Track Balance

Track Balance can be used in a number of ways to assist with automatically tracking the payments or deductions made to staff across pays. Some of these applications include:

• Tracking deductions made from an employee's pay that will automatically stop applying when their current balance owing reaches $0.
• Tracking the ongoing total monetary value or quantity of units paid to an employee over time.

This can be used for tracking an employee's repayments against a loan or for tracking the total number of hours worked by an apprentice. There are many possible applications for Track Balance and the setup and functionality details are outlined further below.

Set Up - Pay Item

The track balance feature first needs to be made active on the associated pay item settings. For more details around creating custom pay items, see our support article: Pay Items - Overview. 

To turn on track balance for a specific pay item, select the Track Balance checkbox.

Some Pay Item types, such as Earnings, will also require a Balance Type to be selected for tracking by either Total or Quantity which applies as follows:

Total - Tracking the total dollar value processed against that pay item.

Quantity - The overall quantity of units (Hours or Other) processed through that pay item.

Set Up - Default Pay

In order for Track Balance to apply, the pay item must first be added to the Employee's Default Pay tab. 

Once the pay item has been included in a default pay tab, you will have a few additional fields available to set depending on how you want track balance to apply such as:

• Quantity - The quantity of units (hours or other) to be applied per pay.
• Rate - The rate to be applied per pay. 
• Current Balance - The current balance which is being tracked against the pay item.
  • • For a reducing balance this will be the total amount outstanding.
    • For an increasing balance, this will be the overall total/quantity processed against the pay item.
• Reduce Balance by... - Select this checkbox to apply a reducing balance. Leave this option unselected if you'd like to track an ever increasing balance.

Please note, the Current Balance will be displayed on employee payslips, within each pay, on the employee's Default Pay tab, and can also be reported on via Insights.

Reducing Balance

A reducing Track Balance can be applied for the pay item types of Earnings, Deductions, Reimbursements and Payments. A reducing balance will require the Reduce Balance Checkbox is selected on the pay item line in the employee's Default Pay tab.

For an earnings type, this can be used for paying back a set amount owed to an employee across a number of pays. You can either track by Total monetary value or Quantity of units.

For a deduction type pay item, this is perfect for an employee loan repayment where you have an overall monetary balance needing to be repaid that will reduce as deductions are made.

PayHero will automatically adjust the final payment/deduction rate to ensure the 'Current Balance' reaches exactly '0'. For example, if the rate was $50 yet the 'Current Balance' was $10, it would be applied at a rate of $10.

The above screenshot is an example of a $30 deduction which will continue applying and then automatically stop once an overall total of $150 has been deducted from the employee.

• Rate - This will be the rate applied in each pay run the employee is included in. 
• Reduce Balance Checkbox - Select this checkbox to have the pay item automatically stop applying once the 'Current Balance' reaches 0.
• Current Balance - The remaining balance to be deducted/paid. Set as a positive value.

Increasing Balance

An increasing Track Balance can also be applied for all pay items types. This will start from either a current balance of '0' or can be set with an opening current balance to continue increasing from.

For an earnings type, this could be used for tracking the number of hours worked against a given pay item and displaying that balance to the employee which can be useful for tracking apprentice hours. You can either track by Total monetary value or Quantity of units.

For a deduction type pay item, this may be a continuous deduction made across pays where the total balance needs to be tracked. 

The above screenshot is an example of an apprentice being paid for 5 hours each week. These 5 hours at $25 will continue being applied to each pay the employee is included in on an ongoing basis. The 'Current Balance' will continue increasing as hours are worked, tracking the total apprentice hours.

• Quantity - The quantity of hours to be applied per pay the employee is included in.
• Rate - This will be the rate at which each quantity is applied. 
• Reduce Balance Checkbox - Having this checkbox de-selected will mean the pay item will continue applying in each pay on an ongoing basis and will not automatically stop.
• Current Balance - With 'Reduce Balance' inactive, the current balance will continue to increase as the pay item is applied over time and will count upwards recording the overall total processed against it.