Standard Update – Payroll - Nominal

After entering/confirming the sales and purchase update details the next four screens define how the payroll is to be updated into the nominal. First you are asked if you want to change the payroll update definition – respond accordingly.

Planning the Update Definition

The items which you almost certainly wish to update into the nominal ledger are the gross pay, additions to gross and net, deductions from gross and net, tax and the NI categories, SSP, SMP, pension values, and any payroll "switch” values. There may be some other items too.

It is important to note that the nominal ledger takes its input from the payroll department file, not from the employee file.

When updating at a department level, you need to give the nominal codes for each item you want to update for each department. This can result in a lot of nominal codes to define, so you should plan the update definition carefully.

You can define up to 60 nominal codes (debit and credit combinations, see later) which are to be updated from the department file.

Note

An example of one of the payroll update definition screens is shown below — there are four of them, and each allows you to enter up to 15 items.

Flag Department

Firstly, a pop-up asks for the department database data item to flag as updated when the update is run.<F4-Select> is available as required. This flag is cleared by the payroll period end, ready for the next run.

Department

Either enter the department code you want this item to refer to, or leave it at zero if all departments for this item are to update into the same nominal codes. You can use the <F4–Select> key to view the department file.

Item

Enter the item number — such as gross pay, NI deduction, tax or whatever. You can use the <F4–Select> key this time to view the department file structure so you can select the item you want.

Debit Account and Credit Account

You must enter a valid nominal code in both the debit and credit columns. Usually you debit expenditure codes and credit the payroll control account, or alternatively debit the payroll control account and credit a balance sheet item such as tax or NI accrual, or an accrual for one of the payroll "switches”.

Note

Once you have entered all the prompts on screen, or if you <Escape> from any of the prompts in this screen, you are asked to confirm the above details OK. Reply 'No' to return to the start of the screen, or 'Yes' to continue to the next screen. After the last of the four you are returned to the User Facilities menu.