Setting Up Master Pay Cycles
You set up master pay cycles to define the dates for each payroll cycle of the year. When you process pre-payroll, you can retrieve the dates that you entered in the master pay cycle. Setting up master pay cycles minimizes the risk of data entry errors during pre-payroll because certain values have already been entered. Within a master pay cycle, you define the length of the pay periods and the corresponding payment dates.
Master pay cycles enable you to define:
Pay period ending dates.
Identifiers for the pay period.
Payment dates for each pay period.
Withholding period indicators to determine the calculation of DBAs.
Integrity period numbers for storing payroll history.
Standard hours per pay period for autopay.
You set up a master pay cycle for the current year to run payroll cycles for the current year. You must set up a new master pay cycle each year. If you already have a master pay cycle for the current year, you can set up a master pay cycle for the next year.
Do not set up additional pay periods at the end of a master pay cycle to use for year-end adjustments. Quantum tax calculations are based on the number of pay periods in the master pay cycle. Adding additional pay periods can cause tax amounts for the entire year to be calculated incorrectly.
For example, a semimonthly master pay cycle should contain only 24 pay periods. If you must run additional payroll cycles at the end of the year, you can reuse pay period 24 as many times as necessary.
To simplify the setup process, you set up a master pay cycle for the next year that is similar to the current year's master pay cycle. You can duplicate a current master pay cycle and indicate whether you want to increment the pay period ending dates for the new year. For example, if the company's payment dates are the 15th and last day of each month, you do not want to increment, or align, dates. However, if the company always pays on a biweekly basis, you should increment dates to account for the changed date in the new year.