Advance Payments

Sometimes you may wish to pay one or more employees in advance. For example, an employee may be about to go on annual leave and you may agree to pay them for this leave in advance so that they have some spending money for their vacation.

Or, perhaps the payroll officer will be away when the next pay period(s) is due to be paid and wishes to process the pay run(s) for that pay period(s) in advance as nobody else knows how to perform pay runs.

Marlin HR caters for these situations by allowing you to process Normal pay runs for future pay periods in advance, for one or all employees.

Important Notes"

• This is all done with Normal pay runs, not Adjustment Pay Runs. You are simply processing the Normal pay run(s) for certain pay periods at an earlier date than you would normally.
• Normal Pay Runs for each employee must always be processed in correct 'Pay To' date order. This is so that Year To Date figures, leave accruals and taxation are calculated correctly. When a Normal pay run is finalised, the employee is marked as having been paid up to the 'Pay To' date of that pay run. Therefore, you can never skip pay periods or go back and perform a Normal pay run for a previous pay period for that employee(s).
• When you select a 'Pay To' date on the Pay Run Initialisation screen, an employee is displayed in red and with a Pay Qty of '0' if they have already been included on a Normal pay run for that pay period. If you look at the 'Last Paid To' column it will show you the 'Pay To' date from the most recent Normal pay run that employee was included in. When you select the pay period after this, the employee will again appear in black with a Pay Qty of '1'.
• Casual employees will always have a Pay Qty of '1' on the Pay Run Initialisation screen as they may not be paid every pay period but they should never have a Pay Qty higher than '1'.
• Processing pay runs in advance does not mean that you have to actually pay the employee(s) in advance. You enter a Pay Date on each pay run and your bank will use that date as the default payment date (see ABA Bank File). Alternatively, you could process the pay runs, print the Pay Advices and Pay Disbursement reports for each pay run and give them to a colleague with instructions as to the dates on which to actually pay the employee(s) for each pay run. they would perform the online banking and give the Pay Advice(s) to the employee(s).
• When performing a Normal pay run in advance, remember to enter the 'Pay Date' on which the employees are to be paid for that pay period.
• When posting pay journals from your Marlin inbox, remember to post each one to the correct GL period.

To process pay runs in advance

Create normal leave entries for all employees that are taking any leave in the pay periods being processed in advance (always use the correct From/To dates on the leave entry).

Open the Pay Run Initialisation screen.

Set the Pay Type to 'Normal'.

Set the 'Pay To' date to the end of the first pay period to be processed in advance.

In the 'Pay Date' field, enter the date on which payment for this pay run is to be made to employees' accounts (if you upload ABA bank files your Bank will use this date to schedule payment - see ABA Bank File).

Select all employees to be paid.

In the employee list at the bottom, ensure that the Pay Qty column shows '1' for all selected employees (note: Casual employees will always show as '1').

Process the pay as normal.

Repeat this process for each pay run that needs to be processed in advance (note: although you could use the Pay To date to process multiple pay runs in advance on a single pay run, this would restrict them to a single Pay Date and a single pay journal in Marlin that can only be posted to a single GL Period).

If you use the ABA bank files to pay your employees, upload them to your online banking and authorise them before going away.

While you are away, each pay run will automatically be paid to employees on the date you entered in the Pay Date field for that pay run.

To pay selected employee(s) in advance

Create normal leave entries for all employees that are taking any leave in the pay periods to be paid in advance (always use the correct From/To dates on the leave entry).

Open the Pay Run Initialisation screen.

Set the Pay Type to Normal.

If you haven't already processed the regular pay run for the current pay period

Prepare the normal pay run as per usual.

Set the Pay To date to the end of the current pay period.

Select all employees to be paid for the current pay period.

In the employee list at the bottom, the Pay Qty shown for everyone should now be '1'

In the employee list set the Pay To date, for each employee that is to be paid in advance, forward as many weeks as you wish to pay them in advance.

The Pay Qty for these employee(s) only will now be greater than one (ie. the current pay period + the number of pay periods to be paid in advance).

Process the pay as normal.

If you have already processed the regular pay run for the current pay period

Set the 'Pay To' date to the end of the last pay period to be paid in advance.

Select only the employee(s) to be paid in advance.

In the employee list at the bottom, the Pay Qty shown for the selected employee(s) should reflect the number of pay periods you are paying in advance.

Process the pay as normal.

What if an employee's leave period ends in the middle of a pay period?

If you are paying an employee in advance because they are going on leave, and their leave period ends part way through a pay period, you have two options.

Pay them in advance for the pay periods up to and including the last one before the end of their leave period.

This will not pay them in advance for the leave days in the pay period during which they returns to work, but they will get a full pay upon their return.

Pay them in advance for the pay periods up to and including the one during which their leave period ends.

This pays them for all of their leave in advance and will include the days between the end of the leave period and the end of the pay period as Standard hours.

Before finalising the pay run you can zero these Standard hours if you do not wish to pay these work days in advance.

After the employee returns to work and you are processing the pay for the pay period during which they returned.

You will leave them off the pay run if you pre-paid the work days as Standard hours and you don't need to pay them for anything else (e.g. overtime).

Otherwise, you will include them on the pay run and pay them for the work days and/or overtime etc.

The system knows that you have already run their normal pay run for this pay period (he will appear in red with a Pay Qty of '0') and will automatically treat it as an Adjustment Pay for them only (it will be a Normal pay for everyone else on the pay run).

As such, all figures on the pay run for them will default to '0' and you will need to manually enter any hours and amounts etc. that you need to pay them.