Understanding Global Payroll for Australia

This chapter discusses:

• Global Payroll for Australia.

• Global Payroll for Australia business processes.

• Delivered elements for Australia.

• Naming elements.

• Element PIN codes.

• Viewing delivered elements.

Global Payroll for Australia

Global Payroll for Australia is a country extension of the core Global Payroll application. It provides the payroll rules, elements, and absence processes needed to run an Australian payroll.

Global Payroll for Australia Business Processes

Global Payroll for Australia supports the following business processes:

Note. If you elect to use the delivered rules for Global Payroll for Australia, use only the employment instance in Human Resources.

• Taxation.

  Global Payroll for Australia comes with all the elements required to calculate a payee’s tax correctly. Whatever the scenario—multiple payments within a calendar period, annualized tax, mid-period hires, or terminations—the system correctly calculates the tax.

• State Payroll Tax.

  Global Payroll for Australia administers payroll tax amounts based on the legislative requirements of the state revenue offices. This feature provides a report that you can use to calculate your state payroll tax liability.

• Superannuation.

  Global Payroll for Australia meets the requirements for superannuation by providing a number of super-related deductions. The calculation rules associated with each deduction reflect a particular type of superannuation deduction, such as a tier-based deduction or a percentage deduction based on employee contributions (matching).

• Net-to-Gross Payments.

  Gross-ups are required when you want to pay a payee a specific net amount. Beginning with the net amount, the system determines the gross amount to process so that the required net amount remains after all tax deductions have been made.

• Banking and Recipient Processing.

  The banking process of Global Payroll brings together payroll data, pay entity source bank data, payee or recipient bank data. The electronic funds transfer (EFT) file creation process extracts data compiled by the banking process according to the type of EFT file that you are creating, merges it with data provided by the Australian country extension, and creates the file for transmission.

• Payslips.

  The payslip feature enables you to create and control payslips that display specified data. You can determine where the data appears and how it is formatted. You can override templates at lower levels, so you do not have to create multiple templates to cover every payslip scenario that you may have.

• General Ledger Interface.

  Building on the Global Payroll general ledger interface, the Australian country extension enables you to link journal types to general ledger (GL) groupings so you can report by journal type, calculate accrued salary and leave liability, report leave liability, calculate state payroll tax liability, and run the GLI or QSP process.

• Absences.

  PeopleSoft delivers predefined rules for processing annual and long-service leave, OGO long-service leave, sick leave and absences generally defined as other leaves, such as maternity or jury duty. You can modify many of these rules to reflect absence policies that are specific to your organization or to labour agreements that may be in force for employees

• Terminations.

  Global Payroll for Australia comes with a termination section that enables you to ensure all legal obligations are met. It gives you the flexibility to make changes that suit your specific business practices.

• Salary Packaging Expense Monitoring.

  The integration of the Salary Packaging business process in PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Resources with Global Payroll for Australia enables you to enter actual expenditures against a budgeted salary package. When you define components, you use the Expense Data page to identify whether the component is administered as a deduction, earning, or expense.

• End-of-Year Reporting.

  The End-of-Year Reporting feature enables you to set up the data that appears on the Payment Summaries, which you provide at year-end or on termination. It enables you to process and report FBT-liable earnings, generate payment summary data, print payment summaries, and create the payment summary electronic file for the Australian Tax Office.

See Also

Managing Taxation Processing

Reporting State Payroll Tax Liabilities

Administering Superannuation

Calculating Net-to-Gross Payments

Running Banking and Recipient Processes

Printing and Viewing Payslips

Using the General Ledger Interface

Defining Absence Rules

Understanding Termination Payment Management

Monitoring Salary Packaging Expenditure

Managing End of Year Reporting

Delivered Elements

Global Payroll defines each business process for Australia in terms of delivered elements and rules. Some of these elements and rules are specifically designed to meet legislative requirements. Others support common or customary payroll practices.

Creation of Delivered Elements

All of the elements and rules delivered as part of your country extension were created using the core application—the same application that you use both to create additional elements or rules, and (in many cases) to configure existing elements delivered as part of the Global Payroll application. Because the tools needed to redefine or create new payroll elements are fully documented in the core application PeopleBook, that information does not appear here. Instead, the PeopleBook briefly reviews the relationship between the core application (which contains the tools that you need to define your own elements and rules) and the country extensions (which contain country-specific rules and elements defined by PeopleSoft).

The core application has the following characteristics:

• It consists of a payroll rules engine—a flexible tool that enables you to define the rules and elements of the payroll system and execute payroll and absence calculations.

  Global Payroll does not embed payroll-specific logic or computations in application code. Instead, it specifies all business application logic—such as earnings, deductions, absences, and accumulators—in terms of payroll rules and elements. Global Payroll enables you to enter and maintain payroll rules through a set of pages, and it offers a comprehensive set of features that enable you to work in your preferred language or currency.

• It provides a payroll processing framework—a flexible way to define and execute payroll and absence processing flows, such as calendars, run types, pay periods, and process lists.

Country extensions have the following characteristics:

• They are built using the core application.

• They consist of statutory and customary objects (country-specific payroll rules, elements, payroll processes, reports, pages, and self-service applications).

Element Ownership and Maintenance

The delivered elements and rules of the Global Payroll country extension can be classified according to whether they are owned and maintained by you or by PeopleSoft. Some elements and rules are maintained exclusively by PeopleSoft and cannot be modified, while others can be configured to meet requirements unique to each organization.

Element Ownership in Global Payroll

There are five categories of element ownership:

Element Ownership in Global Payroll for Australia

Of the five ownership categories listed in the previous section, only PS Delivered/Maintained and PS Delivered/Not Maintained are used to define Australian elements. Although Global Payroll for Australia delivers some elements as PS Delivered/Maintained, most elements are designated PS Delivered/Not Maintained. This enables you to modify, update, and reconfigure the delivered elements to meet needs that are specific to your organization.

Note. In general, Global Payroll for Australia uses the ownership category PS Delivered/Not Maintained unless the modification of an element might interfere with calculations that satisfy legislative requirements. The benefits of this approach are evident if you consider the setup of delivered accumulators. Because balance accumulators (for example, those storing taxable gross on a year-to-date basis) must be set up to comply with the legislative requirement for calculating taxes, Global Payroll for Australia defines them as PS Delivered/Maintained. You cannot modify or directly add new elements to them. However, you can add new elements to these accumulators by using the delivered segment accumulators, which serve as the entry point into the system. They are not maintained by PeopleSoft. When you define a new earning or deduction, you can assign the element to a segment accumulator, and the segment accumulator automatically contributes to the correct balance accumulators.

In the following table of elements supplied with Global Payroll for Australia, the element ownership is PS Delivered/Not Maintained, with exceptions shown in the right-hand column.

Note. The following element types have no exceptions and are therefore not shown in the table: Absence Entitlement, Absence Take, Count, Duration, Date, Element Group, Earning, Generation Control, Historical Data Rule, Process, Rate Code, Rounding Rule, and Writable Array.

See Also

PeopleSoft Enterprise Global Payroll 8.9 PeopleBook

Naming Elements

To understand how delivered payroll elements function in the system, you need to understand their names. The naming convention for PeopleSoft-delivered elements enables you to determine how an element is used, the element type, and even the functional area it serves. Depending on whether the element is a primary element, a component of a primary element, or a supporting element, one of the following naming conventions applies.

Supporting Elements

For supporting elements, such as variables, formulas, dates, durations, and so on, PeopleSoft uses the following naming convention: FFF (or FF) TT NAME.

• FFF (or FF) is the functional area code.

  See Functional Area Codes.

• TT is the type of supporting element.

  See Element Type Codes (PIN_TYPE).

• NAME (or NAME NAME) indicates the purpose of the element.

  The number of NAME components may vary.

For example, in the garnishment variable GRN VR PROC STATUS, GRN stands for garnishment, VR stands for variable, and PROC STATUS stands for process status. With a maximum of 30 characters, the element's description (DESCR) field provides details about the element's purpose.

Primary Elements

Primary elements—such as earnings, deductions, absence take, and absence entitlement elements—often do not contain functional area codes or element type codes in their names. This is because primary elements have names, based on Australian terms, that identify their function and element type without the use of additional codes. For example, the name of the earning element PAY IN LIEU clearly identifies the element as an earning—specifically, as payment in lieu of notice.

Additional Information about Elements

Many Australian elements contain abbreviations that provide additional information about their purpose (beyond what the functional area codes and element type codes provide). For example, consider the following duration elements: PSH DR BS PRD D and PSH DR BS PRD Y. The functional area code PSH indicates that these elements are used for Prior Service History elements, and the element type code DR identifies them as duration elements. The abbreviations BS, PRD, and D and Y provide additional information about how each element measures periods of time. The durations are of between-service (BS) periods (PRD) expressed in days (D) and in years (Y). As you become more familiar with the payroll rules created for Australia, these abbreviations enable you to identify the role of each element.

The following table lists the most common abbreviations used in the names of Australian elements.

Component Names (Suffixes)

In Global Payroll for Australia, suffixes are used to name the components of earnings and deductions elements. For example, when you create an earning or deduction element in Global Payroll, you define the components that make up the element, such as base, rate, unit, and percentage. The system automatically generates the components and accumulators for the element based on the calculation rule or accumulator periods. The system also names the components and accumulators by appending a suffix to the element’s name.

For example, suppose that you define the earnings element named EARN1 with the following calculation rule:

EARN1 = Rate × Unit

The system automatically creates two additional elements for the components in the calculation rule: a rate element called EARN1_RATE and a unit element called EARN1_UNIT. In Global Payroll for Australia, all suffixes fall into one of the following types:

• Separator.

• Earnings and deductions and absence entitlement component suffixes.

• Earnings and deductions and absence entitlement accumulator suffixes.

• Deduction arrears component suffixes.

• Deduction arrears accumulator suffixes.

• Recipient suffixes.

Note. To view the suffixes used for Australia, select Set Up HRMS, Product Related, Global Payroll & Absence Mgmt, System Settings, Element Suffixes.

See PeopleSoft Enterprise Global Payroll 8.9 PeopleBook

Functional Area Codes

The following table contains the functional area codes used in the names of Australian elements.

Element Type Codes (PIN_TYPE)

Many element types, particularly supporting elements, are identified by the type code in their names. For example, the FM in AUS FM LSTSEG identifies the element as a formula.

You can view all the element types in the search page by selecting Set Up HRMS, Product Related, Global Payroll & Absence Mgmt, System Settings, Element Types. Because not all element types are delivered for Australia, some these codes do not appear in the names of Australian elements.

Viewing Delivered Elements

The PeopleSoft system delivers a query that you can run to view the names of all delivered elements designed for Australia. Instructions for running the query are provided in the PeopleSoft Enterprise Global Payroll 8.9 PeopleBook.

See Also

Viewing the Delivered Elements