The Auto Pay Rule is used to override the default auto pay settings. The Auto Pay Rule can be used to override the pay period hours the application uses to automatically calculate an employee’s pay amount for pay periods or the earning assigned to auto pay amounts.
Note: The Auto Pay Rule isn’t required to support auto pay functionality.
Auto Pay Rule Parameters
Pay period hours
Enter the number of hours the application uses to calculate auto pay amounts, regardless of the values in employee records in the People feature. This value overrides the employee-specific pay period hours.
If left blank, the rule does not override the employee’s normal pay period hours, instead they are calculated normally using details from the employee’s records.
Auto pay earning
Select what earning the application assigns to auto pay amounts.
Auto pay reduction earnings
Click the Auto Pay reduction earnings control and select any earnings that reduce auto pay earnings. For these earnings, the application subtracts the hours with the selected earnings from the employee’s normal auto pay hours.
Example 1:
An employee has 80 pay period hours (regular) that have auto pay reduction earnings such as bereavement, holiday, jury, sick, unpaid, and vacation. To configure the auto pay rule for this employee:
- In the Pay period hours field, enter 80.
- In the Auto pay earning field, select Regular.
- In the Auto pay reduction earnings field, select the earnings that apply to the employee.
Important: Because earnings added here use a zero rate and have $0 amount, the following settings must be selected in Payroll Setup > Earnings and Deductions for the unpaid earnings for the scenario in Example 1 to work properly:
- Allow hours without amount
- Allow Unpaid Time to Reduce Auto Pay Amount
Example 2:
A salaried employee receives 40 hours of auto pay earnings each week, but their paid sick and vacation time is still entered for accuracy and reporting purposes. Because this time is spent off instead of working, it should be deducted from the auto pay hours, even though the amount of time the employee is paid remains the same. The employee takes a paid vacation day off, and eight hours of vacation time is entered in the employee’s timesheet. The application deducts this time from the auto pay earnings, so employee has 32 hours of regular auto pay earnings and eight hours of vacations earnings. See Earnings That Reduce Auto Pay.
Mid-period proration
Use this drop-down list to instruct the application to automatically prorate an employee’s salary if the employee’s salary changes on a date that does not correspond with the beginning of a pay period. This setting removes the need for a payroll administrator to enter manual adjustments or quick entries. This can be used for all employees, whether for starters, leavers, or those whose salary changes mid-period for other reasons (such as a change of pay group in the middle of a pay period). In all cases, Dayforce makes sure that salaries are capped to no more than the employee’s Annual Salary and Pay Frequency.
The following options are available for specifying how the application calculates the proration (click a link to see a description of the option):
- Annual 260 Business Days
- Annual 312 Business Days
- Annual 365 Days
- Business Days / Working Days 5 Days a Week
- Not Enabled
Select this option to configure the rule to prorate the auto pay employees earn based on the yearly average of 260 business days for the year. The calculations are as follows:
| Type of Salary Change | Calculation |
|---|---|
| Starter | (Annual Salary / 260 x Number of working days, Monday to Friday, worked in the period from employee start date)
|
| Leaver | (Annual Salary / 260 x Number of working days, Monday to Friday, worked in the period from period start date)
|
| Mid-period salary change | (Old Annual Salary - New Annual Salary / 260 x Number of days worked, Monday to Friday, in the period at the old rate)
|
For example, a starter (new hire) starts work on 20 January 2020. Their annual salary is £32,000 and the period they started in ends on 31 January 2020. As a result, the employee is entitled to be paid £1230.77, determined by using the following calculation:
Annual Salary = £32,000
Number of days from start date to end of pay period = 10(£32,000 / 260 x 12)= £1230.77
Select this option to configure the rule to prorate the auto pay employees earn based on the yearly average of six (6) working days a week or 312 business days for the year (6 days a week - 6*52=312). The calculations are as follows:
| Type of Salary Change | Calculation |
|---|---|
| Starter | (Annual Salary / 312 x Number of working days, Monday to Friday, worked in the period from employee start date)
