How exporting payroll data works
This section describes on a high level how payroll exports work and provides information on important routines to ensure the quality of the exported payroll data.
Standard or customized exports
There are three standard payroll export files. They contain basic information from the schedule, including absences, any overtime or shift allowance and the payroll codes.
If you use the standard export files, you may need to do manual adjustments to the files before importing them to your payroll system. The adjustments can be for example to rearrange the order of the columns in the file or to convert times from UTC to the agents' time zone.
If the content of the standard payroll exports does not fulfill your requirements, a customized payroll export can be set up to handle the specific requirements of the receiving payroll system and your company's rules regarding for example absences and overtime. It is possible to schedule the customized payroll exports to run automatically at a certain date and time.
To set up customized payroll exports is a professional services delivery and is scoped separately. Contact Provider for more information on the possibilities for your company.
Most of the information on this page is related to the routines and processes around the payroll exports. It is relevant regardless of if you work with the standard payroll exports or if you use customized payroll exports, unless it specifically states that it is only valid for one or the other.
Preparations
Before you create and run payroll exports, there are a few things to configure. This is a high-level description of what needs to be done.
- Add payroll system codes to activities, absences and days off. A payroll system code is only needed if this information is required in the exports.
- Set for each activity and absence if it is contract time, work time and paid time.
- Create multiplicators for the different levels of compensation.
- Create definition sets defining during which hours or dates the different compensation levels apply.
- Connect the definition sets to the contracts on which they are valid.
Exporting data
Create a payroll export and export payroll data for the agents and the time period selected. If you are using the standard payroll exports and manual adjustments are needed, it is often good to export all agents to one file and then make the adjustments.
There can be employee changes during the selected period. For example, new agents start, agents change contract or start working part-time. If this information is added in a new person period, the correct data is exported for each day of the period.
The schedule data that is exported is the schedule that agents and resource planners see. For example, meetings and personal activities which are not in connection to a scheduled shift and not visible in the schedule views will not be exported. Similarly, part-day absences that are not overlapping any paid schedule activities will not be exported.
If two or more absences are scheduled on top of each other, the absence type most recently added to the schedule is shown in the schedule and will be exported.
NOTE All times in the standard payroll exports are in the time zone of the user performing the export. In customized payroll exports, data is normally in the agent's time zone.
Routines
The quality of the data in the payroll exports is only as good as the quality of the data in WFM. It is therefore important that you set up routines for how to keep the schedule and employee data up to date, and how to ensure that the rules within WFM are updated if there are any changes to laws or agreements. This is important regardless of if you are using the standard payroll exports or customized payroll exports.
Annual updates
Update the multiplicator definition sets every year with information regarding bank holidays, days with raised shift allowance compensation, days with raised overtime compensation and so on.
Schedule data
The basic rule for schedule data in payroll exports is that the export sees what the resource planner sees. The activities, absences, overtime and days off visible in the schedule will be included in the payroll export. To ensure that the schedule data is correct in the payroll exports, resource planners must be aware of how payroll works and when the exports are done. Set up routines regarding scheduling, entering deviations from schedule and locking schedules.
Employee data
The employee information in WFM, such as names, employment numbers, contracts and employment types, need to be correct and match with the information in the payroll system. When the contract, employment type, part time percentage or any other property affecting the work time and compensation for an agent is changed, add a new person period for the agent and enter the updated information.
Laws and agreements
When laws, union agreements or local agreements are updated within areas related to the level of compensation, the rules in WFM need to be updated accordingly. Review rules and settings related to shift allowance and overtime, like multiplicators and multiplicator definition sets.
Payroll codes
If any payroll codes are added, changed or deleted in the payroll system after the payroll export has been put into production, you must make the corresponding changes to the configuration in WFM.
Related topics