Issuing Proforma Remittance Advice

Description

FastTrack360 now supports the ability to issue payees interim payment advice prior to payees' timesheets being paid in a pay batch.

If a payee is subject to being issued interim payment advice a proforma remittance document is generated whenever any of the payee’s timesheets is approved and is processed by the Interpreter Service. One proforma remittance document is created per timesheet.

The proforma remittance can be configured to output the payment due date so as to alert the payee of when to expect to be paid. The payee will still be issued with a formal payslip when it is paid and this can be configured to output the original proforma ID so that the payee can reconcile their payments.

The proforma remittance can be delivered to the payee via any of the same delivery mechanisms that apply to payslips (i.e. via the candidate portal or email).

The payslip list on the Candidate screen in the Recruitment Manager module, on the Candidate Connect screen, and in the Candidate Portal now includes a Type column that allows a user or payee to identify whether each document that is listed in the payslip list is a proforma remittance or an actual payslip. See Payslip List for further information.

If a payee is subject to being issued interim payment advice, the proforma remittance document that they are issued includes a proforma remittance ID, which is a sequential number that identifies the sequence in which the document was generated in relation to other proforma remittance documents for the same payee. The ID can also be used to:

search for the timesheet to which proforma remittance document corresponds in the Interpreter Review module (for more information, see Enhancements to Cater for Proforma Remittance)
as a reference by the payee if they need to make an enquiry regarding their pay
as a means by the payee can cross reference their interim pay advice and the corresponding final payslip to make sure they have been paid what they expected to be paid.

If a payee is to be issued an interim pay advice document, a proforma remittance starting ID must be defined on the Payee record to identify the starting point for the ID sequence. For example, if the starting sequence is set to 0001, the first proforma remittance document that is issued to the payee will have an ID of 0001, the second document will have an ID of 0002 and so on. The starting sequence number is unique to each payee and can be reset at any time if necessary but cannot be set to a number that is less than the ID of the last proforma remittance that has already been generated for that payee.

When an interim pay advice document is generated at the time the status of an interpreted timesheet is set to Reviewed, in addition to the interim pay advice being assigned the next available ID in the sequence, the interim pay advice is also flagged as Active. That allows the interim pay advice document to be previewed in the Interpreter Review module.

If there is an issue with the reviewed timesheet or the interim pay advice, the timesheet can be un-reviewed in the Interpreter Review module if the timesheet is yet to be paid/billed. That sets the status of the interim pay advice to Inactive to indicate that it is no longer valid and allows a new interim pay advice document to be generated for the same timesheet when the status of the timesheet changes to Reviewed again. That is, the new interim pay advice document will supersede the inactive one.

An inactive interim pay advice document is not recalled if it has already been delivered to a payee via email and it also continues to be listed in the payee’s payslip list in the Candidate Portal.

For more information about changes in the Interpreter Review module to facilitate generating interim pay advice, see Enhancements to Cater for Proforma Remittance.

Benefits

This enhancement allows payees to be advised how much they will be paid before their timesheets have been processed in a pay batch. This is especially useful for contractors whose timesheets are subject to payment terms, whereby the payment of timesheets is deferred until after the period to which the timesheets correspond (for more information, see Contractor Payment Terms).

However, this functionality can apply to any payee type where it is necessary or advantageous to provide an estimate of what the payee will be paid prior to their timesheets being processed in a pay batch.

Configuration

Before enabling the generation of proforma remittance documents for a payee, you must do the following:

link a proforma remittance document format to the payee’s document format (for more information, see Proforma Remittance Formats)
if the proforma remittance documents are to be delivered to the payee via email, email delivery templates must be created (for more information, see Email Templates for Proforma Remittance Delivery).

Once the relevant proforma remittance document format has been assigned to the relevant pay document format group(s) and the email delivery templates have been created, you can enable the generation of proforma remittance documents on a per-payee basis by ticking the Proforma Remittance field on the Payroll > Payee > Payee Entry > Payslip Details screen, as shown in the example below.

On ticking the Proforma Remittance field, the Proforma Remittance field grouping is displayed as shown in the example above. In this field grouping you must do the following:

In the Proforma Remittance Delivery Method field, select the method that is to be used to deliver the proforma remittance document to the payee (i.e. email or candidate portal only).
In the Starting Proforma Remittance ID field, key what is to be the first proforma remittance document ID for the payee. Note that this must be a numeric value.
If the delivery method is to be email, in the Proforma Remittance Email Template field, select the email template that is to be used to deliver the proforma remittance documents to the payee.

Once you have defined the information described above, click Save at the top of the Payee entry screen to save the proforma remittance settings. The next time a timesheet that belongs to the payee is processed by the Interpreter and its status is set to Reviewed, a proforma remittance document will be generated and will be emailed automatically to the payee or will be automatically available for download by the Payee from the payslip list in the Candidate Portal.