Guide: Pay groups

This guide will help you to understand what pay groups are and how to set them up in Wagepoint.

A pay group is simply a group of individuals who are paid on the same payroll frequency.

New to pay groups?

Some key questions to ask before you create your first group:

• Double-check the employment standards legislation in your province to ensure you are meeting requirements to pay your employees.
• Payroll frequency refers to how often the individuals in a pay group are paid. For example, at Coast to Crust Waffle Factory, we have both employees and contractors. Our employees are paid bi-weekly, so every two weeks on a Friday, while our contractors are paid once a month on a monthly payroll frequency. This means I'll need to set up two pay groups in my company:
  • A bi-weekly pay group (for my employees)
  • A monthly pay group (for my contractors)
• When you set up your pay group in Wagepoint, you'll be asked to enter a start date for your first pay period. This is the first day in the pay cycle for that particular pay group. Wagepoint will auto-populate the end date for that pay period on your behalf. 
  It's important to ensure that you use the correct dates here...
  Note: You cannot choose a selection of dates that does not encompass the full pay period for the frequency you have chosen. For example, using the 14 day example above, if you only need to pay a weeks worth of wages, you still need to reflect the full period of cycle dates. Instead, you will prorate the employee's pay to reflect what they earned.
• You will also be prompted to select a pay date. This is the date that the employees or contractors within the pay group will be paid. When selecting a pay date, it's important to consider the payroll processing timeline. 
  • If you are using a Business bank account, then the processing time is 12PM Eastern time, 3 days prior to your pay date. For example, if your pay date is on Thursday the 10th, that means you must process payroll by 12PM Eastern Time on Monday the 7th.
  • If you are using a Personal bank account, then the processing time is 12PM Eastern time, 5 days prior to your pay date. For example, if your pay date is on Monday the 23rd, then you must process payroll by 12PM Eastern Time on Wednesday the 18th.
  
  Why is this important? Selecting an appropriate pay date means that your employees and contractors can get paid on time, consistently. For example, if you have hourly employees, you'll need to collect all hours before you can process payroll. This means you'll want to factor in enough time after the pay period is over to account for collecting hours and the 3 or 5 day payroll processing timeline. If you are not able to get the necessary information from your hourly employees, then you may be delayed processing payroll, which will result in a late pay date for your employees.

Once you have made decisions on the above items, you are ready to create your pay group(s)!

Set up and manage pay groups

In this video, I set up a new monthly pay group for my Waffle Factory contractors. We review how to create, edit, enable, and disable pay groups.

Prefer written instructions with screenshots? We've got you.

• Add or edit a pay group
• Disable or enable a pay group

View your pay group details

When you create your pay group, we will create a payroll schedule for the calendar year. We will set your cycle start, end and pay dates for the year and populate your processing deadlines (with consideration for bank holidays too!)

 

Change payroll frequency or pay group movement

A payroll frequency change or pay group movement requires assistance from Customer Support. Please allow 2-3 business days for the request to be completed.

Review the Service Canada ROE requirements regarding changing payroll frequencies. If you’ve decided to proceed with the payroll frequency change, follow the steps below:

1. Set up a new pay group: Following the steps above, set up a new pay group. The start date for the new pay group should be the day following the cycle end date of the last payroll processed in the old pay group.
2. Request ROEs using Reason Code K: Payroll Frequency Change: This is to ensure all EI history up to this point in time has been captured for any employee being moved. To learn more about ROEs, check out our articles here: Record of Employment.
3. Re-assign each Employee to the new pay group (Customer Support required): Send an email to [e-mail] to request the pay group movement, and provide the following details:

• • Name of old pay group
  • Name of new pay group
  • Which employees should be moved (all, or a list of names)

A couple important notes:

• We cannot adjust or prorate the CPP exemption. If you know this change will result in the exemption being over-applied for the year, a manual adjustment to CPP will need to be made.
• After the pay group movement is made, an employee's expected hours per pay period will reflect the default value for their new pay group. If this needs to be adjusted to a custom amount, you can do so on each individual's Job Details tab.

FAQs: Pay groups

• No, an employee or contractor can only be in one pay group.
• No, each individual should only be in one pay group. You can add one-time or recurring income, deduction, and benefits codes to your regular payroll run or an off-cycle run. For more instructions on how to do that, visit this guide.
• To hide an inactivate pay group from view, you'll need to disable the pay group. You can only disable a pay group when there are no individuals assigned to it.
  
  Follow these steps to disable a pay group:
  1. In the navigation menu, go to Payroll Pay groups.
  2. Locate the relevant pay group, click the drop-down arrow, and select Disable.
  3. In the dialog that appears, click Disable to confirm.
• Pay groups cannot be deleted, but they can be disabled. Find instructions for how to disable a pay group here.