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.

  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.