Employee Salary Assignment - HR and payroll

The record that puts one employee on one salary structure from a date. It also holds the base figure their percentage pay lines are worked out from.

When to use it

When somebody joins, when their salary changes, and when they leave. No record in payroll matters more.

Before you start

The employee and the salary structure must both exist, and you need the agreed base figure.

Where to find it

Open the HR area from the main menu, then Payroll, then Employee Salary Assignment.

The fields on this screen

Field (on screen)	What to enter	Required
Employee	The person this salary applies to. With no assignment covering the pay period they cannot be paid.	Yes
Structure	The salary structure to pay them on. Its earnings and deductions become their pay slip lines.	Yes
CTC	The base figure percentage components are worked out from. A wrong one changes every such pay line.	No
Effective From	First day this salary applies. Payroll only uses an assignment that covers the end of the pay period.	Yes
Effective To	Last day this salary applies. Leave it blank for no end date - payroll then keeps on using it.	No
Active	Only a ticked assignment is used by payroll. Untick the old one when you move someone to a new salary.	No

How it works

An employee is paid only when they have a ticked assignment whose dates cover the end of the pay period. Anybody without one comes out of a payroll run as an error line instead of a slip, and that error line is how you find the gap. The structure decides which earning and deduction lines appear. The base figure is what percentage lines are worked out from, so a wrong figure moves every one of them.

This is the only thing that stops payment

Marking somebody inactive on their staff record does not stop them being paid. Nor does filling in a termination date. A payroll run reads neither.

Ending or unticking the assignment is the only thing that takes a person out of a run. Make it part of the leaving process, dated to the leaving day. Then check the run's employee list before you approve the first period after somebody leaves.

Two live assignments pay twice

If an employee has two ticked assignments whose dates both cover the period, both structures are paid, added together, on one slip. Nothing warns you, and the slip looks consistent.

So when somebody moves to a new salary, make both halves of the change in one sitting. Set the end date on the old assignment (or untick it) and start the new one the day after. Then look at that person's next slip before approving it.

Rerunning an old period does not reproduce it

The pay lines are always worked out from the assignment in force today, not the one in force during the period you are running. Re-running a closed month after a pay rise pays the new salary. Re-running it after the person has left reports that they have no active pay lines.

Correct a closed period with a Compensation Adjustment dated into it, instead of regenerating its slips.

Tips and common mistakes

Untick the old assignment instead of deleting it. The history is worth keeping and deleting gains nothing.
A blank end date means the assignment runs for ever. That is right for a current employee and wrong for everybody else.
Changing the base figure changes pay from the next run, including for a period you re-run.

Salary Structure, the set of lines being assigned
Employee, the person and their account in your books
Bulk Salary Slip Run, where a missing assignment shows up as an error
Compensation Adjustment, the way to correct a period that has closed