Auto Pay is used to pay employees, typically salaried employees, and requires minimal intervention by payroll administrators or other users with access to approve and commit pay.
For most hourly employees who aren’t paid with the Auto Pay functionality, Dayforce calculates pay amounts by using employee time and attendance records, which are mapped to earnings according to their policy's payroll mappings. This can include any quick entry amounts administrators enter manually in Payroll.
For Auto Pay employees, the application automatically calculates the amounts to pay employees based on information in their employee records. For example, an employee in a pay group with a monthly pay period is paid an annual salary of $60,000. The application automatically calculates the employee's pay as $5,000 for the pay period and disburses it, minus any applicable deductions and taxes, when the pay run is approved and committed.
Some Auto Pay employees might have multiple work assignments, working multiple job assignments or at multiple locations. For example, say a salaried employee splits their time evenly between two different job assignments, requiring the application to split the auto pay to allocate 50% to each job assignment.
For employees like this, you can configure the application to allocate a certain percentage of their auto pay to each work assignment by setting up auto pay distribution for each work assignment in People. See Configure Auto Pay Distribution.
A non-Auto Pay method for paying employees can be practical for employees whose pay amounts often vary from week to week, depending on the hours they work, whether they get overtime or shift premiums, or if they earn commission, tips, or other bonuses.
In comparison, for auto pay employees, the application automatically calculates the amounts to pay employees based on information in their employee records. For example, an employee belonging to a pay group with a monthly pay period is paid an annual salary of $60,000. The application automatically calculates the employee's pay as $5,000 for the pay period and disburses it, minus any applicable deductions and taxes, when the payroll administrator approves and commits pay.
Auto pay calculations are based on a variety of factors.
Auto Pay for Salaried Employees
For salaried employees, Dayforce divides the number of pay periods in a year based on the Frequency value selected for the employee's pay group in Pay Setup > Pay Group. Pay groups can have a weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly, or monthly frequency resulting in either 52, 26, 24, or 12 pay periods. If there is an extra pay period during the year (for example, due to a leap year or the or the year starting on a pay day), you can configure the application to take that into account for pay groups with a weekly or biweekly frequency.
Dayforce calculates the pay amount per pay period by dividing an employee's salary (as defined in the Employment Status tab of the Employment > Employment Settings screen in People ) by the number of pay periods.
For each pay period, Dayforce divides the employee's salary by the number of pay periods and calculates the amount. If an employee's salary changes for some reason within a pay period (for example, a raise), the pay amount is adjusted accordingly.
For example, an employee earns $60,000 a year and is paid monthly; on January 31, the employee's pay is calculated as $5,000 for the month, minus deductions and taxes. Effective February 15, the employee's salary is increased to $65,000 a year; in this case, the application pays the employee $2,500 for the half of the month they earned $60,000 a year, and (approximately) $2,700 for the rest of the month that they earned $65,000 a year.
Auto Pay for Hourly Employees
Though Auto Pay is generally applied to salaried employees, hourly employees can also be configured to use Auto Pay. For hourly employees, the calculations to determine the pay amount is different from salaried employees, although Dayforce still determines the number of pay periods in the year based on the employee's pay group's frequency and calculates the pay amount per period in the following manner.
For employees who belong to a pay group with a weekly or biweekly frequency, Dayforce multiplies their hourly base rate (as defined in the Employment Status tab of the Employment > Employment Settings screen in People) by their weekly hours (as defined in the Normal Weekly Hours field of the Employment Status tab) or twice that value for biweekly pay. For an employee with a base rate of $10 and normally weekly hours of 40, the application calculates a pay amount of $400 for the weekly pay, $800 for biweekly.
Note: The amount of hours used can be overridden by the Auto Pay Rule, if configured for the employee's payroll policy.
For employees who belong to a pay group with a semi-monthly frequency, Dayforce multiplies their hourly base rate by twice the value of the Normal Semi Monthly Hours (Top) field of the Employment Status tab.
For employees who belong to a pay group with a monthly frequency, Dayforce multiplies their hourly base rate by the value of the Normal Semi Monthly Hours (Top) field plus the Normal Semi Monthly Hours (Bottom) field. For an employee with a base rate of $10 and 60 in the Normal Semi Monthly Hours (Top) field and 40 in the Normal Semi Monthly Hours (Bottom) field, Dayforce calculates the pay amount as 10 multiplied by 100, or $1,000.
Auto Pay Configuration Process
Use the following general workflow to configure Auto Pay:
- Set up auto pay by pay type.
- Configure employee-specific values in the Employment Status tab of the Employment > Employment Settings screen in People.
- Configure the Auto Pay Rule to assign it to the appropriate earnings.
- (Optional) In the Auto Pay Rule configuration, override the number of hours per pay period that auto pay employees are paid.
- (Optional) Configure the time-driven earnings (if any) that reduce the amount of auto pay employees receive during a pay period.