|
| Leaver | (Annual Salary / 312 x Number of working days, Monday to Friday, worked in the period from period start date)
|
| Mid-period salary change | (Old Annual Salary - New Annual Salary / 312 x Number of days worked, Monday to Saturday, in the period at the old rate)
|
For example, a starter (new hire) starts work on 20 January 2020. Their annual salary is Rs 32,000 and the period they started in ends on 31 January 2020. As a result, the employee is entitled to be paid Rs 1128.21, determined by using the following calculation:
Annual Salary = Rs 32,000
Number of days from start date to end of pay period = 11(Rs 32,000 / 312 x 12)= Rs 1128.21
Select this option to configure the rule to prorate the amount of auto pay employees earn based on the yearly average of 365 days for the year. The calculations are as follows:
| Type of Salary Change | Calculation |
|---|---|
| Starter | (Annual Salary / 365 x Number of days, including weekends, from start date to end of pay period)
|
| Leaver | (Annual Salary / 365 x Number of days, including weekends, from period start date to leave date)
|
| Mid-period salary change | (Old Annual Salary - New Annual Salary / 365) x Number of days worked, including weekends, in the current period at the old rate
|
For example, a starter (new hire) starts work on 20 January 2020. Their annual salary is £32,000 and the period they started in ends on 31 January 2020. As a result, the employee is entitled to be paid £1052.05, determined by using the following calculation:
Annual Salary = £32,000
Number of days from start date to end of pay period = 12(£32,000 / 365 x 12)= £1052.05
Business Days / Working Days 5 Days a Week
Select this option to configure the rule to prorate the amount of auto pay employees earn based on days in the week (Monday to Friday). For example, when an employee is hired on the Wednesday of a weekly pay period and only works three business days, the rule auto-pays the employee a prorated amount for the three days worked. This option is primarily for non-European customers.
Select this option to configure the rule to not prorate the amount of auto pay employees earn. When employees are hired or terminated mid-pay period, the rule pays them the full amount as if they worked the entire pay period.
Also, the rule does not prorate the earning amounts if employees change pay groups mid-pay period. So, if an employee working in a pay group with a weekly pay frequency is switched to a pay group with a semi-monthly pay frequency after working three days in the first week of the month, the rule pays the employee their auto pay earnings for both the entire weekly pay period and the entire semi-monthly pay period. If the employee earned $1,000 in a weekly pay period of auto pay earnings and $1,750 in the semi-monthly pay period, the application would pay the employee $2,750 in auto pay earnings during the first half of the month, $1,000 for the first week when the employee belonged to the weekly pay frequency pay period and $1,750 for the semi-monthly pay frequency pay period.
In this case, payroll administrators or other users with access need to create a quick entry correcting the employee’s auto pay earnings.
Enable mid-proration based on average daily hours
Select this checkbox to enable proration based on days worked and average daily hours for employees who start work mid-period. When you select this checkbox, the application uses the following equation to calculate prorated auto pay:
(Days Worked in the Pay Period x Average Daily Hours x Base Rate)
When the checkbox is cleared, the application uses the default calculation and prorates auto pay by evaluating days worked against total working days in the period.
See Mid-Period Proration of Auto Pay Based on Average Daily Hours.
Enable mid-proration on work assignment changes
Select this checkbox to enable proration based on work assignments. Synchronizing mid-pay-period salary changes based on work assignment for a salaried (autopay) employee is based on the following criteria:
- Employment Status (date of hire, term, pay type, pay group, salary or pay rate, period and hours)
- Work Assignment
See Mid-Period Proration of Auto Pay for Work Assignment Changes.
Salary divisor for weekly pay frequency
Specify the number of weekly pay periods. Depending on the number of weeks in a given year, you will usually enter 52, but in some cases you will need to enter 51 or 53.
Salary divisor for biweekly pay frequency
Specify the number of biweekly pay periods. Depending on the number of biweekly pay periods in a given year, you will usually enter 26, but in some cases you will need to enter 25 or 27.
