Payroll Post Notes: Prepare for the Minimum Wage Increase

I got a hot tip, well actually a great suggestion from a reader, for a blog post to help prepare for the minimum wage increase on July 24, 2008. Since I always want to make my readers happy, here you go . The first thing we need to do is create a list of employees that currently make less than the new minimum wage amount, $6.55. You can accomplish this by creating an employee query. Here's how:

1. Create a new employee query.
2. On the Criteria tab, select:
   • Compensation/Deductions, Pay Types, Valid through date, Operator blank
   • Compensation/Deductions, Pay Types, Amount/Percent, Operator less than, and enter a value of $6.55
3. On the Output tab, select Employee, Employee full name.
4. Select the Results tab to review the employees.
5. Save the query.

Now that we know which employees need to be updated, the current pay type needs to be expired, and a new pay type needs to be added for the increased amount. This process will depend on the number of employees to update and their new hourly rate.

If you only have a few employees currently below the new minimum, I would recommend manually expiring and adding the new record or using the Change Compensation Wizard on each record.

If you have a large number of employees currently below $6.55, you can use Create Group Assignment to globally expire and add the updated pay type. This process will also allow you to increase the current hourly rate proportionately if not all employees make the same amount.

I strongly recommend creating a backup of your database right before globally adding or changing anything in your database. This is one of those processes that can only be reversed by manually correcting each record, which defeats the purpose of the shortcut, or restoring to a backup, which will cause you to lose all data entered after the backup was made (hence the backup right before the change).

Here's the process to globally update the records:

1. In Payroll Processing, click Create Group Assignments.
2. On the Options tab in the What do you want to do? field, select Copy existing records onto employees.
3. Select Pay Type in the Copy existing field.
4. Select the appropriate pay type in the Pay Type ID field.
5. In the Effective date field, select Effective only on period ending dates from, and enter 07/24/2008 in the first field. Leave the through date field blank.
6. Mark the Expire this pay type checkbox, select the same ID as defined in the Pay Type ID field, and enter 07/23/2008 in the Effective end date field.
7. Mark the Increase/Decrease pay type using checkbox, select amount, and enter $.70 in the amount field. If you would like to proportionally increase the wage, select percent, and enter the appropriate percent.
8. On the Filters tab, change the Employee filter from All to Selected.
9. On the Employees screen, mark the Query option, select the query created above, and click OK.
10. Select the Assignment Grid tab to review the employees and new hourly wage amount. You can manually adjust the new amount if necessary.
11. If the employee information and amounts in the grid are correct, click Process Now.