How AngelTrack can Help Automate Your Payroll

A guide to the features offered for Payroll in AngelTrack, as well as some suggestions for usage

Members of Human Resources can use AngelTrack's employee records and timeclock to calculate payroll. The calculations can then be exported into your accounting software or emailed to your payroll processor, for calculation of withholdings and issuance of paychecks.

The Payroll Calculator performs these calculations, and can do so for any date range you choose.

Payroll

Configuring the Pay Period and Payroll Interval

AngelTrack's Payroll Calculator, as well as its labor cost reports, must be told what the company's pay period is. Specify it using the Preferences page under the Settings page.

You can configure a pay period start day (usually Sunday or Monday) and start time (usually midnight). AngelTrack must know this information in order to calculate overtime pay when figuring your payroll or showing you a chart of labor costs.

You can also set the special hourly rate for on call hours, which are calculated separately from base pay and overtime pay.

Payroll interval

AngelTrack supports the following payroll intervals:

  • Weekly, where each paycheck covers a 1-, 2-, 3, or 4-week period;
  • Bi-monthly, where each paycheck covers days 1-14 or days 15-31; or
  • Monthly, where each paycheck covers one full calendar month;

The bi-monthly and monthly pay period types still require you to configure a pay period start day and time, because that information is needed to calculate overtime. In other words, a pay period must always be a seven-day, 40-hour week, even though you cut paychecks on the 1st, the 15th, and/or the last day of each month.

Choosing a Date Range

The Payroll Calculator tries to help you pick an appropriate date range. You can specify either a start date or an end date, and it will then figure out which payroll interval your date falls within. For example, if you specify a start date of Tuesday May 2, and your payroll interval is a 2-week period beginning at midnight on a Monday, then AngelTrack will choose a date range of Monday May 1 through Monday May 15.

AngelTrack will then merge your employees' pay-rate and pay-type records with the contents of the timeclock, doing all the calculations for hourly and salaried employees who were active at any time during that date range.

Change in Pay Rate or Pay Type During Pay Period

The Payroll Calculator is smart enough to handle a change in pay rate or pay type (hourly/exempt) or both in the middle of a pay period. When such a change occurs, the employee will have additional rows in the calculation, one row per pay rate and type.

For example, suppose an employee changed from hourly to salaried halfway through a pay period. While the employee was hourly, AngelTrack uses their timecard to calculate hours worked and overtime, and there will be a row in the calculation showing these subtotals. Then, beginning the day of the change to salary, AngelTrack ignores their timecard and instead pays them at their annual rate... which will appear as a separate row in the calculation.

Likewise for a salaried employee terminated in the middle of a pay period. The calculator will pay them at their salaried rate only for those days they were an active employee.

Correcting Mistakes

As a member of HR, you have authority in AngelTrack to correct any employee's timecard... but if you do, we recommend you collect a signed "Timeclock Correction Form" from the employee, or something similar according to your company's policies, since AngelTrack will thereafter show that you edited that particular timecard entry.

You can also edit any employee's current pay rate and type, and any entry in the history thereof. Such changes are done using the "Payroll" tab of the relevant person's Employee HR Edit page, provided you have the necessary privileges in AngelTrack. You can also modify the date that a payroll rate change took effect; the change is then immediately reflected in the Payroll Calculator.

Exporting the Calculations

AngelTrack's calculations can be exported (as a .CSV) straight to Excel or other app by clicking the Export-Sep-20-2022-08-09-27-97-PM button. Or just print it right off the screen.

If you use an outside payroll processor like ADP, you can email the .CSV to them directly, or perhaps convert it to an Excel spreadsheet first if you wish to add some columns.

Locking the Timeclock Log

Once you've exported your payroll numbers, you can lock the underlying timeclock entries against any further edits of any kind. They can only be unlocked by a call to AngelTrack Support.

If the Payroll Calculator sees that the currently selected date range contains any unlocked entries, it will offer a button you can click to lock them. When all underlying entries are locked, the button disappears, and in its place is a message to that effect.

"Needs attention" not lockable

Any timeclock entry flagged "Needs attention" cannot be locked. You must resolve the issue and clear the flag before you can lock the entry.

Unlockable only by AngelTrack technical support

Locked entries are not unlockable by any person in your organization. This stands as a guarantee to your employees that their timecards cannot be retroactively altered.

If you have made a mistake and need to unlock an entry, you must contact AngelTrack technical support. The unlock process will write a permanent journal message -- viewable by the employee -- to the timecard entry, which will appear if you subsequently alter the entry in any way. The employee will also automatically receive an email or text message warning them that their timecard was unlocked upon request to AngelTrack technical support.

PTO

AngelTrack's timeclock tracks paid and unpaid vacation, and the Payroll Calculator includes it.

PTO days are recorded in the timeclock as 24-hour blocks. The Payroll Calculator assesses 8.0 paid hours per 24-hour block of PTO.

To learn more about vacation tracking in AngelTrack, refer to the Vacations Guide.

Payroll Reports

The Labor Cost Visualizer, available under HR Home, charts data from the Payroll Calculator. Furthermore, it divides the costs up by patch level, so that you can see how much money you are spending on each class of employee.

The related report Labor Hours Visualizer shows the same data, but without factoring in overtime, to give an undistorted view of labor hours by employee class.