There's no magic button to click

To balance your pay, you have to discover what works for you. Every company is different, and every situation is different. It's puzzle-solving; take it as a challenge.

Balancing in general

Balance frequently and early in the process. There is no sense in trying to balance the net pay when the gross pay is wrong.

Look at the totals first. If they balance, forget the detail. If the totals are off by just a bit...

• Is it just one specific pay code?

  Narrow it down by pay code. Can you balance by pay code and find out which code is causing the problem?

• Is it just one or a few people? What is special about them?

  Try narrowing it down by department. That will help you find the people. Then maybe by job or status.

• These are like binary search methods. You narrow it down to a subgroup, then to a subgroup of that, and so on.

Did you get any errors or warning message? They might point to the reason for the imbalance.

Did anything unusual happen this pay period? A special import? A bonus or retro pay? Lots of raises?

Sometimes it is easier to export to Excel, with its nice tools for filtering and totaling. There are exports for both the gross pay (TIMEDT) and for the net pay (PAYDT and TEMPPAY).

Balancing the gross pay

To balance to the gross pay you will use reports from Print > Gross Pay.

• Most gross-pay reports have the same Selection... options.

  • Choose Current Period Only
  • Narrow down results by selecting a subset of earning types or pay codes.

• The Earning by... reports are summaries, and great for narrowing things down.

• The Transactions by... reports are detailed: one line per transactions.

• The Time... reports are in between.

• The Cross-tab reports have employees vertically and codes horizontally. Because of limits on the number of columns, you will probably not want to select all pay codes at the same time.

• Don't check Include unposted timesheet transactions. It will make it hard to balance.

Some things to look for.

• If you are importing from an Excel spreadsheet or another source, balance the totals in Umana with totals from the source.

• Check employee counts. Is every employee accounted for? Do their total hours (worked + absence) match the expected number of hours per period?

• If you are using Umana timesheets, the Unposted transactions reports let you check that all time entered has been posted.

  • This reports can be emailed to managers
  • You might end up having to call and nag managers to approve their timesheets.

Balancing the net pay

Balancing gross earnings to net earnings

For a start, run the report Print > Net Pay > Compare Gross to Net to ensure the earnings balance.

• It is rare, but possible, for the net pay for a period to differ from the earnings in the gross pay. (But if you try hard enough you can make it happen.)

The gross and net earning can differ if...

• You change an employee's earning, but don't recalculate their net.
• You delete an employee's earning, but don't delete their net pay.

Other net-pay balancing

There are many reports in the Print > Net Pay category that are useful.

• Start with Compare to previous period
• The Net Summary... reports are great for narrowing things down.
• The Net Detail... reports give you details by employee.
• The Net Pay Crosstab... reports show employees vertically and pay codes horizontally.

Also, don't forget the nice browse options in the net pay. They are available from the net pay window, the BROWSE button on the toolbar.