Accumulators Overview
Accumulators are used to accrue/collect amounts that can be used to generate earnings or hours for the current pay. The most common use of accumulators is to calculate the vacation pay owing to the employee, and to disburse their vacation pay. Other common uses of accumulators are to calculate sick entitlements, seniority time, banked time, etc.
Accumulator Basics
- Accumulator Action - Accumulators can be set to accrue amounts or to pay out their amounts with every pay run.
- Calculation Methods - Accumulator amounts are calculated in three ways:
- Formula - The most common method is to use the Functions feature where the accumulator's value is based on a mathematical calculation. A common example is calculating vacation pay at 4% of an employee's applicable earnings.
- Fixed Amount - You define a fixed dollar amount that is accumulated for each employee. Fixed amounts can be applied at the payroll-level to be applied to all employees, or can be overridden on an individual employee basis if needed.
- Individually - The accumulator amount is defined specifically for each employee.
- Assigning Accumulators to an Employee - You can assign employee accumulators in two ways:
- Template - This is the most efficient method, and can greatly speed up the process when adding new employees to your payroll. When an employee is assigned a given template, the employee inherits its associated accumulator types. See the Assigning Accumulators via an Employee Template tutorial below.
- Manually - This method involves adding each accumulator one at a time. This approach could be used if the accumulator is only to be applied to certain employees (not to all, as would be the case if you used an employee template). See the Assigning Accumulators Manually tutorial below.
- Accumulator Setup - You work with accumulators in two main areas of the program:
- Payroll Level - When you are adding new accumulator types for use in your payroll, you do so via the Current Payroll - Accumulators screen. This is the "master" area where the accumulator is controlled (i.e. you do not make individual employee settings in this screen).
- Employee Level - Once the accumulator is created, you can assign it to each employee via the Employee - Accumulators Items screen. This is where you work with the individual employee-level amounts, actions, and settings.
See Also