Greenshades Online Payroll Updates

April 12, 2023

Full Release – Adjustment Pay Runs

Background: This change was originally launched as limited availability / a pilot release. This method was chosen to guarantee full and proper functionality before exposure to all clients. After various changes were made and / or stability had been improved, this feature is now prepared for use by all GS payroll clients. You can find the notes from the early pilot rollout here - Pilot Release Notes (08/26/2022)

Feature Description: In the Greenshades online Payroll module, Adjustment Pay Runs are used to remediate mistakes or make changes to the results of an already submitted and processed pay run. Adjustments are a very standard operation for payroll practitioners as payrolls are not always perfect. There are many scenarios and types of mistakes that these practitioners may need to address. The goal of this tool is to provide users a clear and comprehensive way to make these very important, and potentially complex, amendments. The process that Greenshades uses to approach these problems is to allow a user to start by finding their historical pay run that they expect requires changes. The tool will help the user determine if an Adjustment Pay Run is indeed the right avenue for correction. Assuming it is, the tool will create a new pay run that is populated with the inputs of the selected source pay run. At this point, you can imagine the problem being “As a payroll practitioner, I wish that I entered X instead of Y before submitting the original pay run, so that my employees were paid as intended”. As such, the user will be tasked with making changes to the values of the original pay run and turning them into what they wish were entered the first time. After entering these new values, Greenshades’ intelligent pay run calculations will determine the earnings, benefits, deductions, arrears, and tax differences between the original run and this new Adjustment Pay Run. Upon pay run submission, resulting net checks (positive or negative), and future arrearages, will be generated for the affected employees. The most important idea to keep in mind when using this tool is to always remember to enter the values that you “wish” you had in the first place and let Greenshades do the rest.

Key Feature Information: Adjustment Pay Runs will intelligently remediate a variety of different scenarios that the user “wished” were input differently on the original run. It is worth keeping in mind that since Greenshades uses a more “automatic” and less manual process for adjustment runs, it may differ from what you are accustomed to. This tool will do most of the work to ensure your changes are accurate and compliant, especially in terms of resulting tax and taxable wage differences that result from an adjustment to the prior run. However, it is also worth mentioning that it will not allow you to make changes freely and without guard rails. For scenarios where you wish to make specific manual edits that override functionality from the tool, Greenshades support should be contacted. See additional considerations about the features operation below:

  • It is not advisable to pull employees into an Adjustment Pay Run if they do not actually require an adjustment be made. This can cause unintended consequences from recalculations (i.e. Tax override will not be accounted for, tax auto adjustments may trigger, accidental edits could be performed, etc.). Even if there were no resulting changes, and no other issues occurred, those employees would still be distributed a $0 check, which will inevitably confusion Employees and potentially lead to inconsistent reporting.
  • Employees who were NOT included in the source pay run that you wish to adjust, cannot be added to the new adjustment run.
  • Tax overrides will NOT be pulled from the original pay run into an Adjustment Pay Run.  
  • YTD tax auto adjustments are calculated at the time that this amendment pay run is started. This means that if the tax auto adjust may be triggered from amounts that were 'accrued' on pay runs that took place after the pay run that is being adjusted. The resulting Auto Adjustment will appear on the Adjustment Pay run.
  • Garnishments cannot be “edited” in an Adjustment Pay Run, just as they cannot be in the standard pay run wizard. They will still recalculate based on changes to earnings or employee disposable income.
  • Pay Runs or checks that were voided cannot be adjusted
  • Adjustments can be made up to the start of the current calendar year. You may not adjust pay runs from prior years.

Will I, as the reader, benefit from this feature?  

  • If you have a business that often receives last minute, or post pay run timesheet submissions (i.e. staffing)
  • If you have complicated benefits or deductions and / or tiered models that require great attention (these setups are more prone to mistakes)
  • If you have a commission-based businesses or sales models that will pay monies in advance and need to remediate later  

Who can use this feature? All Payroll Clients

Starting an Adjustment Pay Run:

The Adjustment Triage Step:

Selecting the Employees to include in the Adjustment:

Adjustment Pay Run - Hours & Earnings Step:

Adjustment Pay Run – Review:

Navigation:

Adjustment Pay Run: Greenshadesonline.com > Payroll Tab > Recent Pay Runs > Adjust

New Feature – Garnishments: Generate ACH file for Child Support

Background: To electronically disburse garnished Child Support funds after payroll, the generation of an ACH file is required post pay run that can be sent to the disbursing bank. Prior to this functionality, Garnishments would need to be paid by manually, without any ACH file creation assistance from the Payroll Product.

What’s new? Once a Garnishment Account is set up and tied to a Child Support order, there will be an ACH download file available after each pay run that has taken Child Support Garnishments. This ACH file can be provided directly to the user’s bank for the disbursement of garnished funds. As alluded to, the setup for this functionality will be controlled through a combination of the creation of a Garnishment Payment Account Garnishment Code and assigning that account through on the Child Support order on the desired employee’s code setup screens. Note that this ACH file will be separate from the standard post pay run ACH.

