We know that conducting payroll can be one of organizations' most tedious and time-consuming processes. At Connecteam, we have made it our mission to simplify that process and make it as quick and easy as possible so that you can focus your efforts on what matters the most. In this article, we will walk you through the key steps to conduct payroll properly and show you how to save time by implementing a proper payroll process. These are the steps we'll go over:
Step 1: Set Your Payroll Period
The first step of the payroll process is setting your payroll period. You can do this by heading to your Time Clock, clicking on Settings at the top right corner, navigating to the Payroll tab, and then selecting the appropriate payroll period for your needs.
Now, by default, you and your employees will always view the current payroll period when looking at your timesheets. You can also quickly switch between payroll periods by clicking on the Date range and selecting a previous payroll period one or a custom date of your choice.
Step 2: Set Payroll Reminders for Employees and Managers
Have you ever closed payroll and then had an employee let you know that their pay is incorrect? It's a nightmare, we know.
To avoid this, you can remind users to review their timesheets and remind admins to review them and any last-minute edit requests users may have sent! To set up user and admin payroll reminders, just head over to the Payroll tab under the Time Clock Settings and make sure to check the options Remind users to review their timesheets and Remind admins to approve timesheets, then click Save Changes.
Step 3: Approve/Decline Changes
Now that your employees have reviewed their timesheets and perhaps sent some edit requests, and your managers have been reminded to review their requests, it is time to go over the pending requests. To do so, simply click on the Pending Requests button and approve or decline these requests. This step is important as you do not want to go over their timesheets without making sure that the employees have had a chance to make amendments, or else you might have to unnecessarily repeat the approval process.
Step 4: Timesheet Submissions
A key part of the payroll process is for users to submit their timesheets for admin approval. This means they have reviewed their timesheets, seen if any of their requests have been approved or declined, and are now ready to submit their final timesheet for admin approval.
To set up the timesheet approval process, navigate to the Payroll tab and activate the Timesheet Approval option. We also highly suggest activating the option to require employees to submit their timesheets, as this ensures they review their timesheets thoroughly.
You can keep track of which timesheets have been submitted by users by looking at the Timesheets tab and checking the column User Submission. It will either state that the timesheet is Open or Submitted. This is how you'll know which timesheets are ready for you to review.
Step 5: Review Timesheets and Issues
Once users have reviewed their timesheets, sent any edit requests, and submitted them for approval, it is finally time for admins to review them one last time and make sure no issues exist. To do so, click on each user to access their timesheet. Next to the date column, you'll see the Issues column marked in red, with an exclamation icon next to every date that needs to be looked at.
Click on the icon to view what issues need to be handled:
The 'Issues' column currently supports conflicts, pending timesheet requests, and pending time off requests. To deal with the unresolved issues, you can either click on the exclamation mark, then on Review, and then approve/decline, or click on the three dots and ignore the issue, as illustrated below.
During the process of reviewing timesheets for payroll, you may need to make some adjustments to the user's worked hours, which is why we encourage you to explore our Editing and Action Shortcuts, to facilitate the process of making changes.
Editing Shortcuts
Editing your timesheets should also be instantaneous and we've ensured to facilitate the process for you as well with the following capabilities:
Edit clock-in/clock-out time
Edit break hours
Add daily hours for when you just need to add a specific amount of hours without necessarily caring about the clock-in and clock-out times
Add weekly hours for when you just need to add a specific amount of hours to the week without necessarily caring about the clock-in and clock-out times
Action Shortcuts
To speed up the process of conducting payroll, we have added many tools at your disposal:
Chat - By clicking on the chat icon next to the user's full name, you can open a chat directly with that employee to ask timesheet-related questions
Next employee - In the top right corner you can swiftly jump in between employees to go over their timesheets
Export - You can export an employee timesheet in an Excel or PDF format
Add shift - You have two easy ways of adding a shift, the first is by clicking on Add shift (indicator 4) and the second is by hovering over a row and clicking on the + icon (indicator 8).
Add break - You have two easy ways of adding a break, the first is by clicking on Add break (indicator 5) and the second is by hovering over a row and clicking on the + icon (indicator 8).
Add time off - easily add some time off hours to an employee by clicking on "Add time off".
Delete shift - you can quickly delete a shift entry by hovering over a shift and clicking on the trash icon on the far right.
On the right side, you have the ability to add manager notes to add details to a specific shift. Similarly, your employees can also add notes when they clock out or edit a shift.
💡Tip: You can find the Timesheet Conflicts at the top right of your timesheet which will notify you if there are any hourly overlaps, ensuring that you never pay your employees double.
Step 6: Approve Timesheets
As a business owner, you probably want to make sure that hours in Connecteam and in your payroll software are identical. To ensure that no changes are made by mistake, you can approve your employee's timesheets, preventing anyone from making any edits by accident.
Next to the User submission column mentioned in step 4, you will find the Admin approval column, which will help you track the timesheets that are ready to be exported for payroll and which ones remain to be approved.
Step 7: Export Timesheets for Payroll
Once all timesheets have been approved by an admin, the final step of the process is to export the timesheets for payroll. Here, you can choose to (1) export one of our default options, (2) create a custom export of your own, or (3) export it to one of the integrations we offer. Let's take a look at these three options.
Option 1: Choose one of the default Time Clock export options
Option 2: Create your own custom export which will allow you to choose what fields, and in what order you would like to export them, every single time!
Option 3: Export to one of the current payroll integrations we offer. We currently support exports to Quickbooks Online, Gusto, Xero (AU), Xero (UK), and Paychex Flex. We also support formatted exports for Quick Books Desktop and ADP Run.
💡Tip: an additional tool you can use during the payroll process, is periodic auto reports of timesheets and payroll exports. These can be sent to any email address of your choice and add an element of automaticity and effectiveness to your payroll process. Please consider that the auto reports are only available from the Expert plan under the Operations hub.
Summary
By following the 7 steps mentioned in the article we hope to save you a lot of time and errors so that you can focus on the most essential parts of your business. Our promise is to continue to improve the payroll process, making it as seamless as possible
Need more guidance? 🙋 Our LIVE support team (at the bottom right corner of your screen) replies in under 5 mins to ANY question.