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Pay Rates

Learn how to set your user's pay rates and estimate their wage every time.

Shoshana Fleischmann avatar
Written by Shoshana Fleischmann
Updated over a week ago

Your employees' salary is important in the most basic sense - the vast majority of people wouldn't do their jobs if they weren't paid for them. Let's be honest though, calculating their salary can be a nightmare! Make one mistake and you could pay your users the wrong amount and need to do payroll again. You might even overpay them, costing your business thousands of dollars.

Does this sound familiar? At Connecteam, we can all relate to the headache payroll can create. For this reason, we have Pay Rates. These, allow you to set the rate at which each user in your company is paid. Not only that, but you can see the exact salary they should be getting paid. No more late-night calculations or redoing payroll. Set your pay rates and execute your payroll flawlessly.

In this article, we will go over

Now, let’s get started on setting this up!

Setting Up the Pay Rate

To activate the Pay Rate feature head over to the General Settings, to the Pay Rate Settings tab, and make sure the Enable Pay Rates button is toggled on.

After this be sure to set your pay rate currency and set your admin permission which we will go over below.

Pay Rates Admin Permissions

Permitting your Admins to set users' pay rates can be a scary thing, after all this is real money we are talking about! For this reason, we have created a comprehensive set of admin permissions, ensuring you can control exactly who can adjust the pay rate.

The admin permissions have two options:

  • View: This option allows admins to view only the user's pay rate and estimated salary.

  • View and Edit: This option allows admins to not only view but also to add or update the user's pay rate. Please note that all owners are automatically added with this permission.

To add an admin and set their permissions, go to the general settings, to the Pay Rate Settings tab, select the add button, select your admin, and set their permissions. In the example below you can see that I added the admin Michael with view-only permissions.

💡 Tip: It is important to note that the users that the admin will be able to see or update are based on the Manager Permissions and the Smart Groups they are an administrator of. Be sure to go over these features if you are not familiar with them!

How to Set an Employee's Pay Rate

Now that you have enabled the pay rate, let's go over how to set your user's pay rate. Start by Navigating to the 'Users tab' and enter the relevant user's profile, enter the 'Employment tab', and select 'Set Pay Rate'.

Here there are a few options, such as effective date, rate type, default rate, and job rate. First, we will go over the terminology and then we will discuss all the ways to set your user's pay rate based on what you need.

Terminology

  • Effective Date - The date that the pay rate becomes, or should become active. This day can be past, present, or future allowing you to set up pay raises in advance.

  • Rate Types - This is the type of pay your user will be getting, the options are hourly, monthly, and yearly.

  • Default Rate - This option only appears if you are using hourly pay rates. It is the default hourly rate your employee is paid. It is from this rate things like overtime will be calculated.

  • Job Rate - This option be used if you pay employees differently per job. This can be used in combination with or regardless of the default job rate set.

Common Use Cases for Setting Pay Rates

Now that you understand what's what, let's go over all the ways to set your pay rates.

Yearly Salary

In this case, your employee receives a certain amount of pay per year regardless of the number of hours they work. That money is then divided up by the number of payroll cycles you have in a year.

To set this up set the rate type to yearly, enter the pay rate, set the effective date, and save changes. In the example below you can set I set a yearly salary of 100,000 USD to take effect on 01/01/2024.

Monthly Salary

In this case, your employee receives a certain amount of pay per month regardless of the number of hours they work. This pay is then divided between the number of pay cycles you have in the month.

To set this up set the rate type to monthly, enter the pay rate, set the effective date, and save changes. In the example below you can see I set a monthly salary of 8,000 USD to take effect on 09/01/2024.

Hourly Salary

In this case, your employees are paid hourly. Their pay is then calculated based on the number of hours they work.

To set this up set the rate type to hourly then set the default rate to the amount of pay your employee receives per hour, and set the effective date. In the example below you can see that I set my employee's hourly pay to 20 USD per hour, with the effective date as 07/01/2024

Pay Rate Per Job & Sub Jobs

If you pay your employees differently based on the job they are doing then this option is for you. Note that this option only appears if you have the rate type set to hourly.

Begin by setting the pay rate to hourly and toggling on the job rate. Automatically you will see all the Jobs the employee is qualified to work. If you all a lot of jobs, you can use our quick filter to figure out which jobs have rates, and which are missing rates, or view all the jobs together.

