Earning Types

You use earning types to create classifications for other pay and benefits that your employees might earn or accrue. The main classifications of earning types include earnings, memos, and accruals.

Note: For advanced earning types, such as regular and premium types, contact your UniFocus Configuration Specialist.

Earnings

Earnings affect an employee's paycheck. For example, an employee will generally receive an increase in their gross pay and pay employment taxes on this earnings type. The only exception to the increase in gross pay is for cash and charge tips (see below for an explanation about the difference between tips and gratuities). All other earnings are additional income other than time punches that have not been paid to the employee yet. For example, the addition of eight vacation hours results in the employee earning and receiving an additional eight hours of pay. Subsequently they must pay taxes on this amount.

There are typically three types of earnings:

Hours based
Calculated on the hour (such as a shift differential)
Fixed cost amount.

Memos

Memos are used for informational purposes only. An employee who gets assigned amounts from a memo does not receive additional compensation for them. Additionally memo amounts are not figured as taxable revenue. They are strictly for information only. An example of a memo is the entry of gross sales for food and beverage employees. F&B tipped employees are required by the government to claim at least 8% of their gross sales in tips. This is tracked by entering each employee's gross sales as a memo. Other memos may include benefit balances, manual check payments and any other miscellaneous tracking that does not affect an employee's paycheck.

Accruals

You use accrual types to create earnings for the purpose of accruing benefits. For example, if an employee accrues vacation benefits, you would create an accrual earning type that would keep track of the vacation benefit accrual.

Tips vs. Gratuities

Tips: Tips are paid to the employee directly from the hotel or cashier's bank. This is usually done on a nightly basis. Payroll taxes are not deducted when employees receive their tips. Therefore when you enter tips, that tells the payroll processor that those wages have been received but not taxed. In this case, the employee's check will reflect the payment of payroll taxes on the tipped amount. Generally these tips are received from restaurants, bars, and the guest portioned tips of room service. It usually does not include pooled room service tips or banquet gratuities.

Gratuities: Usually from banquets or pooled room service tipping, gratuities are not paid to the employee during the pay period. They are instead paid as part of their paycheck. Gratuities are added as an increase in gross payroll and thus subject to normal payroll tax deductions as well.

Earning types associated with tips and gratuities vary depending on your system configuration.

Fields on the Earning Types screen

This tables describes the fields and controls for this screen.

Note: All fields in the Details pane are READ-ONLY. To edit these fields you must click Edit at the bottom of the screen.

