Ascentis Payroll News - Q2 2009

Ascentis Announces the Release of Ascentis Payroll 3.0
Enhancements include new tools and features that make payroll more intuitive and efficient.

Among other enhancements, this latest Ascentis Payroll upgrade offers calendar-based payroll processing, a time-saving technique that allows payroll to be scheduled in advanced. Additional changes include:

• Restructuring capability that allows the user to change look and feel.
• The ability to hide unused features.
• An improved status bar that moves easily between payroll processing steps.
• The ability to rename, delete or unmerge journals.
• A new Pay SUI In Field, for clients who need to make the SUI state different than the work state.
• Default setting hides all but the last four digits of the SSN on standard reports.
• A new work comp control file screen that maintains W/C codes, rates and subject wages.
• A quick change/refresh directory option that allows changing or refreshing the directory from any screen.
• The ability to view date/time stamps in the system with your local time.
• The ability to split hourly pay with the same percentage for each payroll even if employees do not work the same number of hours each payroll.
• A new master file change log report that allows the user to view changes on just specified fields or a specific payroll.
• HSA deduction maintenance - New taxability code to recognize taxation by state and system limit tracking.

If you have any questions, contact your client support representative.

California EDD Bank Change

Many of our customers have received a letter from the State of California announcing a bank change for the Employment Development Department (EDD). Ascentis has been working with the various tax services, and the changes are all now in place. As we will not need a copy of the letter your received, just keep the letter for your files.

If you are creating a 3rd party EFT file to pay 3rd party payees (as opposed to paying them with 3rd party checks), then this bank change may affect your payees. Review the bank setup for any EFT payees, including the EDD, the Franchise Tax Board, and the Board of Equalization. If you do not use the 3rd party system in payroll, or if you only pay payees via a 3rd party check (as opposed to an EFT file), then you should not have any changes to make to your 3rd party payees in payroll. If you have any questions, contact your client support representative.

Three Options for Accepting HR Changes into Payroll

Did you know there are three different options for accepting HR changes that pass to Payroll through the Connector or Review window?

1. Review and apply each change manually.
2. Set some changes to apply automatically (such as address changes) while keeping other more crucial changes (such as Rate changes) set to be reviewed and manually applied.
3. Use the Calendar feature to create schedules for the system to follow when determining when to apply changes.

If you would like to know more about these three options please contact your Ascentis Payroll client support representative.

Standard Report Spotlight: Deductions and Other Pays

Have you ever wondered what Other Pay or Deduction codes you have available, or what the taxability was for a specific Other Pay or Deduction code? Introducing the “Deductions and Other Pays” standard report. This report can be run from the main Reports screen under the Reference topic.

When you select this report you can choose to run either the Deduction code list or the Other Pay code list. On this report you will see the complete list of codes available, including the code number and description, as well as the taxability for each code.

For the taxability information specifically look in the "Ascentis Tax Code" column. If the space is blank then the code has regular taxation. If the space is not blank then the report will give you a taxability description. For example, when looking at the deduction code list you may see taxability descriptions like "S125" or "401(k)" which indicate that these codes are pre-tax and governed by the tax rules associated with those types of regulated deductions.

Tip! These two reports are also useful to refer to when writing InstaWriter reports where you are creating Design fields or Filters to include or exclude specific codes from the report.

Save Paper with Electronic Reports

Rather than printing out reports with each payroll, take advantage of the Download tool which allows the downloading of multiple reports at once. You can then save these reports to a shared drive or to your PC where they can remain for future reference.

A second option to avoid printing reports but still retain access to them is to have them transferred to a CD. To utilize this option simply mark the “CD” box located in the report row. Once you have marked the reports to be saved to CD, and are ready for the CD to be created and sent to you, send an email to cdromrequest@ascentis.com. The CD-ROM will be created with all the selected reports and sent to you.

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