Maintain Employee File

Datafile Software

Maintain Employee File

This option allows you to change the ‘add’ and ‘amend’ employee maintenance screens as well as the extra maintenance options.

Actions prefixed with ‘***’ have no user-defined options.

Add New Employees

On selection of the ‘Add New Employees’ the current input screen is displayed.

To enter text on the screen, position the cursor where you want to start entering the text by clicking the mouse in the appropriate position and type in the details.

To draw a line borderaround the screen select the ‘Border’ option on the Tools menu.

To draw lines on the screen switch to line mode using the ‘Line Mode’ option on the Tools menu and use the mouse to draw a line by clicking its start position and then dragging the line to where you want it to finish (horizontal/vertical lines only). To switch back to ‘Text Mode’ call the option on the tools menu again.

To position a data item click the starting position and either right-click with the mouse or press the <F4-Select> key – the available data items are then displayed. You select a data item by pressing <Enter> against it and the field is then updated to the screen. You are then asked some supplementary questions – view-only, upper-case input, mandatory – set as required.

The screen design also allows a feature to define a lookup to another database allowing you to (say) import details from a ProFilerpersonnel database. On the Tools pull-down select the option ‘Lookup’ and you will be asked for the following information.

Database Pathname

Enter the database pathname you want to validate the employee input item against.

Lookup Format

Enter the prime-index format of the lookup item – i.e. 9999 applies a four-digit number format, AAA applies a three-letter format etc.

Item for Lookup

Select the data item, <F4-Select> is available, that the lookup validation is to be performed against.

Items to List When Selecting

Next you are asked to define the data items to be listed when you press <F4-Select>. Select, up to a maximum of five, the items to be listed. The size shown defaults to the data item size but you can restrict this if required.

You then select whether the details are to be listed in LIFO order. Note that the items you can select on within the <F4> procedure on this database are controlled by the indexing on the file itself.

Items to Copy from Lookup

Finally, you can define up to 10 copy items from the lookup database to the main accounts file. Restrictions on copy items apply – you should only copy between items of similar/identical type, if copying numeric items then the data items should have an equivalent number of decimal places, etc.

Once the screen design is complete select the ‘Save & Exit’ option off the File menu to update the layout for the system and then exit back to the menu.

Users will be asked if they wish to use a second maintenance screen on exit from the first screen – respond as required. The second screen is usually used to enter year-to-date details when you start use of Datafile payroll during the tax year but you can change once this aspect is no longer required. The second screen of the add action, the amend employee screen and the extra maintenance screens all share the same lookup database.

Amend Employee Details

Although by default showing the same details as the ‘Add Employee’ action you can amend this screen as required separately from the Add Employee action. Screen Design processes are as per above.

Special Amend Screens

The payroll Employee Details maintenance option offers the possibility of six extra maintenance screens. This option allows you to amend these six screens.

On selection of an employee amend screen you are prompted for the screen title and the menu-id before the screen design is displayed. Enter as required.

Once the screen is displayed you configure the screen as per standard parameters.

Extra Maintain Options

Available for Premier systems, when using Payroll Plus, it provides additional maintenance options.

Overtime is usually based on the normal hourly rate the employee is paid – whether its 1.0, 1.5 or 2.0 (etc) times that rate. If using the overtime file available with payroll plus then you can enter specific rates for each of the 19 overtime rates as part of the employee maintenance options by selecting this option.

The maintenance of overtime rates is added to the NEW and ALL employee details actions.

Allow Pick-Up of Existing Employee to make New

This parameter enables the RE-START option on the employee details maintenance.

In some industries, particularly ship building etc., it is common to lay off employees when there is no work and to re-hire them later on in the year. As these are separate periods of employment for year-end reporting (the employee may have worked elsewhere in between) then separate employee records are required. This option, when set, allows you to create an employee based on an existing record.

In use you would need to also use the unique employee code facility available on Premier and the employee number code format would be along the lines of 999999/99 where the first six numbers are the employee number and the last two digits are the period of employment in the year.

Copy Items from Main Database File

Copy Items from Switch File

Copy Items from Extra Payment Database File

If allowing re-start of an employee then you need to define which values from the previous record are copied over to the new record. Setting each of the options lists the data items within the database concerned and you are allowed to select which items are replicated. Remember not to copy year-to-date values or other items which apply specifically to the original period of employment.

Set Values on main Employee Database (c/f-b/f)

Similar to above but this allows to copy from one value on the original employee record to a different value on the new employee record. You may, for example, copy the YTD-TAX-PAID and YTD-TAXABLE-PAY to the PREV-EMP-TAX and PREV-EMP-PAY on the new record – remembering that if the employee has worked elsewhere in the meantime to overwrite with the values from their P45.