report
Once the report has finished processing (the status will say completed), you can use the download button at the end of the row to export the data to a .csv file.
You can then open the file and review the data.
If you chose to only run the actual data or show only one award profile, the columns will be as follows:
- Pay Period Start
- Pay Period End
- Employee Name
- Pay Type
- Profile 1 Hours
- Profile 1 Cost
If you ran a comparison report, the columns will be as follows:
- Pay Period Start
- Pay Period End
- Employee's Name
- Pay Type
- Profile 1 Hours - the employee's hours from the actual pay run or first selected award
- Profile 1 Cost - the employee's cost from the actual pay run or first selected award/rate
- Profile 2 Hours - the employee's hours for either the base award or selected award for comparison
- Profile 2 Cost - the employee's cost for either the base award or selected award and rate for comparison
- Variance Hours - the difference between columns E and G
- Variance Cost - the difference between columns F and H
The Summary Report also uses this format, just without the Pay Type column, and with only one row per employee.
By comparing the Variance Hours and Cost for each employee, you can ensure they are not underpaid when compared to an annualised wage or determine which award profile and rate is best for that employee.
Starting in version 4.8.36, you will also be able to download the error log. This allows you to review errors that will appear when running the payroll before you get to that point and make adjustments to employee records or timesheets proactively.
The error log contains the employee code, payroll code, employee name, shift date (when applicable), error message, and if for a comparison report with two profiles, the error message for the comparison profile.
Deleting a report
If there is a report you no longer need to access, you can use the trash bin icon before the download button to remove the row.
After confirming you want to delete the report, the row will turn grey and have a status of deleted, but after leaving the page and returning, the row will disappear.
