Pay Rate Description on Pay Rate Rules

Description

A new text field labelled Rate Description has been added to the Rates and Rules > Pay Agreements > Pay Agreement > Secondary Interpretation > Pay Rate Rules > Pay Rate Rule Entry screen, from this release on, to allow a textual description of a pay rate to be keyed against each sub-rule of a pay rate rule.

An example of this is highlighted in the example below.

If a description is keyed against a pay rate, the description can be printed on payees' payslips when a payment is made because of a specific pay agreement pay rate rule being applied.

The following applies to the Rate Description field:

it is not mandatory
it accepts a maximum of 60 alphanumeric characters
it is unavailable for pay rate rules that are flagged as Calculation Only
it is locked down (un-editable) once there have been transactions against the pay rate rule
it is unavailable if the Top Up Rates option is ticked on the pay rate rule.

The rate description that applies to a pay item is visible and, subject to security permissions, editable in the agreement rates matrix on a job order in Recruitment Manager. For more information, see Job - Rate Description.

Also, when the Back Pay process is used in the Rates and Rules module, if a rate description exists against a pay item on a pay rate rule that is retrospectively updated, the rate description will be copied to the new pay rate rule that is created to affect the retrospective rate change. However, rate descriptions will not be visible or editable via the Rates & Rules > Back Pay Batch> Back Pay Wizard screen and therefore to view or change a rate description when updating rates retrospectively you will need to open and view the relevant pay rate rule once a Back Pay batch has been processed.

Benefits

This enhancement facilitates compliance with FairWork Australia requirements whereby, if a payee is paid a loaded rate that combines a base rate of pay and additional loadings or penalty rates on top of the base rate, the payee's payslip must allow the payee to identify what the base pay rate was.

Configuration

This video contains Silverlight images which will differ to the new V12 layout

A rate description can be added to pay rate rules by opening the relevant pay rate rule in the Rates and Rules > Pay Agreements > Pay Agreement > Secondary Interpretation > Pay Rate Rules > Pay Rate Rule Entry screen and keying the rate description against the relevant sub-rules on the pay rate rule, as shown in the example above.

Rate descriptions can also be keyed against pay items in the rates matrix on a job order in Recruitment Manager. For more information, see Job - Rate Description.

To allow the rate description to be printed on a payslip, the relevant payslip formats must be configured to allow printing of the rate description for pay items. For more information, see Pay Rate Description Field for Payslips.

If agreement rates are edited at the job template or job order level, the link to the agreement rates is broken (rates are created at the job template or job order level) and therefore any changes to the rate description at the agreement level will no longer flow down to the rate set on the job template or the job order respectively. Where this is the case, the rate description can be updated directly in the rates matrix on the job template or job order to reflect the updated rates. For more information, see Job - Rate Description.