Field	Description	Notes
Earning Types list pane
Earning Types	List of all earning types. When you click an earning type in the list, the Details pane updates with information for the selected earning type.
Add	Add an earning type.
Delete	Delete the selected earning type.
Details pane
Processor Code	A code that is used when exporting earnings to your payroll processor.	READ-ONLY.
Unit Type	Which unit of measure (Hours, Costs, Units, Hours & Costs, or Days) is used to calculate earnings. For example, assume the regular rate of pay is $10/UOM and the differential rate is $1/UOM. If an employee works eight hours, but six of those hours is when the differential rate is in effect, the earning calculation would look something like this: Unit of Measure Reg. Rate Differential Extra pay Dollars 8 hrs. x $10=$80 6 hrs. x $1 = $6 $80 + $6 = $86	READ-ONLY.
Earning Type	Type of earnings for the employee: Regular, Memo, Accrual or Premium. If Accrual is chosen, a new tab is displayed. In the tab, you select the Benefit Earnings that are to be associated with the earning type.	READ-ONLY.
Earning Category	Whether the pay is due to any of the categories you created in Earning Categories. For example, the earnings may be for Sick, Vacation, Holiday, etc.	READ-ONLY.
Reverse Processor Code	Used for the payroll export process.	READ-ONLY.
Pay #	Used for the payroll export process	READ-ONLY.
Tax Frequency	Used for the payroll export process	READ-ONLY.
Payroll Bucket	Used for the payroll export process	READ-ONLY.
Label	Used for the payroll export process	READ-ONLY.
Min. Hours/Costs/Days	Minimum number of hours/costs/days for which an employee can receive earnings. If you try to enter an earning that is less than the Min. Hours/Costs/Days, you will not be able to add the earning.	READ-ONLY.
Max. Hours/Costs/Days	Maximum number of hours/costs/days for which an employee can receive earnings. If you try to enter an earning that goes over the Max. Hours/Costs/Days, you will not be able to add the earning.	READ-ONLY.
Max. Balance	Maximum earnings that an employee can receive. If you try to enter an earning that goes over the Max. Balance, you will not be able to add the earning.	READ-ONLY.
Max. Negative Balance	Maximum number of Units an employee's accrual balance can be in the negative. This is useful if your property allows negative accruals, but has a limit on the total number of negative hours, days, etc., as determined by your Unit Type. For example, if your Unit Type is Days, and your property allows a negative accrual of five days, you would enter -5. (If your Unit Type is Hours, you would enter -40). If an employee exceeds the maximum negative balance, you will be alerted when entering an Earning that violates the maximum.	READ-ONLY.
Minimum Approval Level	Minimum approval level for users who approve the earning. Users' approval level must be greater than or equal to this value to approve earnings associated with this earning type.	READ-ONLY.
Include In	This field can include the following: OT Calcs. Denotes whether the earning should be included when calculating overtime. 7i Commissions. Denotes whether the Earning Type should be included in the 7i Commissions calculations. Note that if a retail or service employer wants to use the Section 7(i) overtime exemption for commissioned employees, three conditions must be met: 1. The employee must be employed by a retail or service establishment; and 2. The employee's regular rate of pay must exceed one and one-half times the applicable minimum wage for every hour worked in a workweek; and 3. More than half the employee's total earnings in a representative period must consist of commissions on goods or services. Unless all three conditions are met, the Section 7(i) exemption is not applicable, and overtime pay must be paid for all hours worked over 40 in a workweek at one and one-half the regular rate of pay, which includes commissions. Benefit Calcs. Denotes whether the earning should be included when calculating benefits. Gross Sales. Denotes whether the earning should be included when calculating gross sales. Tips. Denotes whether the earning should be included with tip earnings. Work Rules. Denotes that the earning should be included in any calculations for Work Rules. Re-Allocate Hours. Allows the earning to be included in Time & Attendance when re-allocating to an accrual. Earnings Wizard. Denotes that the earning should be included when using the Earnings Wizard. Time Off. Allows you to select an earning type to be used when paying hours for Time Off Requests. Banked Hours. Allows you to denote that earnings should be applied toward Banked Hours. Mobile. Allows you to denote which benefits are visible to employees on their mobile device. This option is only visible for accrual Earning Types.	READ-ONLY.
Other Options	Pay at Least Min. Wage. Allows you to designate which earnings should be paid at minimum wage versus regular pay rate. For example, a busser/server has a pay rate of 2.13 per hour but for vacation and sick the employee should get paid the minimum wage rate. Round On Export. Indicates that earnings should be rounded to the nearest dollar when exporting. Charged Tips. Denotes whether the earning was part of tips that were paid by credit card. Exclude from Payroll Export. Denotes whether the earning should be excluded from payroll. For example, earnings for cash tips would not go to payroll because the employee was paid in cash. Re-Allocate Premium Hours Only. Denotes that, when reallocating hours in a Job, only Premium Hours can be reallocated. Export As Costs. Denotes that all Hours Earnings are to be exported as Cost Earnings.	READ-ONLY.
Edit	Opens the Edit Earnings Type dialog box so that you can edit details about the earning type. For more information, see Edit Earnings Type dialog box.
Audit	Opens the Audit Table dialog box. For more information, see Audits.

LMS Documentation 9.x