It's the magic behind the QuickBooks Integration (and try this one for the QB Advanced Guide).

The PS handles semi-monthly hours with overtime.

It creates export formats for various payroll companies such as ADP, Paychex, Paycom, Payroll Data Processing, and others. 

It can isolate hours that need to be paid at a different rate. 

The PS allows you to set your workday start time.

It can split your time cards across your workday start time if employees are on the clock when a new workday starts.

It can calculate PTO hours as OT exempt.

The PS can handle California overtime rules. 

Go to Snapshot Settings>Payroll Settings>Default Pay Types.

Fill in the Regular, OT1 and OT2 fields. The QB default names are the one's we used. If you aren't in California, you can enter NA for the OT2 field, but don't leave it blank. Enter that info and save.

On the same screen, go to the Work Week Settings tab. This is where you will define your work week start day. If you are in California apply the Expanded Overtime Settings. Check the box for Timecard Settings if you need to split your time cards that cross over to the next workday. Save your settings.

Now we need to set your pay period. Go to Payroll Functions, Change Payroll Period and set your pay period from the dropdown, change your starting date, calculate payroll period and then accept changes. The PS is created from the dates you set here. 

Now go to Payroll Functions, Payroll Snapshot and click on New Snapshot.

It will process and cue up at the top of the list. When it's ready it will tell you that the Snapshot has been created. Go ahead and click on it.

Then go to the Exports tab. In the Exports dropdown are several export formats. The first 3 are our unique exports and the rest are for payroll companies. If your company isn't using QB or another payroll service, then use one of ours. For summary payroll hours, use either Summary or Summary Totals. Summary Totals is more versatile and necessary when doing many of the other things on our list up there ⤴ If you do use one of the payroll companies in this export dropdown list, find out from your payroll rep which specific one they need you to use. Then you will export it, save it and then import it into your payroll companies user interface. 

If you only need to use the PS for one of these issues: California overtime; semi-monthly payroll; to split time cards across a new workday; or to import into a payroll company, you are all set. Let's take a deeper dive into the semi-monthly payroll drama.

Let's take a quick look at a couple of screenshots below to see how the PS breaks down hours for semi-monthly pay periods. The calendar illustrates what makes semi-monthly tough to calculate manually. Pay period 1 has parts of 3 work weeks in it and pay period 2 has parts of 4 work weeks in it. 

In the screenshot below of our PS Detail report the green box is my semi-monthly pay period, Saturday, March 16 to Sunday, March 31. My work week is Sunday-Saturday. Even though my new pay period starts on Saturday, March 16, I have hours earlier in that work week starting on Sunday, March 10. These hours for Sunday-Friday were paid in the last pay period, but factor into the OT calculations for the work week ending on Saturday 3/16. The Fair Labor Standards Act refers to overtime in terms of "work week," which does not correspond with the semi-monthly pay period when that pay period starts or ends mid-week. The red box shows the days (32.2 hours) worked earlier in the work week that were previously paid (which is why they are struck through), but are counting towards OT in this Sunday-Saturday work week. So, on Saturday 3/16 (the last day of the work week, but the first day of my pay period), I started the day with 32.2 hours for my work week and at 7.8 hours, I hit weekly OT. I worked 12 hours total on Saturday and 4.2 hours counted as OT. 🤦‍♂️ I know, it can make your head spin. That's why our Payroll Snapshot™ is your life saver. 🚑 

The yellow arrow shows how a time card was split at midnight. 

We allow for one pay rate per employee, but we can put employee hours into different buckets called Pay Types. Pay Types are applied to either the job or an Activity Code. For example, let's say that the My Money Bank location on 5th St is only cleaned on Saturdays and because it's a weekend job, you pay your employee a higher rate for it. To make life easier for your payroll admin wouldn't it be nice if those hours were broken out? It can happen. We need to create a Pay Type to do the magic. Go to Snapshot Settings, Job Pay Types.

Click on "Add New Job Pay Type". In the Description field enter "Weekend". Or anything that makes sense to you. Go ahead and save. 

Now this new Pay Type has to get applied to the job My Money Bank 5th St. Go to List Maintenance, Jobs and click on My Money Bank 5th St. Then click the Advanced tab. From the Pay Type dropdown select Weekend and then save. Now anytime an employee clocks into this job, all of the hours will go into the Weekend bucket.  

I mentioned that Pay Types can be applied to Activity Codes. What does that mean and why do you care? In our current example let's say that the My Money Bank 5th St job is an every day job, but you pay more on the weekends. We need an easy way to separate the weekday hours from the weekend hours for your frazzled payroll admin. You can use Activity Codes. That article will explain how to create one, but in addition select the Weekend Pay Type override that you have already learned how to create. Instead of applying the Pay Type to the job, it's applied to the Activity. This means that any hours done at this activity at any job will go into this Pay Type bucket. So, it's not just for the My Money Bank job. This one Activity Code can be used at any job that's paid at a higher rate on the weekend. Your employee will choose this activity on clock in and we put the hours in the correct bucket. 

And you ask, where are these buckets? Do you remember me mentioning the versatile Summary Totals export? That's the one you will use from the PS exports dropdown list. It exports as a spreadsheet with a separate column for each Pay Type. You can see below that the total hours for Dennis are 54.15 in column L with regular hours (Hourly) in column M, Weekend hours in column N and OT hours in column O. 

That's it and you can do this for any reason that you need to pay a different rate based on the job or activity. Your payroll admin is going to love this! 💖

You probably already know that this payroll problem is going to get solved by Pay Types. Create a new Pay Type called PTO at Snapshot Settings,  Job Pay Types and check the Overtime Exempt box and save.

Now create a new job called PTO at List Maintenance, Jobs. On the Advanced tab, apply the PTO Pay Type and save.

You will create PTO time cards at Payroll Functions, Edit Time Cards. Choose an employee and Add New Time Card. The PTO job will be in the dropdown next to "In". Because we used a Pay Type to do this magic these hours will be broken out in a separate column on the PS Summary Totals export (but will also be included in the total hours as OT exempt.) 

One last thought about PTO. Since it is a job, you really don't want your employees to have it as an option to clock into on the mobile app. Create a separate zone for it at List Maintenance, Zones.

Go to List Maintenance, Jobs and click on PTO. In the dropdown for Job Zone, select PTO and save.

Now that PTO is in a separate zone, you simply will not give access to that zone to your employees on the app. If employees currently have access to ALL ZONES, you will want to fix that. Here is an article that will help about setting up existing employees to use the mobile app. 

If you think of any scenarios that you have that we haven't covered here, please let us know. I bet we have a solution. 💡