Base rate progression describes the functionality in which Dayforce automatically updates an employee's base rate based on a specified amount of time in years, months, or hours, depending on how is configured.
When an employee reaches the threshold for a new base rate, Dayforce starts paying the employee at that new rate immediately, and updates their employee record with the new base rate the following day. For example, an employee’s current base rate is $13. At 2:00 PM on Wednesday, the employee has worked enough hours to progress to a $13.25 base rate. Dayforce starts paying the employee at the new rate at 2:00 PM on Wednesday, but doesn't update the employee's record with the new base rate until Thursday.
Important: As a best practice, when base rate progression is configured, you should run the Base Rate Recalc background job before running the Pay Summary Recalc background job. This ensures that Dayforce detects base rate updates and recalculates them accurately, especially in scenarios involving pay adjustments.
If pay grades are configured in Org Setup > Jobs and Job Assignments, Dayforce doesn't allow an employee’s base rate to exceed the value entered in the Maximum Rate field for their pay grade. For example, an employee's current base rate is $16.80, and their pay grade is configured with a maximum rate of $16.93. After 100 worked hours, they are entitled to a $0.25 increase. When the employee reaches that threshold, Dayforce pays them a $16.93 base rate (the maximum for their pay grade) instead $17.05 (their previous $16.80 base rate, plus $0.25).
In these cases, Dayforce can be configured to pay employees a lump sum based on the difference between the percentage increase the employee would have received based on their base rate set and the one they actually received based on the maximum rate for their pay grade. Continuing the example above, the increase from $16.80 to $17.05 would have been a 1.5% increase, while the employee’s actual increase from 16.80 to 16.93 is a 0.8% increase. Dayforce pays the employee a lump sum based on 0.7% (the difference between 1.5 and 0.8) of their previous year’s earnings.
Dayforce also supports using base rates to implement “tiered” rates, where an employee's step value is calculated weekly based on their worked time for the week. This means that an employee's rate can vary week-to-week depending on their worked time, as opposed to the standard base rate progression where the employee's base rate increases over time based on factors such as their length of service.
Configuring base rate progression involves the following steps:
If you are configuring base rate progression to use tiered rates, see Configure Tiered Base Rate Progression.
Lastly, if you want to review some best practices information about base rate policies, see Base Rate Policy Best Practices.