Extend pay termination date to last pay edit date
Select this checkbox to extend the employee’s termination date and associated auto pay calculation if a payroll administrator creates adjustments or other pay entries after the original termination date.
Consider inactive statuses as pay termination
The Consider inactive status as pay termination control opens a dialog box in which you can select any inactive statuses you have configured that the application will regard as terminated when calculating auto pay amounts.
Keep per pay period salary constant
Select this checkbox to base auto pay on the per pay amount instead of the annual amount configured in the People feature.
Apply employee default labor
Select this checkbox to override the auto pay’s associated labor source and use the employee’s default labor source.
Itemize Intra Pay Period Rate Change
This setting determines how earning statements for Auto Pay employees show changes to the earning rate in a pay period.
When this checkbox is cleared and there is a mid-period base rate change, the average rate is used to calculate earnings for the full pay period. The earnings calculated using this average rate are reported in the earning statement as a single line.
When this checkbox is selected, the base rate for each business day worked is applied and shown in the employee’s earning records. When the base rate varies between business days, each rate is displayed as its own line in the earning statement, resulting in multiple lines. If there are any Auto Pay reductions during the pay period, the average rate is applied to that portion of the pay period.
Itemize mid-period Pay Type change to AutoPay Hourly to Salary
Select this checkbox to configure the application so that employee earning statements, when generated for employees who change from one auto pay enabled pay type to another auto pay enabled pay type mid-pay period, display separate base earning line items for the previous and new pay types. This checkbox is cleared by default.
Important: Selecting the Itemize mid-period Pay Type change to AutoPay Hourly to Salary checkbox might impact the application’s performance when you calculate payroll. This is because the application needs to check what the employee’s pay type was on each day of the pay period rather than what it was at the end of the pay period.
This checkbox isn’t applicable for when you switch employees from an auto pay method to a non-auto pay method, or vice versa. For example, it isn’t applicable when hourly employees who are paid based on WFM time entry switch to a salaried pay type that is auto pay enabled.
As an example of this functionality, say an auto pay employee’s biweekly pay period runs from 9/10/2017 to 9/23/2017, and you change the employee from auto pay hourly to auto pay salaried on 9/19/2017. Moreover, the employee’s base rate and normal weekly hours defined in the HR profile remain the same.
By default, the employee’s earning statement for the pay run displays a single line item for base earnings. While the employee is paid correctly, the earning statement doesn’t reflect that a change in pay type occurred mid-pay period:
Continuing the earlier example, when you select the Itemize mid-period Pay Type change to AutoPay Hourly to Salary checkbox, the employee’s earning statement shows the following earning line items:
- The first line item is for when the employee was hourly auto pay from 9/10 to 9/19. The application calculates that the employee worked 48 of the 80 auto pay hours during this time, which translates into six eight-hour days.
- The second line item is for when the employee was salaried auto pay from 9/20 to 9/23. The application calculates that the employee worked 32 of the 80 auto pay hours during this time, which translates into four eight-hour days.
Additional information about selecting the Itemize mid-period Pay Type change to AutoPay Hourly to Salary checkbox:
- Selecting the Itemize mid-period Pay Type change to AutoPay Hourly to Salary checkbox does not impact how pay is calculated for employees. In the above example, the employee’s base earnings are still $2,800. This only impacts the way in which base earnings are displayed on the earning statement.
- Selecting the checkbox only affects changes in pay type (for example, hourly, salary), and not pay class (for example, full-time, part-time).
- The line items that the application generates respect existing earning statement settings for displaying and hiding hours and rates for salaried or hourly employees.
- For employees who are paid using the Pay Current feature of Dayforce, the Itemize mid-period Pay Type change to AutoPay Hourly to Salary checkbox looks for changes to pay type during the pay period of the pay run, and not the time collection period.
When you select the Itemize mid-period Pay Type change to AutoPay Hourly to Salary checkbox of the Auto Pay Rule for an employee’s payroll policy, and you also configure the Auto Pay Rule to include auto pay reduction earnings, the application subtracts the auto pay hours from each earning line item proportionally.
