Set up department names and ID fields

Department Names are the names of any departments, branches, or offices your company might have. If you do not have any departments in your company, Powerpay assigns all of your employees to ID Dept #100 - Default. In addition to identifying departments, you can use the ID fields to identify other employee categories such as job function, union classification, division, or full-time or part-time status. Creating Departments and IDs is part of the larger task of costing hours and earnings and organizing employees.

Powerpay uses the department number and name, when assigned to an employee, to allocate the employee’s earnings and company contributions to that department for costing and reporting purposes. When you receive your Payroll Distribution Summary and Journal Entry from Dayforce, you see the salaries and wages as well as any employer contributions charged to these departments. Consult with your business accountant if you have questions about costing earnings.

You can use the Sort button in the Employee List to sort the employees in the Employee List by department to ease with your data entry, and have the department number print on employee pay statements to make them easier to distribute. You can also use the department number or any other ID fields to sort the payroll register. Contact your Customer Support Team to request this option.

Powerpay displays the descriptions you create for the Departments and IDs. To save space, reports only display the ID codes, NOT the descriptions.

After setup, the codes can be used on other windows to organize different payroll and costing information.

  • Both departments and IDs can be assigned to employees from the Employee Profile page.Closed From the Payroll menu, select Hire/Profile > Employee Profile. The Department assigned to an employee becomes the employee's "home" department.
  • Department codes can be used on the Employee Timesheet page to cost hours and earnings to departments other than the employee's home department. If no other department is specified on the Employee Timesheet page, earnings are automatically costed to the employee's home department. For that reason, department codes are usually based on costing centres you have designed for your business.
  • ID codes can be used to sort employees based on their IDs. Possible categories could be business locations, functional managers, project teams, or type of work done (for example, Sales). If Job Costing is required using ID codes, contact your Customer Support Team.

Note: Powerpay populates this page with Department #100 with a description of "default" unless you change this value.

Prerequisites

Creating departments and IDs is related to the tasks of costing hours and earnings and organizing employees. To make full use of these features, you may want to do some preliminary business planning before organizing your payroll with these tools.

Consult with your business accountant if you have questions about cost centres and costed earnings.

Tasks

  1. Open the Department/Distribution Setup page.Closed From the Company menu, select Department/Distribution Setup.

  2. In the Description column under ID Dept - Department, enter department names beside the appropriate department numbers. If you need to add more departments than there are lines available, fill in all available lines and click Save. More blank lines appear at the end of the table.

  3. If your company uses other identifiers, type the codes and their corresponding descriptions in other ID columns (ID Y, ID Z, or ID X).

    Note: ID codes X, Y and Z are memo fields only unless Advanced Job Costing is enabled.

  4. Enter custom descriptions (up to 20 characters) in the English and French fields for each ID, as required.

    Note: The Custom Description field can be used to indicate what the department/field is used for. For example: Department = Department, ID Y = Province, IDZ = Location, IDX = Department.

    Note: If you enter a custom description in only one of the two fields (English or French), the custom description appears when that language is selected for the Powerpay application. If you did not enter a custom description in one of the languages, Powerpay displays the default description for that language.

  5. Click Save.

Powerpay displays the ID descriptions and codes in the pages where this information is relevant, including New Hire Defaults, Employee Profile, Employee Timesheets, and Mass Edit pages.

  1. Click the Pay Period menu and click the Enter button for the pay period you want to work with.
  2. Open the Employee Profile page.Closed From the Payroll menu, select Hire/Profile > Employee Profile.
  3. From the Employee List, on the name of the employee for which you want to assign a department and ID.
  4. Select the home department from the Department list.
  5. Select IDs from the ID lists for whichever IDs you have created.

    Note: ID codes X, Y and Z are memo fields only unless Advanced Job Costing is enabled.

  6. Click Save.
  7. Repeat steps 2 through 5 for each employee.

Note: Job costing by Department number is available by default. To job cost with ID codes X, Y, or Z, Advanced Costing must be enabled. To journalize advanced costing, a custom journal entry is required. Service fees apply. Contact your Customer Support Team.

  1. Click the Pay Period menu and click the Enter button for the pay period you want to work with.
  2. Navigate to the Employee Timesheet page.Closed From the Payroll menu, select Regular Payment > Employee Timesheet.
  3. Select the employee from the Employee List.
  4. In either the Hours or Earnings sections, make a line entry for the hours or earnings that are to be costed to a different department.

  5. From the Exception Department list, select the department to which you want to cost the hours or earnings.

    or

    if Compensation is set up for the payroll, select the Position the employee worked. The department is updated automatically based on the department set up for the position.

    Note: If you require more lines to enter your data, click Save. Powerpay refreshes the page, displays all previously entered values and adds more lines.

Departments and IDs that are no longer required can be deleted. If an ID field is being used (that is, the field has one or more values assigned to it), Powerpay displays a Remove column and a check box for each value set up for that ID on the Departments & IDs page.

  1. Open the Department/Distribution Setup page.Closed From the Company menu, select Department/Distribution Setup.

  2. In the Remove column, select the checkbox next to the ID to be deleted.
  3. Click Save.

Powerpay deletes both the value and description after the page is saved. After the ID is removed, it no longer appears in lists on Powerpay pages.

If you delete ID value or description in error, re-enter the same value or description as if it were a new value.

Next steps

Set up employees with their departments and IDs and cost hours and earnings to different departments, as required.

Field Information - Department/Distribution Setup page

Enter custom descriptions (up to 20 characters) in the English and French fields for each ID, as required.

If you enter a custom description in only one of the two fields, the custom description appears when that language is selected for the Powerpay application. The default description, appears in the language for which a custom description was not entered. For example, if you enter an English custom description, but leave the French blank, the new description appears when Powerpay is used in English but the default description (for example, ID Y- ID Field #1) appears if French is selected as no custom description was entered for French.

  • Number - A numeric code (maximum three digits) between 1 and 999. There is a maximum of 200 departments.
  • Description - A description of the department code up to 10 characters. The description appears in the lists on the Employee Profile and Employee Timesheet pages. The organization of your departments is based on your own business requirements to cost earnings. Consult with your accountant to determine how best to implement departments and costing for your business.
  • Number - An alphanumeric code up to six characters. Example: MGRJON
  • Description - A description of the code up to six characters. Example: A. Jones
  • Number - An alphanumeric code up to two characters. Example: C7
  • Description - A description of the code up to fifteen characters. Example: Calgary 7
  • Number - An alphanumeric code up to five characters. Example: SHIPG
  • Description - A description of the code up to fifteen characters. Example: Shipping

Other Information

Powerpay pages display the descriptions of departments and IDs, however, to save space, Powerpay reports display only department codes.

See also