Two-Week Cycles

Marlin HR is based upon a standard week so that in Employee Maintenance, for the vast majority of employees, you can simply tick which days of the week they work and enter the number of Standard Hours (hours paid at their standard rate) that they work per week.

The system will then automatically pre-enter that information onto each pay run for you and most weeks you need do nothing except perhaps enter overtime.

When the employee takes leave and you enter a leave entry, the pay run will automatically deduct the leave hours from the Standard Hours for you.

For the vast majority of employees, this will save you time and keystrokes every week.

However, you may also have employees that work a 2 week cycle (e.g. 5 days every second week and 4 days every other week) or a rolling cycle (e.g. 4 days on then 4 days off).

Depending on whether these employees are to be paid the same amount every week, or differently according to the number of hours actually worked in the week, these employees may need to be set up a little differently and may require a little more intervention on the pay run.

Below we have provided recommendations on how best to setup these employees to minimise your effort each week.

Employees working a 2 week cycle

If an employee working a 2 week cycle (e.g. 5 days every second week and 4 days every other week) is to be paid the same amount every week, regardless of whether they worked Week A or Week B, you can set them up to be paid each week for half of the standard hours they work per 2 week cycle.

Configure your employee using the instructions for How to enter a Salaried Employee except for the following differences.

Open the relevant employee in Employee Maintenance.

On the Pay Details tab.

Calculate the employee's average weekly hours paid at their standard rate (Week A + Week B) / 2.

Enter this figure into Normal Hours per Pay at Standard Rate and also into Earnings (Standard Hours).

Untick the Salaried Employee checkbox if this employee is not salaried.

Tick Monday to Friday as Normal Days Worked at Standard Rate (even though each day may not be worked in both weeks of the cycle).

On the Entitlements tab, enter the number of hours the employee is entitled to accrue each year for Annual Leave (i.e. the average weekly hours x 4).

Enter the number of hours the employee is entitled to accrue each year for Personal Leave (i.e. the average weekly hours x 2).

Pay Runs

Because the employee is to be paid the same amount every week and you have entered their 'average' standard hours in Employee Maintenance, the 'average' hours will automatically be pre-entered onto each week's pay run and no adjustment will be required.

When each week's pay run is processed, the employee will accrue the same number of leave hours.

This is because the yearly accrual entitlement is divided by 52 to derive an 'average' weekly accrual that is applied each week.

Leave Entries

Because the employee is to be paid the same amount every week (i.e. the 'average' of Week A and Week B), this same amount is also to be paid when he takes a week of leave.

If you have setup Employee Maintenance as instructed above this should happen automatically as you have entered the employee's 'average' weekly hours as the Normal Hours per Pay at Standard Rate.

If your 'average weekly hours' (calculated above in Employee Setup) included some Saturday and/or Sunday hours, be sure to include Saturday/Sunday in the date range on a leave entry if the employee took those days off, so that the correct number of hours will be applied on the leave entry and deducted from his leave balance.