Continuing the earlier example, say that the employee had 8 hours of sick pay, which is configured as an auto pay reduction earning in the Auto Pay Rule. As a result, the application reduces 60% (or 4.8 hours) of the 8-hour sick pay from the first line, and 40% (or 3.2 hours) from the second line in the earning statement:
You can select both the Itemize mid-period Pay Type change to AutoPay Hourly to Salary checkbox and the Itemize Intra Pay Period Rate Change checkbox in the same instance of the Auto Pay Rule.
When you select only the Itemize Intra Pay Period Rate Change checkbox, and an employee’s rate changes mid-pay period, the earning statement displays separate line items for the earnings at the old and new rates.
When you select only the Itemize mid-period Pay Type change to AutoPay Hourly to Salary checkbox, and an employee’s pay type changes from one AutoPay hourly to AutoPay salary, or vice versa, but their pay rate does not change, only the pay type change will be reflected on the earning statement.
If you select both checkboxes in the Auto Pay Rule, and an employee’s auto-pay pay type and pay rate change mid-pay period, the earning statement displays the appropriate earning line items. For example, say you update an employee from salary auto pay to hourly auto pay and increase the pay rate on the same date. In this case, the employee’s earning statement displays two earning line items, one for the salaried earnings and one for the hourly earnings and new rate.
In this example, if you cleared one of these two checkboxes in the Auto Pay Rule, the earning statement would look the same because the pay type and rate change were effective on the same date (that is, the earnings were split on the same date).
Enable mid-period proration for Retro Calculation
Select this checkbox to ensure that when you make a mid-period salary change to an auto pay employee, Dayforce can apply mid-period proration using the method specified in the Mid-period proration drop-down list in the Auto Pay Rule. This can be done by clicking Sync Pay Changes in the Quick Entry subtab in Payroll > Pay Run Management.
Salary divisor for weekly pay frequency
Enter the number of weekly pay periods that the application uses to calculate auto pay for salaried weekly employees. This field is cleared by default. Entering a value overrides the default 52 weeks that the application uses to calculate auto pay for salaried weekly employees.
For example, you might need to increase the number of pay periods to account for a leap year or when the year starts on a pay day.
The application does not consider the Salary divisor for the weekly pay frequency setting when the Auto Pay Rule also has mid period proration settings enabled. Instead of dividing salary by the number of pay periods, the application multiplies base rate by normal hours for the business day amount.
Salary divisor for biweekly pay frequency
Enter the number of bi-weekly pay periods that the application uses to calculate auto pay for salaried biweekly employees. This field is cleared by default. Entering a value overrides the default 26 weeks that the application uses to calculate auto pay for salaried biweekly employees.
For example, you might need to increase the number of pay periods to account for a leap year or when the year starts on a pay day.
The application does not consider the Salary divisor for biweekly pay frequency setting when the Auto Pay Rule also has mid period proration settings enabled. Instead of dividing salary by the number of pay periods, the application multiplies base rate by normal hours for the business day amount.
Extend pay termination date to last pay edit date
By default the rule stops paying auto pay as of a terminated employee’s termination date. Select this checkbox and it pays them up to their last pay edit date instead.
Consider inactive statuses as pay termination
By default the rule stops paying auto pay when employees are terminated; optionally, you can configure the rule to stop paying auto pay when an employee’s status is set to specific inactive statuses.
Click the Consider inactive statuses as pay termination control and select any inactive statuses that cause the rule to stop paying auto pay when they are assigned. For example, to stop paying auto pay when an employee goes on an extended leave of absence, select the status that represents the leave.
Keep per pay period salary constant
Select the Keep per pay period salary constant checkbox to configure the application to adjust the hourly base rate so that the salary is constant regardless of for the period.
Clear the checkbox to configure the application to use the hourly base rate as the default constant; the application adjusts the salary amount based on the number of default hours in the period.
Pay To Schedule Cost
Select one or more pay types for the application to calculate auto pay earnings for selected employees based on schedule cost data that is generated from WFM pay policy rules. This functionality allows organizations that use pay current practices (that is, who have dates that are future to the commit date included in pay checks) to forecast pay based on hours and rates that are calculated via the WFM pay policy.
Pay To Schedule
Before You Begin: The Auto Pay Payroll checkbox in HR Admin > Pay Type controls whether a pay type has auto pay enabled and appears in the Pay To Schedule list.
Select one or more pay types for the application to calculate auto pay earnings for selected employees based on their scheduled hours from the Workforce Management module, rather than the average hours that are configured in their HR records. This functionality is useful for paying hourly auto pay employees in semi-monthly pay groups, where the number of business days that employees work varies from pay run to pay run. However, you can also enable this functionality for salary auto pay employees in any other pay frequency.
To illustrate the benefit of Pay To Schedule functionality, consider the example of an hourly auto pay employee who works full-time from Monday to Friday in a semi-monthly pay group. In the first pay period of October, which runs from 10/1/2017 to 10/15/2017, the employee works 10 business days. In the second pay period of October, which runs from 10/16/2017 to 10/31/2017, the employee works 12 business days. By default, the application calculates hourly auto pay by multiplying values in the following fields of the employee’s HR record:
- For the first pay of the month, the application multiplies the Base Rate field by the Normal Semi Monthly Hours (Top) field.
- For the second pay of the month, the application multiplies the Base Rate field by the Normal Semi Monthly Hours (Bottom) field.
Because the values in the Normal Semi Monthly Hours (Top) and Normal Semi Monthly Hours (Bottom) fields are constants, the application pays the employee the same average number of hours for the first and second pay periods of the month, even though the employee worked a different number of days each pay period.
When you expand the Pay To Schedule setting, the application shows only the pay types that have auto pay enabled (in HR Admin > Pay Type). You can select one or more options.
When you select one or more pay types from the Pay To Schedule setting, the application calculates auto pay for employees with those pay types by multiplying the value in the Base Rate field of the employee’s HR record by the total net hours in the employee’s schedule during the pay period.
The application uses net hours by default, but you can set it to use gross hours instead. See Pay Net Hours only on Schedule or Shift Rotation.
For Dayforce to calculate auto pay, scheduled hours only need to be saved to the Schedules feature. You don’t need to post the schedule to make it available to employees.
You can review and manage the employee’s scheduled hours each week in the Schedules feature. See Schedule Your Staff in the Manager Guide.
Example of Paying to Schedule
In Schedules, an hourly auto pay employee in a semi-monthly pay group is scheduled for 8 hours per day from Monday to Friday for each week of October. In the second pay period of October, which runs from 10/16/2017 to 10/31/2017, the employee is scheduled for 12 days, or 96 gross hours.
In the employee’s payroll policy, you select the Auto Pay Rule, and in the Pay To Schedule drop-down list, you select the employee’s pay type, in this example Hourly (Non-Exempt):
When you calculate the pay run, the earnings statement shows that auto pay is calculated based on 96 gross hours of work:
Continuing this example, say you don’t select the employee’s pay type in the Pay To Schedule drop-down list of the Auto Pay Rule. In this case, the application uses the default method to calculate auto pay. If you defined 86.67 hours (which are the average hours for full-time hourly employees who are paid semi-monthly) in the Normal Semi Monthly Hours (Bottom) field of the HR record, the earning statement shows that the auto pay is calculated based on 86.67 hours of work:
If you select the employee’s pay type from the Pay To Schedule setting of the Auto Pay Rule, and the employee doesn’t have scheduled hours during the pay period, the application multiplies the Base Rate field by the number of net hours of the shift rotation to which the employee is assigned that fall within the pay period.
The application uses net hours by default, but you can set it to use gross hours instead. See Pay Net Hours only on Schedule or Shift Rotation.
The application bases the calculation on the shift rotation that is assigned in the employee’s HR record in the Shift Rotation setting. See Update Employment Status Records in the HR Administration Guide.
Continuing the earlier example, say that during the second pay period of October, the employee doesn’t have any scheduled hours, but is assigned to the Morning shift rotation, which includes Monday to Friday 8-hour shifts.
This pay period includes 12 business days, or 96 hours, which span 12 shifts of the employee’s shift rotation. This includes two weeks of Monday to Friday shifts, plus Monday and Tuesday in the last week of October. As a result, the earning statement shows that the auto pay is calculated based on 96 hours of work:
Defaulting to Zero Hours
If you select the employee’s pay type from the Pay To Schedule setting of the Auto Pay Rule, and the following is applicable:
- The employee doesn’t have scheduled hours during the pay period
- The employee isn’t assigned a shift rotation in their HR record
Then the application does not default to the average hours that are set in the employee’s HR record. Instead, the application generates zero auto pay for the pay run. This behavior covers the case where the employee is legitimately not scheduled during that pay period (for example, the employee is on vacation).
Pay by Shift Rotation
Select one or more pay types for the application to calculate auto pay earnings for selected employees based on their shift rotation, rather than the average hours that are recorded in their HR records.
The Pay By Shift Rotation setting is similar to the Pay To Schedule setting of the Auto Pay Rule, except the application ignores the employee’s scheduled hours in Schedules and only checks the hours in the employee’s assigned shift rotation. The functionality for checking the shift rotation hours is the same as described in Defaulting to Shift Rotation.
For example, if employees have a shift rotation assigned, and their schedule has shifts added to it in the same pay period, the application ignores the scheduled shift and only checks the hours in the shift rotation. Even if you load a shift rotation to an employee’s schedule and then edit the schedule, the application still uses the hours defined in the original shift rotation.
Like with the Pay To Schedule setting, if there’s no shift rotation assigned, the application calculates zero auto pay hours.
Pay Net Hours only on Schedule or Shift Rotation
This checkbox is selected by default, so that the application uses net hours instead of gross hours to calculate auto pay for employees who are paid to schedule. However, you can clear this checkbox for the application to use gross hours instead.
You pay employees based on their schedule via the following settings of the Auto Pay Rule:
- Pay To Schedule
- Pay by Shift Rotation
Gross hours are the duration of any shift that employees are scheduled to work, including scheduled meals and breaks. For example, a shift scheduled from noon to 8:00 PM, with an unpaid half hour meal at 6:00 PM, equals 8 gross hours. Conversely, net hours don’t include meals and breaks. Using the same example, the above shift includes 7.5 net hours instead of 8.
Generate Autopay by Business Date
Use this option to have the auto pay earnings generated by business date, including the Labour % and GL splits, tied to the employee record. This allocation can be either EWA Labor % or GL splits and can contain an effective date to ensure the GL output respects this effective date for all hourly paid and salaried employees.
In the Mid-period proration drop-down list, you must set the option to Working days - 5 days a week. Monday to Friday are considered as business days to calculate the total number of days in a pay period. Select the Pay to schedule or Pay by shift rotation checkboxes to define the days by the schedule or the shift rotation, respectively.
Generate Autopay by business date overrides the following rule options:
- Itemize intra pay period rate change. Uses the rate per business day instead.
- Enable mid proration on work assignment changes.
If the Generate Autopay by business date checkbox is selected, Dayforce uses the applyAutoPayReductionsWhenSplitByBusinessDate method to handle reductions for WFM and quick entries, separately. First, it applies the auto pay reduction for WFM, and then it does the same for quick entries. If the reduction surpasses the employee’s auto pay hours for the day, another method, updateSystemEarningsWithRemainderSplits, takes effect. This method divides the remaining units and amounts evenly across the remaining workdays with positive units and amounts after the initial reductions.
Important: Any percentage splits other than Labor % aren't supported when the Generate Auto Pay By Business Date checkbox is selected in Australia, UK, Canada, and Germany. For example, the Multi Jurisdiction Allocation % and Telecommuter % options are available in US only.