The following steps summarize the process of preparing your employee data for payroll, processing your payroll, and moving a pay cycle to the next pay period:

  1. Create timecard and payroll reports - Before you begin, create a Timecard Exception Report and Payroll Detail Report. You will use these reports to verify your payroll data.

  2. Prepare employee data for payroll - When the end date of a pay period is reached, you must run the Prepare for Payroll process for the associated pay cycle. During this process, the Time & Attendance module checks the pay cycle for errors such as missing time pairs, supervisor approvals, payroll reconciliation errors, and other items. If any errors are found, on-screen instructions are provided to help you correct the errors. The Prepare for Payroll process also prompts you to create a payroll export file (ADP Payroll users only). If you call in your payroll information using Teledata, you should not need to create a payroll export file unless you project your payroll.

  3. Import the payroll export file to ADP Payroll or call your payroll into Teledata - For ADP Payroll users, after you have corrected all errors in the pay cycle and created and saved a payroll export file you should exit the Time & Attendance module, import the payroll export file and process your payroll. For Teledata users, after you have corrected all errors in the pay cycle, call in or fax your payroll data.

  4. Verify payroll data - When you receive your paychecks from ADP, verify that all information is accurate.

  5. Move the pay cycle to the next pay period - After you have received and verified your payroll, you must move the pay cycle to the next pay period in the Time & Attendance module. The "current pay period" then becomes the "previous pay period" and can no longer be edited. The pay period that was formerly considered the "next pay period" becomes the "current pay period."

You must perform these steps for every pay cycle used by your company. For example, if your company uses a bi-weekly pay cycle to pay some employees and a monthly pay cycle to pay other employees, you must perform these steps every two weeks for the bi-weekly pay cycle and once a month for the monthly pay cycle. To avoid losing employee time data, you must perform these steps before the end date of the next pay period. To help you remember to complete these steps on time, you can have a notification sent to you for each pay cycle. If you enable this option, a warning is displayed on the Home and an e-mail reminder is sent to an individual you select (if you enter an e-mail address).

Note: If your company's payroll schedule requires you to prepare (or begin preparing) payroll before the pay period has actually ended, you can use the Projected Payroll feature to generate payroll based on employee's projected total hours for the pay period. If you use this feature, you must still perform all of the End of Period Operations and close the pay period in a timely manner. However, the timing and exact procedures are different from those described in this section of the Help. If you need to use projected payroll, see the Projecting Payroll section instead.

The following topics provide detailed information about preparing employee data for payroll and moving a pay cycle to the next period: