The Time & Attendance module Projected Payroll feature allows you to prepare and export payroll before a pay period ends. This projected payroll includes employees' recorded hours to date and projected hours for the days in the pay period that have not yet been worked. The projected hours are estimated based on employees' defined schedules. After the pay period has been closed, the Reconciliation processor compares the projected hours to the actual hours recorded by employees and automatically generates any required adjustments. You can then review the reconciliation adjustments and accept or reject each one. The adjustments you accept are applied to the employees' payroll for the next pay period.

Projected payroll is useful for companies with payroll schedules that do not include a delay between the end of a pay period and the day on which pay for that pay period is distributed to employees. For example, if your company pays all employees every other Friday for the 2-week pay period that ends the next day (Saturday), you must be able to process payroll before the pay period ends. If you need to begin processing payroll on Wednesday morning in order to generate and deliver employee payments on Friday, you must be able to project payroll for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Notes:
The Projected Payroll feature is designed for companies with payroll schedules that require payroll to be projected every week. It is not intended for the occasional projection of hours due to a holiday or other special circumstance.

Projected Payroll is not required if your company pays employees on a delayed schedule. For example, if your company pays employees every Friday for the pay period that ended the previous Friday, you do not need to project payroll.

There are three general phases in the projected payroll cycle. Each phase occurs during a different segment of the pay period.

Phase 1: Configure Projected Payroll

This phase includes basic set-up steps that must be performed before you can project payroll. During this phase, you enable projected payroll for a pay cycle and define when payroll projection occurs during each pay period for that pay cycle. It is also helpful to create an export template for each pay cycle you configure for projected payroll. You can use these templates each time you process projected payroll. Once you have performed these Phase 1 steps, you only need to return to Phase 1 when you need to change the projection start date for a pay cycle, configure additional pay cycles for projected payroll, disable payroll projection, or create additional projected payroll export templates.

For detailed instructions on performing Phase 1 tasks, see:

Phase 2: Projecting Payroll

This phase occurs before the end of the pay period, on or after the "Begin Projecting" date defined for each pay cycle during the configuration phase. During this phase you prepare the pay cycle for a payroll export by resolving errors and exceptions in the pay period data and running reports that you can use later to verify the integrity of the data imported into your payroll system. You then generate the projected payroll export, which includes the actual and projected data that you import to your payroll processing program to generate employee payments.

For detailed instructions on performing Phase 2 tasks, see:

Phase 3: Reconciling the Previous Projected Payroll and Closing the Current Pay Period

This phase happens after the last day of the pay period. During this phase, you run End of Period in order to prepare the pay period to be closed and moved forward. As part of this process, you reconcile the projected payroll and actual payroll for the previous pay period by accepting or rejecting the reconciliation adjustments created by the Time & Attendance module. After all exceptions have been cleared and all reconciliation adjustments have been reviewed, you lock the pay period and move it forward. After you have moved the pay period forward, you can perform reconciliation on the pay period you just closed, or you can wait until you are ready to close the next pay period to do this.

For detailed instructions on performing Phase 3 tasks, see:

Note: For answers to common questions, see Frequently Asked Questions about Projected Payroll.