As a practitioner, you can assign base rates to employees, create wage rate programs, assign wage rate programs to employees and pay groups, define global job rates, and assign job rates to employees. When and how these various rates are applied, however, is affected by earnings code and pay group settings that you cannot view or edit.

The bullet points in this topic explain some of the factors that affect how these various rates are applied. If you have specific questions about how rates are used in your company, consult your system administrator or an ADP Time & Attendance Representative.

• Each earnings code used by your company defines a rate calculation method for figuring gross payroll for time pairs charged to the earnings code. There are many variations to these settings, but in general, your ADP Time & Attendance Representative configures each earnings code to use either an employee base rate; a rate calculated by multiplying a base rate by a defined factor; a rate determined by a wage rate program; a rate based on a comparison between certain job rates and employee base rates; or a flat rate established for the earnings code. This means that even if you assign wage rate programs and job rates to your employees, these rates will not have any affect unless your company's earnings codes are configured to use these rate calculation types. You should contact your payroll administrator and/or ADP Time & Attendance Representative if you are unsure how your actions will affect gross payroll or if your payroll summaries do not reflect the outcome you expect.

• A rate calculation method is defined for each earnings code, so different methods of figuring payroll can be used for a single timecard.

• Some of the rate calculation settings involve "highest of" or "lowest of" comparisons between two or more rates, so the same rate type is not always used.

• If an earnings code is defined to use the wage rate program method for calculating payroll, Time & Attendance module first looks for an employee-level wage rate program. If no employee-level wage rate program exists, or if no rate in the program applies, the Time & Attendance module may attempt to use a wage rate program defined for the employee's pay group. As a practitioner, you can set an option in an employee record that determines whether or not the Time & Attendance module applies a pay group-level wage rate program.

• In wage rate programs, a particular time pair may meet the criteria for several different rates. There is an established order of precedence that determines which rate is used in such situations. Wage rate definitions are evaluated from left to right, and any exact match overrides a match to a rate that uses the "ANY" wildcard.

• Wage rate programs and job rates are mutually exclusive. Only one of these rate calculation methods can be used at a time for a specific earnings code.

• All individual rates (base rates, job rates, wage rates, earnings code rates) have an effective date. Rates are not in effect until the effective date. Rates remain in effect until they are deleted or until the effective date arrives for another rate that uses the same qualifying criteria. If a payroll summary of time pair detail indicates that an unexpected rate is being used, check the effective dates of the defined rates.

For more information on the rate-related tasks you can perform as a practitioner, see the following topics:

• Defining an Employee's Base Rate

• Creating a Wage Rate Program

• Creating a Wage Rate Program by Copying an Existing One

• Viewing and Editing Wage Rate Programs

• Deleting a Wage Rate Program

• Assigning a Wage Rate Program to an Employee

• Assigning a Wage Rate Program to a Pay Group

• Defining an Employee's Job Rates

• Defining Global Job Rates

• Viewing an Employee's Rates

• Viewing an Employee's Payroll Summary