Salaries that are paid out twice a month, termed semi-monthly or bi-monthly payroll, for employees can be a bit more complicated. It is usually practised by American companies or in some industries like F&B.
The steps are the almost the same as processing monthly payroll, with certain parts in particular which a user will need to take note of:
Step 1 - Process Payment
Head to Payroll > Payroll Settings > Process Payment, and select 1st Half of the Month (1st to 15th of the month payments) or 2nd Half of the Month (16th to end of the month payments). Then, click on "Select Pay Items | Next >"
Next is the payroll 'menu', where we sort the nature of pay items into 3 different tabs:
Monthly Payment/Deduction - Show up each time a new payment is created
Ad Hoc Payment/Deduction - Entered just for this payment and will be reset when a new payment is created
Hourly/Daily Attendance - Record exact hours or days worked for staff, including overtime
Once everything's been captured, hit "View Summary | Next" (blue button, top right). Fear not, you can always return to this page to make changes!
Note: Naming a payment will be helpful if you intend to create multiple payments in a month e.g. 1st half of June 2020.
Finally, you can choose to pay out by salaries by Cheque or Bank Transfer. Choosing "Cheque" just means that it won't be populated in the bank file to be exported for salary disbursement.
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Step 2 - Month Total & Bank File Exporting
At Payroll > Payroll Settings > Month Total, if you are not processing payroll for Singapore companies, you can export bank file and upload to your corporate bank account.
For Singapore companies, please follow these steps:
Head over to Month Total > Export Bank Payments / CPF / Reports > Make Payment
Check if there is Reconciliation** by heading to the Reconciliation Amounts (B) column on the page.
If there is Reconciliation and if it is not the final payment for the month, uncheck "include reconciliation".
After checking through the amounts showing, head to Options to download the Bank File in Giro/Fast format.
Remember that once the final payment is processed for the month (Eg. 2nd half of the month), you'll have to "include reconciliation" amounts into the final bank file for for your employees.
**Note: Reconciliation (also known as CPF Withholding in Talenox) is designed for employees who are paid more than once in a month with less than $750.00 of salary. We withhold the max amount of CPF for employee contribution to ensure that when such employees resign, there will be enough buffer for CPF contribution.
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Here are other related topics that'll help you along:
Push payroll entries to Xero or QuickBooks Online