Business user guide

Tue May 20 10:38:45 CDT 2003

The traditional reason for having a 'Payroll Module' is to get user lock 
in.  Commercial accounting software companies require that the users buy 
periodic updates of the tax tables and since the government can never 
leave the tables alone, that produces a good stream of revenue.  Of 
course, they typically also require the users to buy updates even when 
nothing at all changed, but that is another story. Since the CCRA 
provides the dinky little Windows Tables on Disk program, much of the 
need for small businesses to use a payroll service is eliminated, but 
that is not true for other countries.

Somehow one needs to:
a. Compute the deductions based on rules/tables provided by the tax 
agency for each employee
b. Print pay slips
c. Print pay cheques
d. Record the salaries & wages and payroll taxes for all employees
e. Record employee leave
f. Print a single payroll tax cheque to settle the account with the tax 
agency
g. Print a consolidated Payroll report as an audit trail
h. Print a Record of Employment when an employee gets laid off, for 
Employment Insurance / Social Security / Maternity Leave / Medical Leave 
purposes
i. Compute Holiday Pay, Termination Pay, Pay in Lieu of Notice and other 
lay-off related pay - nice to have stuff - not essential

Derek Atkins wrote:

>Hi,
>
>herman <herman at aerospacesoftware.com> writes:
>
>  
>
>>I've never had the pleasure(?) of using a real payroll module.  I have
>>always used my manual kludge.   The reason being that once you have
>>the split transaction set up, it becomes a simple matter to replicate
>>the cheques.  Also, if you have one or two employees, it is your
>>problem, but eventually, it becomes the secretary's problem! ;-)
>>    
>>
>
>Heh.  "SEP" (Somebody Else's Problem) is a major motivator... :)
>It's one reason there is no payroll or inventory support -- I didn't
>need them. :)
>
>  
>
>>Here in Canada, the WTOD program from the CCRA also alleviates much of
>>the effort, but that is not true in other countries.  The big problem
>>will be making a payroll module that is country independent.
>>    
>>
>
>This is what scheme is for -- it allows you to script up the varkious
>tax rules and plug them in.  For example, I can easily see a script
>that is given the gross pay and returns three values, the net pay, a
>list of payroll deductions, and a list of company contributions.  Then
>you could just create all the necessary transactions from that
>information.
>
>However you probably need more information to actually print a check;
>you probably need to know if a payroll deduction is pre- or post- tax.
>
>The question is: what kind of records do you need to keep.  For
>example, do you need to know the total amount of gross payroll per
>employee?  Or is that something that you compute later in an
>end-of-year report?  If you need to keep it, does it need to be in an
>account or perhaps an easily-computed value from an account?
>
>Lots of complications....
>
>-derek
>
>  
>
>>Derek Atkins wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>If you have suggestions for how a payroll system should behave
>>>(from a usability, feature-requirements, etc. standpoint) we'd
>>>certainly welcome the input.  No guarantees on when it will get
>>>implemented, mind you, but having the discussion is useful.
>>>
>>>-derek
>>>
>>>herman <herman at aerospacesoftware.com> writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>It used to be a very painful experience to get QB to run on wine, but
>>>>nowadays it is as simple as paying Codeweavers for a copy of cxoffice
>>>>and la voila...  cxoffice is well worth the money. I am in the process
>>>>of transferring all accounting from QB Pro to GNU Cash and is running
>>>>a double system at the moment, until I have everything figured out.
>>>>After today's progress with the payroll transactions, I think it will
>>>>be OK.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>James Leone wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>>>herman at aerospacesoftware.com wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>>>I added a ton of stuff to the Business User's Guide, including a
>>>>>>payroll example - ugh...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>See the Aerospace Web Site for the latest:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>http://www.AerospaceSoftware.com
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>            
>>>>>>
>>>>>Herman, I have been wanting to thank you for quite some time for
>>>>>discovering the Quickbooks Pro in wine installation method.
>>>>>
>>>>>Thank you!
>>>>>
>>>>>:-)
>>>>>
>>>>>James Leone
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>>gnucash-user mailing list
>>>>>gnucash-user at lists.gnucash.org
>>>>>https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>-- 
>>>>Herman Oosthuysen (B.Eng.(E))
>>>>ARMdimension Inc., 255 Edenwold Drive NW, Calgary, AB, T3A 4A4, Canada.
>>>>Phone: 1.403.852-5545, Fax: 1.403.241-8841
>>>>E-mail: Herman at ARMdimension.com, http://www.ARMdimension.com
>>>>E-mail: Herman at AerospaceSoftware.com, http://www.AerospaceSoftware.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>gnucash-user mailing list
>>>>gnucash-user at lists.gnucash.org
>>>>https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>gnucash-user mailing list
>>gnucash-user at lists.gnucash.org
>>https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
>>    
>>
>
>  
>

-- 
Herman Oosthuysen (B.Eng.(E))
ARMdimension Inc., 255 Edenwold Drive NW, Calgary, AB, T3A 4A4, Canada.
Phone: 1.403.852-5545, Fax: 1.403.241-8841
E-mail: Herman at ARMdimension.com, http://www.ARMdimension.com
E-mail: Herman at AerospaceSoftware.com, http://www.AerospaceSoftware.com

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