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How do I generate a payroll projection?

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Payroll Projections forecasts payroll expenses for  the upcoming budget year.  This is only available for Advanced Payroll (v2) on the Vulcan Release 07.25.2018 of BIAS or later.

Create a baseline projection, then generate, annualize, and update individual employees that may have been part time in the current year and will be full-time in the next year or vice versa. Edit wages and benefit tables for employees at the expected levels for the upcoming budget year.

All plans, wages, distributions are kept separate inside the projection so your operational settings are not affected.

If not already done, run the New Year Setup for the upcoming budget year

Go to Advanced Payroll (v2) > Setup

Update rates for L&I & Unemployment for the budget year created.  If the new rates are not available, enter an estimate.  You can always come back and edit these and use the Refresh option to update your Projections if you change them.

Make sure the correct year is selected in the drop down box.  Changing the wrong year can impact your current payroll.

Go to Advanced Payroll (v2) > Reports > Payroll Projections

  1. Select year From, typically the current year. Although not show here, Feb 2019 and later releases allow you to pick a beginning and ending date if you wish to analyze a subset of a year.  One use would be to calculate retro pay.
  2. Click the blue magnifying glass in Projections

Create a baseline projection to compare to subsequent projections.

  1. Click Add New
  2. Enter a Name for the projection
  3. Select a Column value for results
  4. Enter projection Description
  5. Click Save

Multiple projections can be created but BIAS can only compare up to 4 projections at one time.  The column value determined the order in which they are displayed.  It is the responsibility of the user to ensure that there are no duplicate numbers.

  1. Click the Close box
  1. Select Projections to generate
  1. Click Generate

Each time a projection is generated, the selected projection will be deleted and rebuilt.  To generate a projection with a different date range, create another projection.

  1. Click Annualize

This function will convert the current wages to annual wages.  If different payroll groups are paid with different schedules (i.e.  monthly, semi-monthly, quarterly, etc) each group can be annualized separately.  In addition, any new employees that are seasonal should be annualized separately.  

  1. The Periods are manually entered and should be the number of periods the generate represents of the total periods per year.  (i.e.  semi-monthly pay periods ran through June would be 12 periods of 24.

Use the History option to view an employee's history if periods need to be counted without leaving Payroll Projections.

Increases are not typically applied to the baseline.

BIAS does not prevent this from being run more than once, so keep track of what is being done.

IMPORTANT Before continuing, review and make corrections for errors or abnormalities to the baseline projection.  Such as, increased wages, decreased benefits, and L&I adjustments. Employees that only worked part of the year will need some editing, use the Wages and/or Benefits options in the tool bar to do so.  Be sure to make L&I corrections here as well.  

Add New Deduction Plan

To add a new deduction form next year and has not been used requires the following steps.

  1. Go to the Payroll Setup program, select the Benefits & Deductions tab, add the deduction and at least one setting.  DO NOT assign the deduction/setting to any employee profiles unless you intend to start using it now.
  2. Go back to the Payroll Projections program, select the Plans tab, select Add New and either type in the plan number you just created or double click to pick it from the list. Select Save in the tool bar. (Settings are hidden until you Save the new plan)
  3. The far right column shows the employees along with their assigned setting for the highlighted plan.  This section will be blank for the new plan so click on 'Write All'.  
    • This will write all the employees into the list unless a 'Group' is selected in the filter, then only those employees will be added.
    • 'Edit' and assign the applicable setting in the 'Setting' column for each employee.  If an employee will not be receiving the benefit, you can delete them from the list or leave the setting blank.  
    • If you accidentally delete an employee, just run 'Write All' again (using the same Group Filter as before if you used one) and the missing employee(s) will be added.

Go back to the Employee Totals and check some of the employees to see the results.

When changing the value of a drop down box, you can type the first letter of your choice instead of using the mouse.  In the case of the new FLA which will most likely only have one setting of ALL, just type the 'A' then press the down arrow to go to the next line.

