Costpoint Online Help

Compute Payroll

Use this screen to create potential paychecks, including tax withholding calculations at the federal, state, and local level.

Accruals for employer contribution calculations, workers' compensation, state unemployment, and federal unemployment are also calculated.

Compute Payroll is always in a recompute mode. For example, it is not necessary to remove a timesheet flag in order to recompute payroll. Timesheets with dates falling within the current pay period are always selected for processing. Timesheets with dates before or after the current pay period are skipped.

In order for employees to be paid from timesheets, the timesheets must be processed to payroll. The Compute Payroll program performs the following functions:

  • Computes gross pay, federal, state, and local withholdings, and other deductions for each employee. Accruals are calculated for workers' compensation, state unemployment, federal unemployment, and employer contributions. You can review this information on the Manage Payroll Records screen, or you can print a report from the Print Payroll Edit Report screen.
    Note: Beginning January 1, 2013, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requires an employer to withhold Additional Medicare Tax on wages that are paid to an employee in excess of the IRS threshold amount (set at $200,000 in 2013). Costpoint has been updated for this requirement and now the Additional Medicare Withholding amount is stored in a separate column on the Employee Earnings table. As part of this enhancement, when you compute payroll, Costpoint calculates and stores Medicare Additional Wages and Medicare Additional Withholding amounts.
  • Makes computed timesheets unavailable for edit. Timesheets that have been included in the creation of payroll can no longer be modified on the Manage Timesheets screen. After you compute payroll, the Computed Payroll check box in the header of the timesheet is selected.
    Note: To modify a timesheet after computing payroll when the timesheet is not posted or computed for other processes, run the Delete Timesheet Payroll Computed Flags screen for that timesheet. Change the timesheet and then recompute payroll for the employee.
  • If you selected a Calculation Method of Days Per Cycle in the Prorate Options group box on the Configure Labor Settings screen and if the employee is salaried and works over or under the scheduled hours in the work schedule for that day, the employee's time is adjusted to reflect the work schedule hours. If you selected the Prorate Hired/Terminated Employees Only check box on the Configure Labor Settings screen, time is adjusted only for employees hired or terminated within the timesheet cycle.
  • If you selected the Enable SUTA Reciprocity Functionality check box on the Configure Payroll Settings screen, all SUTA eligible wages for employees are applied towards the SUTA limit in each state. When an employee moves from one state to another, SUTA eligible earnings do not start over, and any eligible earnings from the first state apply to the SUTA limit for the second state as well.

You must initialize the federal, state, and local tax data and tables before withholdings can be computed (see the Federal Taxes and State Taxes menus). Before processing your first payroll, verify that the relevant data in the Payroll Controls menu and the Basic Employee Information menu in the Employee module have been provided. (Refer to the Processing the Payroll topic for more information.)

Enter and appropriately modify all timesheets before executing this program. You cannot change an original timesheet after the timesheet is either processed to payroll (computed) in this module, or posted to the G/L on the Post Timesheets screen. However, if corrections must be made, enter additional or correcting timesheets. You can also run the Delete Timesheet Payroll Computed Flags utility if the timesheet was not posted to the G/L. You can then execute the Compute Payroll program again. If a check has not been issued (that is, there is no check number on the Manage Payroll Records screen for the specific paycheck type (regular or bonus)), the new timesheet is combined with the original timesheet to create a new paycheck.

You cannot create payroll in one pay period when there are items remaining on the Manage Payroll Records screen from a previous pay period. You can, however, still enter timesheets and post them to Labor Distribution, even though a previous pay period has not been paid. This control is important because it keeps timesheets segregated by pay period and does not allow you to accidentally combine timesheets from more than one period into one paycheck.

Multi-state functionality was added to a number of applications. This functionality allows the proper calculation of withholdings for employee who work in multiple states during a single pay period. Because the new tables are needed for multi-state calculation, this application now looks at new tables to hold the tax data.