Alternative pay is an option in AccountLinx for supported payroll systems where we can use an alternative pay type/ID/code depending on the employee, location, or cost code of a time record. This allows you to accommodate for unique situations where you are paying employees differently based on various circumstances.
Some common examples of using alternative pay/wages include, but are not limited to:
- Certain regions/clients requiring different pay.
- Standardized pay for Union work depending on the actions being performed.
- Standardized pay depending on State/Federal work due to prevailing wage/Davis-Bacon.
Setting up alternative pay is dependent on how you have ExakTime Connect, AccountLinx, and your payroll system set up.
Table of Contents
Examples of Usage
Let us first think about where alternative pay could be used to see if it would apply to your needs. While ExakTime and AccountLinx can be customized to accommodate a majority of payroll situations, we may not be able to cover every scenario.
Employee dependent alternative pay is typically used when specific employees are receiving an alternative pay type.
For example:
- Your regular employees would receive pay type 1, while your supervisors would be receiving pay type 7.
Location dependent alternative pay is used when where the employee is working determines what pay type an employee should be receiving.
For example:
- Joe normally works in a commercial district and normally receives pay type 1. If he were to work for a government location, however, he should receive pay type 4 to accommodate for additional requirements/regulations. With ExakTime and AccountLinx, you can set up certain locations so that if any employee chooses the government location, it would use pay type 4 instead of pay type 1.
Cost code dependent alternative pay is used when what the employee is doing determines what pay type an employee should be receiving or if you need additional flexibility that the employee/location dependent options cannot offer.
For example:
- Joe installs, inspects, and repairs HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) and receives pay type 1 for a typical work day. If he is called out to perform any emergency work after hours or on the weekend, he should receive pay type 4 to accommodate any special/premium pay. With ExakTime and AcocuntLinx, you can set up an "Emergency Work" or "Weekend Work" cost code so that if any employee uses the cost code, it would use pay type 4 instead of pay type 1.
- You are looking to track paid time off for your employees. You can create a "PTO" cost code to help accommodate this so if the cost code is used for an employee's time record, it would have an alternative pay type.
- You are required to track prevailing wage work differently than your typical work. Your typical work would simply be "Iron Worker", but you must track prevailing wage work more intimately with cost codes like "Iron Worker Area 1" and "Iron Worker Area 2".
Prerequisites
Check if AccountLinx Supports Alternative Pay Types for your Payroll System
You must first check if your AccountLinx exporter supports alternative pay for your accounting/payroll application before proceeding to avoid any unnecessary changes/setup.
- Go to Tools and click Exporter Settings in AccountLinx.
- Click Configure....
- Check if there are any options for alternative pay. It may have a different label than "alternative pay". If supported, there will generally be a drop-down menu to choose what entity the alternative pay should be associated with.
- In the example below, we can see that our Foundation exporter allows alternative pay and is labeled "Map Earning Codes to".
- In the example below, QuickBooks has the option labeled as "Map Payroll Wage Item to".
- In the example below, we can see that our Foundation exporter allows alternative pay and is labeled "Map Earning Codes to".
What to Do in Your Payroll System
Before we can set up the alternative pay in AccountLinx, you must first have the appropriate pay set up in your payroll system, if able. AccountLinx does not generally tell a payroll system the specific dollar rate an employee should be receiving, but the type/ID/code of what the employee should be receiving for hours worked (i.e. $15 per hour vs. Pay ID 1 per hour for a given employee).
As payroll systems differ in how they are set up, we can only provide the idea/concept of what should be done. The pay for the employee should be set up so that in addition to their regular/overtime/doubletime pay, the employee would also have alternative pay for situations such as working on the weekend, emergencies, special locations, etc.
For example:
- Pay ID 1 - Regular Pay
- Pay ID 2 - Overtime Pay
- Pay ID 3 - Doubletime Pay
- Pay ID 4 - Regular Pay on Weekends
- Pay ID 5 - Overtime Pay on Weekends
- Pay ID 6 - Emergency Pay
What to Do in ExakTime
Depending on your needs and your payroll system, we can associate the alternative pay to the employee, location, or cost code, as explained in the examples above. This allows the employees' pay to be determined by who it is, where they are working, or what they are doing.
For location or cost codes, it is best to establish this early on when setting up ExakTime/AccountLinx so your employees do not have to change their habits/processes down the line. We commonly see the alternative pay associated with a cost code as it allows the most flexibility and options when setting up an alternative pay.
For more information on setting up locations, you can refer to the following article.
For more information on setting up cost codes, you can refer to the following article.
Setting Up AccountLinx
After setting up the appropriate pay type/ID/code in your payroll system and creating the appropriate locations and/or cost codes in ExakTime, we can now associate the alternative pay with the location/cost code.
- Go to Tools and click Exporter Settings in AccountLinx.
- Click Configure....
- Check if there are any options for alternative pay. If supported, there will generally be a drop-down menu to choose what entity the alternative pay should be associated with. In the example below, we can see that our Foundation exporter allows alternative pay and is found under "Map Earning Codes to".
- Save your changes.
- Click Map X from the main AccountLinx page depending on what you have selected in the prior steps.
- There should be a set of columns for you to enter/specify what the alternative pay should be if that entity is used for a time record.
- If the pay column is blank on the mapping window, it will default to the regular pay set up from the exporter settings window.
Special Considerations
Depending on what you are setting up for alternative pay, you may need to perform some additional setup to properly track your cost codes or to help your employees.
- Excluding a Cost Code - If a cost code should be ignored by policies for any reason, such as for overtime calculations, you will need to exclude the cost code.
- Create a Group/Crew - If you a large number of locations or cost codes that have alternative pay, you may want to group them up so they are separated from your normal options. For example, you may want to create a group for your regular cost codes and a group for "Emergency Work" cost codes.