Press <F3> as a shortcut for Delete, instead of clicking on the Delete option in the toolbar.

Employee tax deferred amounts are not shown, but are taken into consideration for Social Security and Medicare costs.

Moving Forward, Either Create a New Projection OR Copy Initial Baseline Projection

  1. Repeat steps 1-15 to create a new projection.  This can be repeated to create as many projections as needed. OR
  1. Use 'Copy' to populate a new Projection from an existing one.

Remember, if you click Generate on an existing Projection it will override all of your previous work!

  1. From- will default to the projection that is currently open, but can be changed in the dropdown menu
  2. To - is the destination projection and needs to be selected from the dropdown menu, or click the magnifying glass button to add a new projection.
  3. Click Copy
  1. Add Employees if needed
  2. Apply Universal Wage increase
  3. Apply Universal Plan Increase
  4. Review Distributions
  5. Review Employees and fine tune expectations

Steps 21-25 are outlined in the tab sections below

Employee Totals tab

  1. Edit - Only Increase and L&I Hrs can be edited.  If a specific employee needs to have their own increase that is separate from the group, update it here.  To update an entire group, see 'Apply Increase'.  Most of the options in the toolbar are disabled when editing here.
  1. Delete - This allows the deletion of any employee from the list.  It does not affect the real time data
  2. Wages / Benefits / Distributions - displays the designated list for that employee
  3. History - displays the actual payroll history for reference
  1. Copy Employee - This allows the addition of a new employee to the list, copied from the highlighted employee.  
    • The 'To' value must be a number that is not used in the existing list.  Any other number may be used, but it is recommended to start with 9000001 and go up from there.
  1. Apply Increase
    • Put the percent increase in (whole number, not decimal value)
    • By using the group filter, increases can be applied in a more granular way
    • This tool updates all employee wages and refreshes the cost of benefits.
  1. Refresh - Run this if the L&I and Unemployment rates change to update an existing projection.  This will need to be run separately for each projection.
  1. Distribution Error - Is a tool to make sure that there is no difference between Owner Cost and Check columns.

If the box is checked and lines remain in view, contact BIAS Support.

This example does not have any errors

The SS/Med basis adjustment values and overall SS/Med percent of wages are available in the Excel export.

Emp Pay Items tab

  • This is a list of all employees pay items   If the 'Increase' is updated here and it is different from the overall increase, BIAS will leave it alone
  • This screen can be printed or exported to Excel.
  • If you select a Pay Item in the toolbar filter drop down, the report will filter on that item as well.

Emp Ben & Deductions tab

  • If an increase is applied in the Plans tab, the increase will be shown here.  Only put the increase in here if it is different from the overall plan increase
  • Only plans with employer contributions are displayed here by default.  If all plans are needed, check the 'Show All' box on the tool bar.
  • If you select a plan in the toolbar filter drop down, the report will filter on that plan as well.

Plans tab

  • Either apply a universal increase for all the settings in the plan list or update the settings individually in the settings list
  • Each plan can be increased uniquely.
  • See 'Add New Deduction (Plan)' section above to add a plan not in use in the current year.

Distributions tab

  • Distributions for the current projection can be modified here
  • Distribution Amount is allocated by decimal percentage (0.10 = 10%).  The cumulative distribution total is shown above.
  • The far right column shows the employee pay items that are affected
  • If any change is made, the overall costs are recalculated

Compare tab

  • Shows each BARS code and its cost for up to 4 projections.  (This is where the 'Column' option from creating the projection is used)

Budget tab

  • Shows all the employee pay distributions and the source
  • After printing a budget, there is an option to update either the budget or proposed budget with these numbers
  • BIAS also has the option to 'round' the totals to whole numbers

Print

  • When 'Print' is selected from any tab, the same dialog box appears except for the Distributions & Compare tabs.  They have there own report.
  • The options checked it based on the tab it is called from.  The options can be changed without having to leave and to to another tab.
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