Configure the Employee Pay Zone Recalc Background Job

You can use the Employee Pay Zone Recalc background job in System Admin > Background Jobs to assign employees to matching pay zones. The job also unassigns employees from pay zones that no longer match.

Before You Begin: You must first complete the steps in the following topics: Create Pay Zones and Configure Pay Zone Differentials.

You can also manually assign pay zones to employees. See (Optional) Override Pay Zones by Employee.

Job Scheduling

You should schedule this job to run nightly so that it keeps assigned pay zones up to date with changes from records across Dayforce. The job also runs automatically after pay zone imports and when certain changes are made in Dayforce. See Schedule the Pay Zone Differential Recalc Background Job.

Job Prerequisites

• The Enable Pay Zones in place of Org. Differentials checkbox must be selected in the General section of the Properties tab of System Admin > Client Properties. If it isn’t selected, the job ends with an error.
• The job runs only for employees with an Active status type on the current date. It doesn’t run for employees with Terminated, Inactive, or Pre-start status types. An exception is when the job is run in some forms (such as the Candidate Hire form) where the new hire doesn't have a status yet. In this case the job still runs so that the correct pay grade is shown on the form.
• The job runs only for employees who have a job that is assigned a pay grade.

Pay Zone Assignment

The Employee Pay Zone Recalc background job assigns matching pay zones to the employee's work assignments in the Work > Work Assignments screen of People. In the Pay Information section of work assignment records, the read-only Pay Zone field displays the pay zone assigned to the work assignment.

The values of the pay grade, like the read-only Min and Mid fields, are updated based on the assigned pay zone. In this example, the work assignment is assigned the US - 10% Above Average pay zone. The normal pay grade values for the job are increased by 10%:

In the Pay Information section, Dayforce also displays the Pay Zone Override drop-down list, where you can select a different pay zone to assign to the work assignment.

If an employee has more than one work assignment, Dayforce assigns the best matching pay zone to each work assignment. For example, an employee has a work assignment in Toronto, Canada, and another work assignment in Montreal, Canada. If there are pay zones for Toronto and Montreal associated with the employee's pay grade, the Toronto work assignment is assigned the Toronto pay zone and the Montreal work assignment is assigned the Montreal pay zone.

Background Jobs Process

To determine which pay zone to assign to the employee, the background job first checks where the employee works. It does this by checking the work assignment address in the following priority order:

• If the work assignment has the Virtual checkbox selected, Dayforce uses the employee's primary address from their profile. If a virtual employee has more than one primary address over time, the application determines which address to use as follows:
  • If the work assignment has an effective end date, the address effective on the end date is used.
  • If the work assignment has an effective start date in the future, the address effective on the start date is used.
  • If the work assignment has a start date in the past and no end date, the address effective on the current date is used.
• If the work assignment has the Virtual checkbox cleared, and an option is selected in the Work Location Override drop-down list, Dayforce uses the address set for the location override in Org Setup > Org Payroll Setup > Employee Work Location Overrides.
• If neither of the above are applicable, Dayforce uses the address associated with the location in the work assignment. If there is no address associated with that location, Dayforce keeps looking up the organizational hierarchy until it finds a location with an address. For example, if the employee's department doesn’t have an address configured, Dayforce looks at the address configured for the parent site location.

After the job determines which address to check, it looks for the appropriate pay zone. First it needs to find which effective date the pay zone must have, as follows:

• If the work assignment has an effective end date, only the pay zones effective on the end date are looked at.
• If the work assignment doesn't have an effective end date, and the employee's latest employment status record has a start date in the future, only pay zones effective on the start date are looked at.
• If the work assignment doesn't have an effective end date, and the employee's current status is their latest status record, only pay zones effective on the current date are looked at.

Next, the job looks at pay zones with the above effective dates that are assigned to the employee's pay grade. Pay zones are assigned to pay grades in the Pay Zone Differentials subtab of the Pay Grades tab of Org Setup > Jobs and Job Assignments.

Of the pay zones assigned to the employee's pay grade, Dayforce assigns the pay zone that most closely matches the address found above, in the following priority: zip/postal code, city, state/province, and country.