Running payroll from time clock to pay period

Sidebar: Team & Payroll, then Payroll. Hours are approved under Team & Payroll, then Time Management.

Owners can run payroll. Managers can too, unless an owner has taken away Manage payroll.

What Alaga does and does not do

It works out what each person earned. Hours, overtime, commission, tips, bonuses and deductions, ending at gross and net pay.

It does not pay anybody, and it does not file your taxes. There is no transfer to staff bank accounts, no tax withholding, and nothing is sent to any tax authority. Alaga gives you the figures. Paying people and reporting taxes still happens in your payroll provider or bank.

Keep your accountant in the loop.

The path

1. Staff clock in and out. From the clock at the top of the app, on their own device or at a shared station. Breaks they start and end come off the total. See My time card, clocking in and time off.

2. Someone approves the hours. Under Time Management, on the Time Entries tab. A finished shift waits as Submitted until it is approved. Only approved shifts are paid. If you calculate a run with unapproved shifts in it, Alaga warns you how many were left out.

Approve every week. A month at once means nobody remembers whether that eleven-hour Tuesday was real.

3. Pay profiles set the rates. On the Payroll page, the Pay Profiles tab. Each person has a pay type and rate (hourly or salary), overtime settings, and their PTO and sick days. Anyone without a pay profile is left out of the run completely. Set these up before your first run.

4. Commission, if you use it. On the Commissions tab, create a plan and assign it to people. Commission is earned from completed appointments assigned to them, and from products they sold. A day never marked complete pays no commission.

5. Tips. Tips taken at checkout land on the person automatically. Use Record Tip for tips handed over another way.

6. Run the payroll. On the Payroll Runs tab: New Period, then Start Run, Calculate, Approve and Finalize. See Time tracking and running payroll for each step.

7. Check before you pay. Open the run and compare each person's total to what you expect. The figures are only as good as the approvals and rates behind them.

Adjustments

Add bonuses, deductions and reimbursements to the run. Use these instead of editing hours to reach a number. An adjustment is easy to explain months later. A changed timesheet is not.

Common problems

• Someone was paid nothing. Their shifts were not approved, or they have no pay profile.
• Hours look short. A shift with no clock-out is not counted. Use Clock Out Employee or Edit Entry on Time Entries, approve it, and calculate again.
• No commission. The appointments were never marked completed, no commission plan is assigned, or the plan started after the pay period.
• Overtime looks wrong. It is worked out per week (40 hours), not per pay period. A two-week period with 45 hours then 35 hours has 5 hours of overtime, not zero.
• A contractor is missing. People set as 1099 Contractor are left out of runs on purpose.

Good habits

• Approve weekly. Everything after it depends on it.
• Get pay profiles right before the first run, not during it.
• Keep finalized runs. They are your record of how a number was reached if anyone asks about their pay.