Casual Employees

The ATO now requires that you designate on Pay Advices when a payment to a casual worker includes a loading component.

To see how to do this please see Pay Advice Comments.

Do I have to withhold PAYG tax from casual employees?

Yes.

Even though a casual employee may feel that they are unlikely to earn more than the tax free threshold during the financial year, or would prefer to have no tax withheld during the year and to then take care of it themselves at the end of financial year, it is your obligation as their employer to withhold PAYG tax during the financial year and forward it to the ATO.

An employee can, under certain circumstances, complete a Withholding Declaration to have the amount of PAYG tax withheld amended. Please refer to the ATO or your employer organisation for advice.

What days do I select in the Normal Days Worked At Standard Pay Rate section?

Even though a casual employee may work different days each week or not at all some weeks, you should tick the days on which the employee usually works and is paid at their standard rate (i. e. not overtime rates).

If you are not sure but know that the employee generally works 2 days per week, then tick any 2 week days.

This information is entered on the Pay Details page of Employee Maintenance.

What do I enter in Normal Hours Per Pay (at Standard Rate)?

Enter the total number of hours that a casual employee normally works per week and is paid at their standard rate. Do not include any hours that are paid at overtime rates.

Default Earnings Type for Casuals

You should normally select Standard Hours as the default Earnings Type for employees, regardless of whether they are full time, part time or casuals, and enter their rate in Standard Pay Rate.

The system already knows whether the employee is full time, part time, or casual because you have selected this in the Employment Type picklist on the General tab.

A common misconception is that you need to select Casual Rate as the default Earnings Type for casual employees.

When to use the Casual Rate earnings type

The purpose of the Casual Rate earnings type is to make life easier if you have a number of casual employees that are all paid at the same rate.

In this case, you can enter that rate on the Casual Rate earnings type (select System > Earnings from the menu).

Then select Casual Rate as the default earnings type in Employee Maintenance for the casual employees that are paid that rate.

The benefit of this is that when the pay rate for casual employees is increased, you only need to update the rate on the Casual Rate earnings type instead of updating the individual rate for every casual employee in Employee Maintenance.

Using this setup will automatically apply the shared casual rate to the employee's earnings and ignore the value entered in Standard Pay Rate but it is probably best set it to 0.00 to avoid any confusion.

Overtime Rates for Casual Employees

If for example, a casual employee sometimes works on Saturdays and is entitled to a higher rate that is not the standard 1.5 times or double time rate, you should create a new Earnings type for Casual Overtime.

A casual employee's leave entry doesn't appear on the pay run or has incorrect hours?

If you have a casual employee that is entitled to leave and you have created a leave entry that is not appearing on the pay run, it is likely due to one or more of the following:

• There are no days ticked in Normal Days Worked At Standard Pay Rate (on the Pay Details page of Employee Maintenance).
• The default earnings type is set to Casual Rate instead of Standard Hours (on the Pay Details page of Employee Maintenance).
• The number in the default Earnings type of Standard Hours is zero (on the Pay Details page of Employee Maintenance).

If the leave entry is appearing on the pay run but the leave hours showing are less than the number you entered on the leave entry, it is likely due to one of the following:

The leave period on the leave entry extends beyond the pay period being paid.

If necessary, correct the dates on the leave entry and then void and restart the pay run (or click on the Reset to Standard Pay Advice icon to refresh only that employee on the pay run).

The total hours on the leave entry is greater than the number in the default Earnings type of Standard Hours (on the Pay Details page of Employee Maintenance).

Increase the number in the default Earnings type of Standard Hours to match the total hours on the leave entry (on the Pay Details page of Employee Maintenance) then void and restart the pay run (or click on the Reset to Standard Pay Advice icon to refresh only that employee on the pay run).

Casual Employees and Superannuation

You should check with your employer organisation as to whether your casual employee is entitled to superannuation.

If the employee is entitled to super regardless of their earnings for the month, you will setup their superannuation exactly as you would for a full time employee.

If they are only entitled to super if their earnings for the month reach a minimum threshold (e.g. $450 per month), you will need to either:

• Apply superannuation by default and remove it at the end of a month if earnings do not reach the required threshold,
• Or, apply no superannuation but add it at the end of each month if earnings reach the required threshold.

In either case you will need to select the Entitlements tab In Employee Maintenance and enter the employee's superannuation fund details.

In the Compulsory Rate (%) field enter 0% if not applying super, or enter the superannuation guarantee rate (eg. 9.5%) to apply super.

After the last pay run for each month, total the employee's earnings, by selecting Reports > Earnings & Allowances from the menu toolbar.

Highlight the pay runs to be totalled (click on one and then hold the Shift key down and use up/down arrow to select the other pay runs for the month).

Click on the None button under Earnings and also under Allowances, then just tick the Earnings types (e.g. Standard Hours) that are included in the superannuation calculation.

Click on Print Employee Detail and then on the Generate button.

This will show you the total earnings for each employee for the selected period (multiply this by the superannuation guarantee rate to get the correct amount of super).

If you applied super and the earnings reached the required threshold, or didn't apply super and the earnings didn't reach the required threshold, no further action is required.

Otherwise, you will need to perform an Adjustment Pay Run for this employee to add or remove superannuation by initialising an Adjustment Pay Run for the casual employee(s) requiring a superannuation adjustment and double-clicking on them in the employee list to view their pay details.

Click in the Superannuation field in the 'This' column.

Double-click on the Employer Super Adjustment row (not the Additional Super row).

Enter the amount of super to add or remove then click on Add Super or Reduce Super as appropriate.

Click on the OK button and you will see the amount appear in the Adjustment column.

Ensure all other figures are $0 then finalise the pay run.

The Adjustment Pay Run will automatically send a journal across to Marlin GTX to make the same changes there.

This will ensure that Marlin HR and Marlin GTX remain synchronised.

How to remove leave accruals from Casual employees

If you inadvertently accrued leave for an employee that was not entitled to them, you will need to remove the accrual entitlements and zero the accrued leave balance.

To stop an employee from receiving any further leave accruals, open the employee in Employee Maintenance and go to the Entitlements tab.

Edit each leave entitlement and change the figure in Annual Entitlement (Hours) to zero.

To zero the existing leave accrual balances, please refer to Leave Balance Adjustments.

How to setup a Casual employee with weekend hours rates

If you have a Casual employee who works some weekday hours but also some Saturday hours at a 40% higher rate, we recommend you set them up as follows.

Select System > Earnings from the Marlin HR menu.

Click on the Add icon (green +) to add a new Earnings type.

Call it "Standard Rate + 40%".

Select the Employee's Standard Rate button.

Enter 1.40 in Standard Rate Factor field.

Click on Save icon.

Close & re-open Employee Maintenance (to pick up the new Earnings type you just added).

Open the employee and go to the Pay Details page.

Ensure the Casual employee's Standard Pay Rate (left-hand side) is set to $22.77 per Hour.

Only tick the weekdays the employee normally works (do not tick Saturday).

In the Earnings box (right-hand side), use "Standard Hours" (not Casual Rate) for weekday hours.

In the Earnings box (right-hand side), click on Add and add the new "Standard Rate + 40%" earnings type for Saturday hours.

This will ensure that the pay runs use $22.77 for week day hours and $31.88 for Saturday hours.