Piece workers are generally paid according to production rather than hours worked.

For example, an employee may be paid according to:

Because the employee's earnings are based on production, two additional considerations apply:

SmoothPay handles these using:

PRB and Top-up serve different purposes and can apply independently. An employee may require PRB without requiring a Top-up, or both may apply within the same pay.

Before the piece-work functions can operate, the employee must be identified as a piece worker.

This enables THW to be recorded against an employee's pay.

For more information about the employee's employment settings, refer to:

Piece-work production is normally paid using Allowance codes.

Create a separate Allowance code for each type of production that needs its own description or rate.

For example, a shearing business may have separate codes for ewes and rams.

An Ewes code could be configured as:

A separate Rams code can be created using an appropriate abbreviation and description, with the same Taxable classification and Units × rate calculation.

The rate does not need to be defined by the Allowance code itself. When processing the pay, the Units represent the quantity produced and the applicable Rate is entered against the transaction.

For example:

For instructions on creating the codes themselves, refer to:

Two additional Allowance codes are required for SmoothPay's piece-worker calculations.

Create an Allowance code identified as the Paid Rest Break code.

For example:

PRB is used to pay the employee for paid rest-break time that would otherwise produce no piece-work earnings.

When entering PRB in a pay, enter the Units as decimal hours only. Do not assign the rate manually. SmoothPay calculates the applicable rate automatically.

For example:

For an employee working five 8-hour days, with 20 minutes of paid rest breaks for each day:

PRB can be entered manually or supplied through an applicable payroll transaction import.

Create another Allowance code for the minimum-wage Top-up.

For example:

Unlike PRB, the Top-up transaction is not normally entered manually.

Where all of the required conditions are met, SmoothPay creates the Top-up transaction automatically.

For more information about the broader minimum-wage functionality, refer to:

The applicable piece-worker settings are available under the Options tab in the Settings screen.

Auto-topup piece-worker pay should be enabled when paying piece workers.

This allows SmoothPay to compare the employee's relevant production earnings with their Total Hours Worked and automatically apply a Top-up where their earnings are below the required minimum.

For the automatic Top-up to operate:

If no Top-up is required, no Top-up transaction is added.

Cumulative THW is relevant when THW is being imported.

Enable this option where multiple THW transactions may be imported for the same employee and those transactions need to be added together to produce the employee's total THW for the pay period, instead of one single THW total per employee.

For example, an import could contain one THW transaction for each day worked rather than a single total for the entire pay period.

If THW is being provided as one total value, cumulative THW is not required for that purpose.

The Top-up to contract rate if greater than minimum option allows the Top-up calculation to use the employee's contract rate where that rate is greater than the applicable minimum wage.

For more information about the available Settings options, refer to:

Total Hours Worked (THW) tells SmoothPay how many hours of work the employee's production earnings relate to.

THW is essential to the automatic Top-up calculation because piece-work units themselves do not tell SmoothPay how long the employee spent producing them.

For example:

An employee may shear 50 ewes, but that quantity alone does not establish whether the work took 2 hours, 8 hours, or 20 hours.

THW provides that missing time component.

THW is manually enter by using the Summary button on the payrun control bar, in the Payrun screen

Enter the total hours in the THW field to record the THW.

THW can also be supplied through the Pay transactions import using the alias "THW".

This is particularly useful where piece quantities and working time are coming from another time, attendance, or production system.

If multiple THW records are supplied for the same employee, consider whether Cumulative THW needs to be enabled.

For more information about importing payroll information, refer to:

A typical piece-worker pay therefore contains three different types of information:

If a minimum-wage Top-up is required, SmoothPay then creates the Top-up transaction automatically.

PRB and Top-up are separate calculations.

The Top-up exists to ensure that the employee's production earnings meet the required hourly value for their THW.

The PRB exists to pay the employee for paid rest-break time during which they were not producing pieces.

Where both apply, they are calculated independently from the pay before either adjustment is applied. The PRB value does not reduce the required Top-up, and the

Top-up does not replace the employee's paid rest-break entitlement.

This is why a pay may contain:

Consider a piece worker who has worked 40 hours during the week.

Their production is:

Their piece-work production earnings are therefore:

The employee's pay also records:

The employee has not produced enough piece-work earnings to satisfy the required hourly value for their 40 hours worked, so SmoothPay automatically creates a Top-up.

In this example, the resulting pay is:

The $823.00 Top-up, together with the employee's $135.00 production earnings, brings their earnings for the 40 THW to the required hourly value.

The $40.00 Paid Rest Break payment is then separately included for the employee's 1.67 hours of paid rest-break time.

The result demonstrates the two separate protections:

Then structure it like this:

In this example, the applicable minimum hourly rate is $23.95 and the employee has recorded 40.00 THW.

SmoothPay first calculates the minimum amount the employee must receive for those hours:

The employee has already earned $135.00 from their piece-work production:

SmoothPay therefore calculates the remaining amount required:

The Top-up transaction is displayed across the employee's 40 THW, giving an effective Top-up rate of:

The resulting minimum-wage calculation is therefore:

or:

The Paid Rest Break is calculated separately.

In this example, the employee has 1.67 hours of paid rest-break time. SmoothPay applies the calculated average hourly rate of $23.95:

The Paid Rest Break value is not included when calculating the Top-up shortfall.

The final gross pay is therefore: