The Employment nested tab contains the employee’s core employment, pay, costing and standard work-pattern settings.
These settings define how the employee is categorised within SmoothPay, how their regular pay is calculated, and how their employment information connects with other areas of the software.
Making changes
The nested Employment tab contains a detail panel only.
Click the Edit button to place the employee record into edit mode. Make the required changes, then select Save to apply them or Cancel to close the window without saving.
Options, settings and fields
For ease of reference, the available options, settings and fields are grouped into the following areas:
base employment settings
employee payment preferences and categories
internal identifiers
default costing
standard work pattern and pay rates
Base employment settings
These fields define the employee’s core employment arrangement, including their employment status, contract type, work type and wage basis. They establish the fundamental settings used to interpret the employee record throughout SmoothPay.
Start date
Type: Date field
Purpose: Records the date the employee’s employment started.
Dependency: None
Other functionality: Used when determining the employee’s length of service and may affect employment and leave-related calculations.
Terminated
Type: Tick box with associated date field
Purpose: Identifies whether the employee’s employment has ended.
Dependency: None
Other functionality: Marking the employee as terminated enables the associated termination date field and changes the employee's status from Current to Terminated.
For more information about ending an employee’s employment, refer to:
<Processing leave and terminations>
Occupation
Type: Text field
Purpose: Records the employee’s occupation.
Dependency: None
Other functionality: May appear in various reports and outputs.
Role
Type: Dropdown menu
Purpose: Assigns a role to the employee.
Dependency: Roles and positions category in the Codes screen
Other functionality: Appears in various reports and outputs.
Contract
Type: Dropdown menu
The available options are:
Permanent
Temporary
Casual
Independent contractor
Purpose: Records the type of employment agreement held by the employee.
Dependency: Available options depend on jurisdiction
Other functionality: Appears in various reports and outputs and determines standard leave entitlements
For more information about contract types, refer to:
<Contract types>
Employment
Type: Dropdown menu
The available options are:
Full-time
Part-time
Piece work
Purpose: Records the employee’s general employment basis.
Dependency: None
Other functionality: Appears in various reports and outputs and provides additional functionality in the case of Piece work.
For more information about piece workers, refer to:
<Piece workers>
Wage type
Type: Dropdown menu
The available options are:
Waged
Variable salary
Fixed salary
Purpose: Determines how the employee’s regular remuneration is treated.
Dependency: None
Other functionality: Controls how the employee’s pay-rate fields behave and how regular pay is calculated.
For more information, refer to:
<Salaries and waged employees>
Minimum wage
Type: Dropdown menu
The available options are:Adult
Starter
Training
RSE worker
Living wage
Purpose: Assigns the minimum-wage category used when checking the employee’s pay rate
Dependency: Only available for New Zealand
Other functionality: When automatic updates are released for minimum wage, employees below the new minimum wage will be updated on the basis of the selected option
For more information about minimum wage, refer to:
<Minimum wage>
Employee payment preferences and categories
These fields define how the employee is paid, how payslip production is handled, and which categories are assigned to the employee. Some available options depend on the corresponding categories created within the Codes screen.
Pay cycle
Type: Dropdown menu
The available options are:Weekly
Fortnightly
Monthly
4 Weeks
Half-month
Purpose: Records how frequently the employee is normally paid.
Dependency: Available options depend on jurisdiction
Other functionality: Helps determine the applicable tax treatment and how regular pay dates are suggested.
Pay preference
Type: Dropdown menu
The available options may include:
Cash
Cheque
Direct credit
Purpose: Determines how the employee will normally receive their net pay.
Dependency: Direct credit requires account details to be entered under the Bank tab in the Staff screen
Other functionality: Works with the employee’s bank-account records and relevant payment outputs.
For more information about pay preferences, refer to:
<Place holder>
Pay advice
Type: Dropdown menu
The available options are:Email or Print (not suppressed)
Do not email or print (suppressed)
Email only
Print only
Purpose: Controls how payslip production is handled for the employee.
Dependency: None
Other functionality: None
For more information, refer to:
<Payslip production>
Award
Type: Dropdown menu
Purpose: Assigns an award category to the employee.
Dependency: Awards category in the Codes screen
Other functionality: Appears in various reports and outputs.
Branch
Type: Dropdown menu
Purpose: Assigns a branch category to the employee.
