How to Setup Deductions In PayMaker

Several clients have asked us in past if there are provisions to enter and track deductions in PayMaker…..if YES….how???

You can easily do this……It is quite simple….

It could be a useful feature for many companies because staffs generally request for staff loans, other personal loans and request to be deducted from their wages in the upcoming pays.

Here’s the instructions on how you can enter and track deductions in PayMaker.

How to set-up a deduction such as staff loan in PayMaker

1. Go to Payroll Data Forms 
2. Select Deduction 
3. Select the Employee that has taken loan
4. In the Deduction Column Select enter type of deduction taken by employee.
5. In the Total column you will enter the total loan taken by the employee.
6. In the Amount column, enter the amount that will be deducted each pay period.

Below example shows that the staff has taken a loan of $100 and $20 will be deducted from each pay.

Once the total amount has been paid off, PayMaker will automatically stop the deductions.

You can then view the deductions report by Selecting Other Reports (see image below)

Click the Preview but or Print button should you wish.

We hope that this will help you enter and track your deductions successfully in PayMaker. For further assistance please call us on 330 4554 or email us at payroll@standss.com.fj

Compulsory FNPF Update As Per COVID-19 Response Budget

ALL companies using PayMaker will need to change their FNPF contribution in your payroll software before processing the first pay of April 2020.

Please ensure that all your March 2020 pays are done before making these changes. Once these changes are done, DO NOT rollback any pays from March 2020 or earlier.

Steps on how to change FNPF Contributions

1. Click on the Administration menu group button on the main menu. The application displays a list of menu commands on the menu list box.
2. Click on “System Setup” on the menu list box.
3. Click the OK button. The application displays the System Setup screen.
4. Click on FNPF Tab
5. Change FNPF % (Member) and FNPF % (Company) to 5% as highlighted in the image below:

6. After you click OK there will be 2 prompts, please click Yes and close the setting screen.

         7. Restart PayMaker after making changes (Before processing any April 2020 pays)

If you have any questions, please contact us at our office on 330 4554.

Verification of Birthdate while Using Payroll Software (PayMaker)

Until now you may not have entered employee’s birthdates into your payroll software, PayMaker. If that is the case, you will need to check and ensure that all employee birthdates are entered correctly into PayMaker before you submit any 2020 files to FRCS.

Why?

As of January 1^st 2020, FRCS will be opening a portal for all employers to use. Employers will need to use this portal to submit EMS files (and later Pay Day Reports). You will no longer be able to email the files to FRCS.

The new EMS file format will now contain both the employee TIN number and their birth dates.

As a means of validation, FRCS will check that the two match what they have in their records. If there is a mismatch then the entire file will be rejected until you correct and resubmit.

We recommend that you start verifying and correcting birth dates now and not leave it till the end, particularly if you have many employees.

We have updated PayMaker to create the EMS files in the new format required by the FRCS Portal. The new update to PayMaker also includes the soon to be introduced Pay Day Reports (required by FRCS) as well as fields for approval numbers for lump sum payments, redundancies etc. (also compulsory once the portal is released).

If you are an existing PayMaker User and require additional information regarding the above, feel free to contact us at 3304554 or email us at: payroll@standss.com.fj.

If you are not a user yet, please contact us for more information or a demo.

Assessment Notices for 2017

You may (as several companies already have) receive enquiries from employees with regard to assessment notices that they have received from FRCS. Employees are being told by FRCS that they need to pay additional PAYE!

Why do they need to do that, given that you are using PayMaker and carried out the two required rollovers (June 31st 2017 and 31st December 2017)?

The reason for this is that there were two different tax rates in 2017. We had emailed the following to FRCS on August 16 2017.

As you are aware, due to the tax change in the middle of the year, and the treatment of 2017 as 2 tax years, it is highly likely that the PAYE as Final Tax will not work as well as required i.e. some tax payers will be eligible for a refund while others will need to make additional payments (due to insufficient deductions at source). This can happen for both PAYE and SRT (and possibly for the new ECAL).

The response from FRCS has included the following:

Fully agree with your comments. Whilst this has not been addressed as yet, I can assure you that we will work along these lines: 

• 2017 tax calculations for individuals will be a challenge.
• FRCS fully appreciates this.
• Penalties will not be charged for short deductions unless there is deliberate attempt to defraud the system.
• Refunds will be issued for any over deduction.

As you can see from the above, FRCS are aware of this issue. Unfortunately, there was no solution available to this problem (in terms of a formula to get the correct final tax) and as a result, some employees will need to pay additional tax while others may get refunds.

Printing the Employee Payment History (Extended) Report With PayMaker

If you want to check an employees pay history, or check if the PAYE was calculated properly, you need to print the Employee Payment History (Extended) report. This report has all the relevant information that can be used with the spreadsheet provided by FRCA to see if tax calculation were done correctly.

You can print out the report using the following steps:

1. Open PayMaker.
2. Go to reports.
3. Select Other Reports.
4. Select Employee Payment History Extended report.
5. Enter a valid date in Date From and To.
6. Select an employee from the drop down list on the screen.
7. Click the Preview button to see a Report similar to the one below.

If you have any questions, please contact us at our office on 330 4554.

Printing Tax Withholding Certificates with PayMaker Fiji Payroll Software

You can easily print your employee’s Tax Withholding Certificates (or P4-1 slips as they used to be called) from inside PayMaker.

The Tax Withholding Certificate summarizes the employee’s income for the year showing how much they were paid, how much PAYE was deducted etc.

Employees who have a single source of income generally no longer need a printed copy because FRCA already has this information… assuming that their employer is submitting monthly EMS files (PayMaker for Fiji Payroll users canprepare and submit EMS files at the click of a button).

You can use the steps below to print out the Tax Withholding Certificate from PayMaker

1.       Open PayMaker

2.       Click on Reports.

3.       Select Other Reports and click the “OK”.

4.       Scroll till you find the Tax Withholding Certificate (with Duplicates).

5.       Select the date range for the Tax Withholding Report.

6.       You can either select an individual employee in the drop down or leave the drop down blank to     view/print all employees.

7.       Click Preview.

Note: For 2017 you will need to print TWO Tax Withholding Certificates for each employee.

The reason for this is that there was a tax change in the middle of the year (with the new tax rate started from 1-August).

Each employee will need a Tax Certificate for  the following date ranges.

The first is for the date range (01/January/17 – 31/July/17)

The second date range is (01/August/17 – 31/December/17).

We hope that this helps you with your end of year payroll tasks. If you need any help, please call us on 330 4554.

How can I track Projects in PayMaker?

We were recently asked by a customer on how they could track time spent and amount paid out on projects for their staff using PayMaker?

This would be useful to any company where employees work on multiple projects e.g. Construction companies.

You can do this using the Accounts feature of PayMaker. This lets you allocate a different account to each line of your timesheet. Most of our clients do not use this for anything useful and simply allocate it to one account called Wages.

However you can use it for Project cost tracking as explained below.

Step 1: Setup your Projects as Accounts in PayMaker

           1. Go to Administration
           2. Select Table Maintenance and click OK
           3. Select Accounts and click OK
           4. Click Add and enter the Project names as per your requirements (Example shown below)

Step 2: Enter timesheets with Account/Project information.

         1. Create your batches as you normally do to enter your timesheets.

         2. After the batches are created you can select the project names as shown in the                                    picture below by using the Account drop down.

Step 3: Print reports with Project/Accounts information.

PayMaker has a number of reports that you can use to print out project/account related information.

      Payroll Reports:
          1. Go to Reports
          2. Select Payroll Reports
          3. Choose Accounts or Account Details (Based on your Company requirements)


We hope that this post helps you to use PayMaker even more effectively to manage your business. If you need any further help, please contact us at payroll@standss.com.fj or call us on + (679) 3304554