Calculating DBAs Using the DBA Factor
On occasion, you must pay an employee for more or less than a full pay period. For example, an employee's first or last employment period with the organization is likely not to be a full pay period. The employee might have commenced work in the middle of a pay period, or have been terminated two days after a pay period had started. You must pay the employee for the portion of the pay period that was worked. In addition, you must calculate the employee's DBAs accordingly.
When you enter regular timecards and process those timecards through a payroll cycle, the system calculates the amount of pay that the employee receives during that payroll cycle and then calculates the DBA amounts that are associated with the employee's earnings. Therefore, if you were to enter timecards for a partial pay period, but process them through a regular payroll cycle, the system would treat the amount of pay as if it were earnings for a full pay period. Without taking into account the fact that the employee had not worked a full pay period, the system would calculate the employee's DBAs as if he or she had worked a full pay period, which would result in incorrect DBA amounts.
To ensure that DBAs for employees who work more or less than a full pay period are calculated correctly, you must create interim payments to process partial pay period earnings. On the Interim Entry form, you can enter a value in the DBA Factor field. The value in this field represents the amount of time that the employee worked during the pay period. The system uses this value to calculate the employee's DBAs for the period. For example, if an employee worked 3 of the 12 days in the pay period, you would enter a value that represents .25. The system would use this value to calculate DBA amounts at .25 of what they would normally be.
Depending on the amount of time that the employee worked, you can either enter the value directly into the field, or set up a value in user-defined code (UDC) 07/DO. The DBA Factor field is a one-character field; therefore, if you want to multiply DBA calculations by a value of 0 through 9, you can enter that value directly into the field. However, if you want to enter a value that is more than one character, you must set up a one-character code in UDC 07/DO that represents the value, and then enter that value in the DBA Factor field.
You can use values that are more or less than a full pay period. For example, if you want to pay an employee for one-and-a-half pay periods, you can set up a code in UDC 07/DO and enter 1.5 in the second description for that code. You then enter the code in the DBA Factor field on the Interim Entry form.