Pay Policy Best Practices

This section describes the best practices for configuring and maintaining pay policies in Pay Setup > Pay Policy:

Updating and Deactivating Rules

When you need to update a pay rule’s configuration, you should copy and paste a new version of the rule rather than update the existing rule. It’s recommended that you follow these guidelines when you need to update a pay rule:

Copy and paste the rule that you want to update.
Use the arrows to place the new version of the rule above the rule that you copied in the ruleset hierarchy:
In this example, the Weekly Overtime Rule was copied and the copied version of the rule was placed above the original version in the hierarchy.
Important: Don’t move rules that have been updated or end-dated to the bottom of the hierarchy. The output of one rule might depend on the output of a rule above it in the ruleset hierarchy.
Update the effective period of the new rule.
When configuring a new effective period, consider whether the rule should become effective at the start of the current pay period. It’s recommended that you enter the start date of your pay period’s calculation period in the Effective From field. See Effective Period of Rules.
Activate and update the configuration of the new rule. To do this, select the Active checkbox and update the rule’s settings as needed.
Add an end date for the original rule.
You should end-date this rule using the same date that you entered in the Effective From field in the new version of the rule (that is, the calculation period start date). Further, as a best practice, you shouldn’t clear the Active checkbox of a rule, even if you’re end-dating it. If you need to inactivate the rule, entering an end-date in the Effective To field is sufficient.
Rename the original rule you copied and the new rule with identifiers to differentiate them.
This helps to distinguish between the active rule and the end-dated rule. For example, you could add “Ends 10/1/2022” to the original rule name so you know when it’s no longer effective. Next, you’d add “Starts 10/1/2022” to the name of the updated rule:
Save your changes.
Test your updated pay policy in a test environment.

Effective Period of Rules

Some pay rules should become effective at the start of a pay period (in most cases, the current pay period that’s active when you’re adding or updating a rule). If this isn’t done, retros might be generated to cover gaps in pay.

For example, some pay policies are configured with an effective start date of 1/1/1900. In this scenario, if a change is made to a rule in the policy, pay that was previously transmitted might be affected when Dayforce runs the Pay Summary Recalc background job. Other actions might also trigger a recalculation for transmitted pay periods, including:

Running a report.
Running an import.
Editing timesheets.
Creating schedules.
Approving pay.

Rule Placement in Your Ruleset Hierarchy

Dayforce processes the rules in your pay policy sequentially. This means that an employee’s pay details, as calculated by one rule, are then exposed to the next rule in the ruleset hierarchy. Because Dayforce processes pay this way, it’s important that you configure your ruleset hierarchy logically. A misconfigured ruleset can affect eligibility for certain premiums or result in pay miscalculations.

Consider an example where an employee should receive holiday pay based on their average number of worked hours leading up to the holiday, including premium hours. Before the holiday, the employee worked some time that deviated from their schedule, which entitled them to premium pay. The employee’s pay policy is configured with the following rules, among others:

The Holiday Average Hour Rule, which calculates their holiday pay.
The Schedule Variance Rule, which grants premiums when employees work time that deviates from their schedule.

If the Holiday Average Hour Rule is placed above the Schedule Variance Rule in the pay policy, the holiday hours average calculated by Dayforce won’t contain any schedule variance premium hours. In this scenario, the Schedule Variance Rule runs after the Holiday Average Hour Rule in the ruleset, so its evaluation (that is, its detection and pay recalculation based on the schedule variations) isn’t included in the holiday pay calculation. This results in an underpayment for the employee.

Add New Rules and Qualifiers to Your Ruleset Hierarchy

Before You Begin: This functionality is currently unavailable. It will be available in Release 2023.2.0 of Dayforce.

Previously, when you added a new pay rule to your ruleset, it was added to the bottom of the hierarchy by default. After adding the rule, you could move it to the appropriate location using the up and down arrows.

Now, you can select a rule in the hierarchy and click Rule below selected item. Dayforce adds the new rule under the rule you selected. Similarly, you can select Qualifier below selection item to add a qualifier under the selected rule or qualifier.

Number of Rules

To maintain performance, it’s recommended that you limit your pay policy to 100 pay rules or fewer. If you add more than 100 pay rules to a pay policy ruleset, performance of the pay rule engine will likely be impacted. In general, the more pay rules you include in your pay policy, the longer Dayforce takes to load and process each rule.

It’s recommended that you configure your pay policy ruleset as efficiently as possible to avoid performance issues. This can include combining pay rule configurations or adding pay rules to different pay policies whenever possible.

Filter Pay Rules

You can filter the rules and qualifiers in your pay policy ruleset to better track down specific components of your policy configuration. For example, you can filter out rules and qualifiers that are inactive.

See Filter Rules and Qualifiers.

Additional Recommendations

Consider how you configure these additional settings in other features in Dayforce.

Terminated Employment Status

The effective starting point of a day for employment status changes can affect pay calculation. In HR Admin > Status, it’s recommended that you set the Terminated status to End of Day in the Effective Starting Point of Day field to avoid pay calculation issues.

See Create Employment Statuses.

Pay Adjustment Import Client Property

In System Admin > Client Properties in the Properties tab, in the General section, there’s a client property that affects Dayforce’s pay rule engine. The Run Pay Engine on Pay Adjustment Import client property controls whether Dayforce runs the pay rule engine after the Employee Pay Adjustment Import runs. This client property is enabled by default.

If your organization contains a large number of employees, it’s recommended that you disable this client property to reduce the import time. For example, if your import file contains more than 500 time entries, this client property—if enabled—can impact the application’s performance when running the import.

See General.