When setting the pay rate per job though, there are two ways to set things up: with or without a default rate. You should set the default rate if your employees are paid a regular hourly rate sometimes and a rate per job other times.

Let's look at some examples of using/not using the default rate when setting up jobs.

Default Hourly Pay + Pay Per Job: My employees are paid 15 USD an hour for regular clients, however when working for VIP Clients they are paid 20.

In this case, I should set the default pay to 15 USD, for each job that is a regular client I can add and select the option to use the default rate. For each VIP Client, I'll set the rate to 20 USD. If I have sub jobs regardless of if I am using the default rate or not I'll be able to select whether or not to use the parent rate.

💡Tip: If you want the default rate to be applied for any new jobs the employee might work, this can be done by selecting the option 'Use the default rate for new qualified jobs and the parent rate for new sub job.'

Pay Per Job, With No Default Hourly Pay: I have 3 jobs and for each one, I pay differently. Office is 20 USD per hour, Installation is 30 USD, and Field Work is 30 USD. In this case, since my employees are paid differently for each job I don't need to use the default rate. I have set up sub-jobs, their rate can according to the parent job, by checking off 'use the parent rate', or if each sub-job receives a unique rate I can unselect that option and set the rate.

💡 Tip: If your Employees sometimes work jobs they are unqualified for, you can still add those rates for that job. Simply click on add unqualified jobs and you'll be able to see all the jobs set up in your account.

It's important to note that the pay rate per job needs to be per employee. For example, if James and Jackie both work in the Job Office, I will need to set the rate for that job in James' Employment tab, and Jackies Employment Tab of their user profiles.

How to Enable Pay Rates in the Time Clock

To set this up go to the Time Clock>Settings>General Tab and scroll down to Show Pay Rates. Here you have the option to allow either qualified admins or qualified admins and users to view the calculated pay.

How Do Pay Rates Look in the Timesheets?

When entering your timesheets, you will see the total amount you are paying both your salaried and hourly employees for the current payroll period.

This can be seen in the top right-hand corner.

Additionally, if you access a specific timesheet, you can add two more columns to break down the employee's pay even further. The columns are 'Hourly rate' and 'Daily pay', click on the column icon in the far right corner and add them.

You can even include both of these columns in the Timesheet export and the Hourly rate in the Shift Report. Take a look at the example below of the Timesheets export.

Now, let's go over the differences between hourly and monthly/yearly salaried users and how these look in the timesheets.

Hourly Rates

Hourly rates are calculated on an hourly basis. The calculated salary is based on the number of hours your users worked x their pay rate.

In the example below you can see Sean worked 64 hours at a base rate of $25 per hour making his total pay $1,600.

Monthly Rates

Monthly rates are calculated by dividing the monthly rate by the number of payroll periods you have set. For example, if you have set two pay periods a month, then the monthly pay rate will be divided by two.

In the example below you can see that Emily is on a monthly salary of 8,000. Her timesheet shows a calculated pay of $3,920.95 based on the number of days in the payroll cycle.

💡 Tip: Even if your salaried employees never clock in there will still be calculated pay. Notice that Micahel below never clocked in but still has a calculated pay. This occurs because the pay of salary employees is not based on the number of hours worked, but rather on the pay rate set in their user profile and the number of Payroll periods defined. To learn more about setting Payroll Periods check out this article.

Yearly Rates

Yearly rates are calculated by dividing the yearly rate by the number of times you are paying your employee across the year.

In the example below you can see Emily is paid a yearly salary of $100k but her salary is $4,084.32 because his company pays every 2 weeks per month.

💡 Tip: Do not be alarmed if when adjusting the date range, the calculated pay of your salary user changes. It just means, that their pay is being recalculated based on the number of days you have set.

Pay Rate By Job

Pay Rates by job are calculated by the hourly rate at which the employee worked the job multiplied by the number of hours worked by the employee. Take a look at how this looks in the example below.

Want to learn more about pay rates? Check out our FAQ section!

Want a Pro to configure Pay Rates for you? 🤓 Click here to learn more.

Need more guidance? 🙋 Our LIVE support team (at the bottom right corner of your screen) replies to ANY question.

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