# Departments

Departments allow a payroll-based categorisation of employees. The payroll system can allocate General ledger amounts for pay runs based on the Department to which employees have been assigned.

A Department holds information about which General ledger accounts should be updated for an employee’s leave and payroll expense amounts and an employee’s leave provision amounts. An employee’s department can also be used for reporting and searching.

Features

- Department codes are FlexiCode
- No practical limit to the number of departments that can be created
- A General ledger provision account can be specified for each leave type
- A General ledger expense account can be specified for each leave type

Departments form

Module: Payroll

Category: Departments

Activation: Main > Payroll > Setup > Departments

Form style: Multiple instance, SODA

Special actions available for users with Administrator permissions:

- Change the User ID of the Entered by field of memos.
- Edit memos entered by other users.

Database rules:

- A department cannot be deleted if the department is referenced by an employee in its Department field. If you attempt this, an error message will display the employees linked to the department.

Field definitions
Main

List of Departments

Reference: list, read-only

This list shows all departments currently defined.

As you click on each department in the list, the details of the department are displayed to the right of the list.

General tab

Department code

Reference: text(50), FlexiCode, mandatory

This is the code given to a department to allow it to be quickly identified.

The Department code is a FlexiCode. This allows you to modify the Department code while still retaining all previous internal references and links to that Department.

Name

Reference: text(64), mandatory

This is the full name of the department. This is only used as a reference in searching and reporting.

Comments

Reference: memo, expandable

This field should contain and comments that are relevant to the department.

Expense accounts

Reference: account, mandatory, QuickList

These accounts represent the General ledger expense accounts that are debited with the relevant values when a pay run is applied containing one or more employees assigned to the selected department.

For a given pay run and for all employees in the pay run who have the selected department assigned to them, the expense accounts are debited with amounts as follows:

- Superannuation
- The total of all employer-sponsored superannuation amounts.
- Salaries
- The total income expenses less any income expenses attributed to leave payments and less any allowances before or after tax.
- Timesheet labour recovery
- Whenever a timesheet entry is recorded for a person for a job or a work order, it is possible to have the value of this work deducted (or recovered) from your wages expenses and allocated to either the job or a work order. The value of the amount deducted/recovered from this account is equal to the number of hours entered on the timesheet multiplied by the "Job cost rate" on the timesheet.
- For more information, see Timesheet labour recovery.
- Timesheet labour posted
- When a job is flushed (see Job flushed), if the job does not have a flush account associated with it, then the accumulated labour costs are posted to the employee's departmental Timesheet labour posted account.

Hourly overheads

Reference: currency

This amount represents an additional cost per hour added to the usual Job cost rate that is filled into timesheets when using the Timesheet labour recovery mechanism.

This field is typically used when you have a department that has additional employee expenses/costs/benefits that you have not already incorporated into the individual employee’s Job costing rate or a specific pay item rate. You can also use this field to represent the full departmental job cost rate for everyone in the department, providing you have set their individual job cost rates to zero.

Leave expense accounts tab

Leave expense accounts

Reference: account, QuickList

These accounts represent the General ledger leave expense accounts that are debited with the relevant accrued leave values when a pay run is applied containing one or more employees assigned to the selected department.

An expense account is specified for each type of leave except where leave types are distinguished in terms of dates. All types of Annual leave use a single account labelled "annual leave", and all types of Long service leave use a single account labelled "long service leave".

For a given pay run and for all employees in the pay run who have the selected department assigned to them, the relevant leave expense account is debited with the total dollar amount of the type of leave that has been accrued.

Leave provision accounts tab

Leave provision accounts

Reference: account, QuickList

These accounts represent the General ledger leave provision accounts that are credited with the relevant provision leave values when a pay run is applied containing one or more employees assigned to the selected department. When leave is taken by an employee, the value in the relevant account is debited appropriately to reduce the liability (the relevant Salaries expense account is credited by the same amount).

A provision account is specified for each type of leave except where leave types are distinguished in terms of dates. All types of Annual leave use a single account labeled annual leave, and all types of Long service leave use a single account labeled long service leave.

For a given pay run and for all employees in the pay run who have the selected department assigned to them, the relevant leave provision account is credited with the total dollar amount of that type of leave that has been accrued less the amount of the same type of leave that has been taken.

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