1. Click on your Payroll login.
2. Click on the Payroll Settings module.
3. Click on Pay Categories.
4. Click Add.
   
   

   Helpful Hint

   To read further information on pay categories creation, refer to this article.

5. Change the unit field to fixed, as this is paid on a weekly (not hourly) basis.
   
   

   Helpful Hint

   There is no requirement to pay superannuation on paid parental leave, but if you wish to, you can leave the Super Guarantee (SG) rate at the platform default.

6. Click the Save button.

1. Click on your Payroll login.
2. Click on Employees on the side menu. 
3. Click on your chosen employee.
4. Click on Pay Rates on the side menu.
5. If you pay the employee a set amount of hours each pay, you will see the Show in Pay Run tick box selected against their default pay category. You will need to untick this box.
6. Click on Pay Run Inclusions.
7. You will see the Additional Earnings information. You are going to use this feature as it will allow you to have payments automatically added to a pay run until the parental leave payment limit has been reached.
8. Click the Add button to create an Additional Earnings line.
9. Select the previous parental leave pay category that you created earlier. You can set a location for the payment as the default option. The Units field represents the number of weeks paid in the pay run; e.g. 1 for a weekly pay run, and 4.33 for a monthly pay run. 
10. Set the parental leave pay rate. Typically you would leave the super rate at 0% but you can override it if you wish.
11. Enter an optional note if you wish, e.g. parental leave.
12. Select the All Pay Runs until the Maximum Amount Has Been Reached option. Here, enter the weekly amount multiplied by 18, the number of entitlement weeks. 
13. Click the Save button.
    
    

    Important

    As you process each payment within a pay run, you will be able to go back here and view how much you have already paid, and how much pay is remaining.

1. Click on your Payroll login.
2. Click on Pay Run on the side menu. 
3. Click on New Pay Run.
4. Complete the required fields.
5. Click on the employee's name to view their details.
6. You should see an earnings line for the parental leave, but because you set it up as a Fixed Pay category, you will notice that there are zero hours. This is to be expected, as the gross earnings will still be correct. For the last pay run, you will likely find a pro-rata amount that the platform will work out so that it does not overpay the employee.

If you want to record the leave taken, you can create a new leave category called unpaid parental leave. When creating the leave category, select the Not Tracked option, as this will tell the platform that it does not need to keep track of the employees leave entitlements.

Once you create a leave category, if you create a leave request for the length of time that the employee will be away, you will be able to apply this leave to each pay run. You may need to enable the leave type so that the employee can apply for it.

You can do this via the Employee File Leave Allowances page. If they are on a leave allowance template, you will need to either take them off the template, or go to Payroll Settings Leave Allowance templates and add it to the template, which will also apply for all employees attached to the same template.

Once you fix the above, you can go ahead a create a pay run as usual. Once you have created the pay run, you can then click the Leave Requests tab to apply to the leave. If you hover over the leave request, you can click the Apply button.

You will then see a prompt to select the number of hours that you want to apply to the pay run. Once you enter the required hours, it will add that leave request into the pay run details under the Leave Taken section. Repeat this process for each pay run that the employee is on leave.

If the employee comes back on a different date than expected, you can close off the rest of the request by clicking the Mark as Applied Manually option in the next pay run. It will prevent it from showing up in any future pay runs.

If you do not want to show leave as being taken for the employee, and have them included in any pay runs whilst they are gone, you can stop them from automatically being picked up when a pay run is created. Using this approach, they are still on the platform, but not included in any pay runs.

To do this, you will need to set up a new pay schedule. Call it unpaid leave or something, so that you know its primary use is to separate those employees they do not need paying. In the Included Employees field select the Employees with this Pay Schedule as their Default option.

Once you create this category, go to the Employee File module; next go to the Pay Run Defaults page. Lastly, change the employees pay schedule to the newly created one. You will never create a pay run using this pay schedule and so it is a handy way of keeping employees separate until they get back from leave.