Garnishment ACH Account Setup:

Child Support Setup (with ACH account):

Post Payroll Checklist for Garnishments ACH file download:

Navigation:

Create and Manage Garnishment Bank Accounts: Greenshadesonline.com > Settings Tab > Company Info > Payment Accounts > Add New / Edit Garnishment account

Child Support Garnishment Setup: Greenshadesonline.com > Employees Tab > Payroll Codes > Add Child Support Garnishment

Post Payroll Checklist for Garnishment ACH: Greenshadesonline.com > Payroll Tab > View Pay Run > Scroll to the section for “Download your Garnishment ACH file”

Enhanced Feature – General Ledger: Ability to Split and Map GL by Payroll Custom Fields

Background: As of the first release of Payroll Custom Fields / Cost Reporting, users were NOT able to split General Ledger results, and therefore related employee benefits and employer taxes, by a chosen Payroll Custom Field. Moreover, even if the results were split, there was no option to map the resulting transactions based by a user defined Payroll Custom field.

What’s new? The General Ledger Split Allocation options have been expanded to allow the selection of any Payroll Custom Field. As with all other splitting selections, once a split is chosen it will split the resulting earning ledger transactions, and that employees related Benefits / Deductions, per the pro-rated amount form the earning splits. From this point, the GL mapping options have been expanded to allow users to select one or more custom fields to map their GL results by. These mapping selections are available for all types that would be affected by a split, so Earnings, Benefits, and Taxes (Employer). When mapping, both primary Custom Field data types will be available and will adhere to the following rules:

  • Text – Client will openly type in any text for the mapping. We will allow this mapping to accept extra spaces before or after the mapped value. It is important to note that Transactions will only meet the rule defined by this mapping if they are provided the EXACT same text on their earning from the source pay run.
  • List – Fields of this type will display all selectable options that were defined in the original settings of the Payroll Custom Field itself. Transactions will meet the defined rule for mapping whenever that same selection was applied to an earning from the source pay run.

Splitting the GL by selected Custom Fields:

Mapping the GL to Custom Field Values:

Navigation:

General Ledger Split Allocations: Greenshadesonline.com > Settings Tab > Payroll > General Ledger >  Split Allocations Tab

General Ledger Custom Field Mappings: Greenshadesonline.com > Settings Tab > Payroll > General Ledger >  “Edit Mapping” on Earnings, Benefits, or Taxes Tab > “Split By” chosen Custom Field > Enter Values

Enhanced Feature – Added Loading Wheels to various pages

Background: Various areas of the payroll module and associated pages did not display loading spinners after an action having been executed. This lack of feedback may have created a confusing experience that left users expecting they need to click the action again, when in reality the operation was already in progress.  

What’s new? Loading spinners have been added to a variety of actions. See the Navigation section for the actions that have received this update.

Loading wheel for “Completing a Pay Run”:

Navigation:

Continue a Pay Run: Greenshadesonline.com > Payroll Tab > Continue Pay Run  

Completing a Pay Run: Greenshadesonline.com > Payroll Tab > Start / Continue Pay Run > Review Pay Run > “Submit” > “Yes” (pay run completion)

Add Employee to a Pay Run: Greenshadesonline.com > Payroll Tab > Start / Continue Pay Run > Employees > Add Employees > “Add Employee”

Manually Add Hours & Earnings / Deduction / Benefits to a Pay Run: Greenshadesonline.com > Payroll Tab > Start / Continue Pay Run > Hours & Earnings / Deductions / Benefits > Add ___ > ”Save”

Upload Hours & Earnings / Deduction / Benefits to a Pay Run: Greenshadesonline.com > Payroll Tab > Start / Continue Pay Run > Hours & Earnings / Deductions / Benefits > Upload ___ > “Upload”

Preview General Ledger in a Pay Run: Greenshadesonline.com > Payroll Tab > Start / Continue Pay Run > Review Pay Run > Preview General Ledger

Preview Pay Stub in a Pay Run: Greenshadesonline.com > Payroll Tab > Start / Continue Pay Run > Review Pay Run > View Paystub

Cancel a Pay Run: Greenshadesonline.com > Payroll Tab > Start / Continue Pay Run > Cancel Pay Run > “Yes”

Add / Edit Employee Tax Parameters: Greenshadesonline.com > Employees Tab > Select Employee > Tax Parameters > Add / Edit Parameters > “Save”

General Ledger Settings / Mappings: Greenshadesonline.com > Settings Tab > Payroll > General Ledger

Enhanced Feature – Bulk Manage Earning Codes: Add a filter to include / exclude inactive employees from the export

Background: The Bulk Manage Employee Earnings process is most utilized to change pay rates for employees. Typically, this report download would provide the user all of the employees on that workspace with all of their assigned code details. To reduce the overhead required from overly large exports with inactive employees, users have requested the able to only export the employees that are being managed for payroll currently or list as “Active”.

What’s new? A toggle has been added to the Bulk Manage Earnings Codes Tool that that will allow the user to limit the initial export to only employees with Employment Status = Active.

New Toggle on Bulk Manage Earning Codes:

Navigation:

Bulk Manage Employee Earning Codes (inactive toggle): Greenshadesonline.com > Settings Tab > Payroll > Codes > Earning Codes > Bulk Manage Codes

Enhanced Feature – Greenshades API: Settlements

Background: The Greenshades API is a public facing set of endpoints for our clients and partners to utilize with the goal of integrating our data into other systems (i.e. Accounting packages, reporting software, relevant HCM solutions, etc.).

What’s new? This latest release has launched one new Public Endpoints that can add new settlement results to the clients' Pay History

These endpoints will post information about settlements information after a completed pay run.  

  • POST Creates New Employee Settlements (Pay History)

https://api.greenshadesonline.com/employees/{employeeId}/payroll/earnings

Navigation:

Greenshades API Development Portal  

Download Release Notes