Understanding Employee Balance Adjustments
This topic lists common elements and discusses:
Balance adjustments.
Balance Adjustment component.
Adjustment processing.
New balance records.
Related balances.
How to view employee balances.
|
Field or Control |
Definition |
|---|---|
| Adjustment Reason |
Text that you enter here becomes part of the adjustment record and your audit trail. |
| Balance ID |
Identify the type of balance being adjusted, such as calendar year, fiscal year, and so forth. |
| Period |
Identify the period within the balance ID that is to be adjusted. For example, if the calendar year and the fiscal year span different time periods, September would be period nine for the calendar year and could be period one for the fiscal year. |
| Quarter |
The system displays the quarter that corresponds to the balance ID and period that you entered. |
| Suspend Adjustment |
Select to return to the first page in the component to reenter one or more of the keys. |
Sometimes it is necessary to adjust employee balances, for example if an employee were taxed in the wrong state or province. To correct the error, you use the Balance Adjustment component to adjust the employee's balance records.
The balance records in the system are cumulative totals of the various deductions, earnings, and taxes for individual employees' paychecks. If an employee works for more than one company, the system maintains separate balance records for each. The system creates a new balance record for each month, updates all balances when you run the Pay Confirmation COBOL SQL process (PSPCNFRM), and maintains monthly, quarterly, and YTD totals.
Use the Balance Adjustment component to adjust employee balances. Pages are provided for both U.S. and Canadian payroll adjustments.
For each type of balance to be adjusted, there are two pages:
Adjust Balance 1 page.
On this page you identify the balance that you want to adjust.
Note: After you enter data on page 1, select Save. The system brings up page 2 for entering the adjustment. If you select the page 2 tab before saving page 1, all you will get is the data entered on the first page and blank space where the adjustment fields should be.
Adjust Balance 2 page.
On this page you enter the adjustment.
When you save the data, the system updates the appropriate employee balance record. You can then make another adjustment to another balance for the employee. You can make multiple adjustments to an employee's balances quickly, without having to retype a lot of information.
Note: (CAN) When there is a separate Canadian version of a page, the fields on that page have the same functionality as those on the U.S. version. However, in addition to company and balance ID, you can view information according to wage loss plan and province.
Suppose it's November, and you must adjust an employee's deduction balance for the previous March. When you make the adjustment, the system updates the March balance and then rolls the adjusted amount forward, updating all monthly, quarterly, and YTD balance records through November.
If you want to adjust a balance for a particular quarter, you can make the adjustment to any monthly balance in that quarter, and the system rolls the adjusted amount forward to the balance record for that quarter.
For each adjustment, the system creates an audit record that identifies the balance that was updated, the before and after values, and the amount of the adjustment, providing a complete snapshot of the adjustment, including the date and time it was made. You can view the audit trail for this adjustment online, using the balance inquiry pages located under
For multiple adjustments to a balance record, the system stores the adjustments by sequence number. For example, if you adjust a January deduction balance in July and then adjust the April balance of the same deduction in September, the sequence information provided by the system enables you to retrace your steps to get a precise accounting of how the system arrived at the current balance.
Warning! You cannot cross years when adjusting employee balances. To adjust a balance from a previous year, do a check reversal and then make the adjustment in the current year. Also, when you make an adjustment to a previous year's balance, be sure to consider the year-end requirements, for example, whether you need to issue a revised year-end slip.
You can create new balance records using the balance adjustment pages. For example, an employee has moved from Ohio to Indiana, and wages that were earned in the last pay period should have been in the Indiana tax balance. Using the Adjust Tax Balance pages, you can make an adjustment to reduce the Ohio wages and create a new Indiana tax balance, even though the employee doesn't have a state tax record for Indiana.
Note: Garnishment and Canadian Record of Employment (ROE) balance records cannot be created through the balance adjustment pages. For garnishments, you must first establish a Garnishment Specification Data record for the employee. For Canadian ROE, the balance adjustment process allows only for the reallocation of ROE earnings and hours information from one existing Employment Insurance period to another.
Some employee balance records are related to others. For example, an employee's garnishment balance is a subset of the employee's overall deduction balance. However, the system treats each category of balance records independently. When you make an adjustment to an employee's garnishment balances, the system does not automatically make a corresponding adjustment to the employee's deduction balances.
Similarly, if you adjust earnings, deduction, or tax balances, which are components of the employee's check YTD balance, the system does not automatically adjust the corresponding check YTD balance.
To keep the related balances synchronized, you must do so manually. For example, if you update the taxes on the Adjust Tax Balance page, make a corresponding manual adjustment on the Adjust Check YTD Balance page (and vice versa).
Use the balance inquiry pages to view employee balances for deductions, garnishments, earnings, taxes, arrears, special accumulators, and YTD paycheck totals. You can also use these pages to view the adjustments that are made to employee balances.
Note: The system automatically updates information on the balance adjustment inquiry pages each time you confirm a payroll or make an online adjustment.
Although you can select the page tabs to move from a balance inquiry page to its associated balance adjustment page, there is no correlation between the scroll areas on those two pages. The scroll area on the balance inquiry page moves among monthly balances. The scroll bar on the balance adjustment page moves independently among adjustments.
For example, if you're viewing a particular monthly deduction balance on the Deduction Balances page, the Deduction Balance Adjustments tab takes you to the employee's deduction balance adjustments, but not necessarily the adjustments of that particular monthly deduction balance.