Dependency: Branches category in the Codes screen
Other functionality: Appears on various reports and outputs
Internal identifiers
These fields assign identifiers that can be used to connect employee records with imported data and group employees for filtering, reporting and other processes
Badge number
Type: Text field
Purpose: Connects the employee record to an import
Dependency: None
Other functionality: None
For more information, refer to:
<Importing data>
Group code
Type: Text field
Purpose: Assigns a shared code that can be used to group employees and filter results
Dependency: None
Other functionality: Appears in various reports and outputs
For more information, refer to:
<Group codes>
Default costing
These fields assign the default costing codes used for payment of the employee. The available options depend on the corresponding categories created within the Codes screen.
Paypoint
Type: Dropdown menu
Purpose: Assigns the employee’s default pay point (department)
Dependency: Department category in the Codes screen
Other functionality: Categorises some reports by Paypoint (Department), then employee name and appears in accounting reports and some outputs, can form part of a glcosting file
Cost centre
Type: Dropdown menu
Purpose: Assigns the employee’s default cost centre
Dependency: Cost centre (account) codes category in the Codes screen
Other functionality: Appears in accounting reports and outputs and forms part of a glcosting file
Job code (Tracking 1)
Type: Dropdown menu
Purpose: Assigns the employee’s default job code
Dependency: The available options come from the Job code category in the Codes screen. Where the category has not been renamed, the field appears as Tracking 1
Other functionality: Appears in accounting reports and outputs, can form part of a glcosting file
Activity code (Tracking 2)
Type: Dropdown menu
Purpose: Assigns the employee’s second default tracking category, commonly used for activities or another costing dimension.
Dependency: The available options come from the Activity code category in the Codes screen. Where the category has not been renamed, the field appears as Tracking 2.
Other functionality: Appears in accounting reports and outputs, can form part of a glcosting file
For more information about costing and accounting settings, refer to:
<Accounting integration>
Definition of a working week
These fields define the employee’s standard working week and regular pay settings. They are used by SmoothPay when calculating pay, valuing leave, and interpreting the employee’s normal work pattern.
Days per week
Type: Numeric field
Purpose: Records the number of days the employee normally works each week.
Dependency: None
Other functionality: Forms part of the employee’s standard work pattern and may affect leave valuation and other payroll calculations.
FTE
Type: Numeric field
Purpose: Records the employee’s full-time-equivalent value e.g. 1.0 for a full-time employee
Dependency: None
Other functionality: Provides a proportional measure of the employee’s working arrangement compared with a full-time employee. Informational only.
Annual salary
Type: Numeric field
Purpose: Records the employee’s annual salary.
Dependency: Connects directly to Hourly rate and One week equals
Other functionality: Acts as a tool for calculating an effective hourly rate for a salary
For more information about salaries, refer to:
<Salaried and Waged employees>
Hourly rate
Type: Numeric field
Purpose: Records the employee’s standard hourly pay rate and determines what an employee will be paid per hour
Dependency: Connects directly to Annual salary
Other functionality: Broadly associated with leave calculations
One day equals
Type: Numeric field
Purpose: Records the number of hours considered to make up one standard working day.
Dependency: None
Other functionality: Used for proportioning leave types valued in days
One week equals
Type: Numeric field
Purpose: Records the number of hours considered to make up one standard working week.
Dependency: None
Other functionality: Used by leave valuation, hourly-rate calculations and other payroll processes.
Truly irregular work pattern?
Type: Tick box
Purpose: Identifies that the employee does not have a consistent or predictable work pattern.
Dependency: Only affects anything for New Zealand, it is informational for any other jurisdiction
Other functionality: Determines the use of the 4 week average for annual leave calculations in New Zealand
For more information about the 4 week average, refer to:
<New Zealand>
Pay rate includes casual loading?
Type: Tick box
Purpose: Identifies that casual loading is already included within the employee’s recorded pay rate.
Dependency: Only affects anything for New Zealand, it is informational for any other jurisdiction
Other functionality: Performs the calculation of casual loading (holiday pay) inclusive of the employee's earnings, instead of on top of their earnings.
Split-rate employee?
Type: Tick box
Purpose: Identifies that the employee may be paid using more than one regular rate and allows a Template pay to be stored with multiple rates of pay without it being affected by an update of the employee's Hourly rate
Dependency: None
Other functionality: None
For more information about defining an employee’s standard working week, refer to:
<Definition of a working week>
Additional functionality
Wage-type information button
The (i) button beside the Wage type field displays a brief explanation of the available wage types.
Paypoint spanner button
The spanner button beside the Paypoint field opens options that can apply the employee’s costing settings to existing pay entries.
These options may apply an individual costing category or all costing categories to:
current pay entries
all current and historical pay entries
Because these options can apply broad changes across payroll records, create a backup before using them.
For more information, refer to:
<Accounting integration>
Irregular-work-pattern information button
The (i) button beside Truly irregular work pattern? displays additional information about the intended use of the setting.
