Did You Know?

Affinity myPA uses notifications to remind managers and decision-makers of important events and tasks, and alert them to issues. Notifications can be created to suit a wide range of business scenarios, preventing issues, lowering risk and achieving compliance. This month we create notifications that:

• Monitor negative and excessive leave balances.
• Track unapproved current-period leave.

Notifies managers of undesirable leave balances (too much or too little). You’ll need to create two notifications: one for negative leave and one for excessive leave.

• Empowers HR teams by shifting the responsibility back to managers.
• Notifications can be tailored to suit company leave policy.
• Managers are proactive, not reactive.
• Minimises the risk of large annual leave pay outs when employees terminate.
• Helps companies comply with legislation.

Ideally, you’ll want to alert managers as soon as the latest information becomes available. In this example, we decide to email managers on the morning following each fortnightly pay run, starting with the next pay run which is scheduled for 27.03.2017.

Notifies managers of any self-service leave requests awaiting action.

• Empowers payroll teams by shifting the responsibility back to managers.
• Reduces late approvals.
• Reduces the need for pay adjustments and add-to pay runs.

These depend on your company policies, but typically you’ll want to give managers enough time to approve outstanding leave. In this example, we email a reminder to managers on a Tuesday morning every two weeks. We do this because our pay period ends two days later and we want managers to approve all leave before the period ends.

Affinity Clever Forms creates useful, meaningful forms that save time and money, reduce risk and help achieve compliance. Forms are easy to design and deploy. Workflow is logical and easy to build in. Staff help themselves to a library of forms to get things done. Over the next few months, we’re going to help you build a collection of forms so amazing, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without them. This month we look at two forms that simplify the on-boarding process.

Requests a new position then (if approved) automatically creates it in Affinity.

This manager-initiated form manages the process of adding a new position. You can easily capture vital information about position requirements, obtain the correct approvals along the way and have Affinity automatically create a new position profile in the database.

Position Masterfile > New Position

Use a mix of free-text fields (for new information such as position title), and Affinity selection lists so form users can select existing information like department, cost centre and location.

Manager > HR > Finance > Payroll

Key things about this workflow:

• Approve/decline options are available to HR and Finance.
• The form needs to be approved by both HR and by Finance in order to move to the next workflow state/recipient.
• If declined at any stage, the form will go back to the initiator’s inbox.
• Pre-defined ESS employee groups control whose inbox the form goes to once it’s approved. For example, the ‘CF Finance Approvers’ group contains the role ‘Financial Controller’ (the person in that role will give the financial approval). The ‘CF Payroll Processors’ group contains the ‘Payroll Team Leader’ role who is responsible for processing the form once it reaches the Payroll department.

Asks for permission to hire someone into an existing position.

Now you’ve got approval for the new position, you’ll want to hire someone to fill it.

Employee Masterfile > Initiator

You could design this form in three parts. The first part of the form could pre-populate the requester’s (form initiator’s) details. The second part could contain lookups to allow the requester to select the position information direct from Affinity. The third part could contain a free-text field so the requester can write a business case in the form (or attach a separate document to the form).

Manager > HR > Finance

Key things about this workflow:

• Approve/decline options are available to HR and Finance.
• If declined at any stage, the form will go back to the initiator’s inbox.
• While in the Pending HR Approval state, the approver has an option to approve or decline. If declined, the form goes back to the initiator’s inbox. If approved, the form moves to the role assigned to the ESS group ‘CF Finance Approvers’. In our example, this is the ‘Financial Controller’ role (the person in that role will give the financial approval).

We’re simplifying and enhancing the way we deliver online help. This will be rolled out in stages over the next few months.

These are available on Vimeo now! Links are provided in relevant help procedures, or via the handy video index (use search word ‘index’). Check that your PC sound is on when viewing them. We know you’ll find these very useful both as reference tools to support current knowledge, and to assist training new staff. You might even learn a new trick or two!

Online help is being re-written to make it easier to read and comprehend.

Online help will soon launch from Affinity Self Service applications like Affinity Self Service Leave and Affinity Clever Timesheets. Once that happens, we’ll no longer provide PDF user guides.

Soon, when you press F1 from Affinity Payroll, you’ll have direct access to Affinity Payroll help. Self-service help will be removed (it will launch from self-service apps like Clever Timesheets), and videos can be accessed via links in the help.

Our online help is also undergoing a facelift. In the future, our online help will look and act more like a mini website, making it customisable and more interactive. This is likely to happen later this year or early in 2018.

As a manager, you can create leave requests on behalf of your team members in Affinity Self Service Leave.

From the Team Leave screen, expand the Create Team Leave section, select the employee, complete the details then select Approve.

System > View Operator Log

The Operator Log summarises the tasks and activities (‘operations’) carried out by Affinity system users such as pay processing and log in/out. The log can only be viewed by Affinity System Administrators. It’s useful when auditing system operations and troubleshooting problems, and contains the following information:

• The task.
• The date and time it occurred.
• Who performed the task.

Affinity Clever Forms lets you create dynamic online forms complete with approval workflow. As a result, HR and payroll processes become more efficient, accurate and compliant.

Form elements are the fields, functions and user options that you drag onto Clever Forms templates to create dynamic, meaningful forms. This month we feature elements that provide form users with text-entry options.

Lets the form user enter a valid email address. Note: this field is display-only on the finished form (you can’t click the email address and send an email).

Appears as a notepad storing unlimited (wrapped) text. Useful for recording detailed information such as business cases or details relating to a health and safety incident.

In this example we want to provide space for people to write a business case before attaching supporting documentation. Dragging the bottom-right of the box makes it larger (the new size remains once the form is saved, printed or submitted).

Can be used to introduce a text-entry field or add a warning or extra instructions. In this example we are introducing a policy document.

Inserts a simple, single-line text box with no text wrapping. If wrapping is required, use Memo (Multiline) Box instead. In this example, the Manager Name field is a text box because we expect that the average name will fit into this field without needing to wrap over multiple lines.

Reports > Standard Reports

This report summarises all employees who had deductions for the pay period just processed. This report is important because it:

• Summarises all deductions taken in the last pay run.
• Helps you to reconcile to the 005 Control Account Report.
• Groups information by deduction code then sorts it by employee surname.
• Totals each deduction code individually for easy analysis.

TXMETH is an informational code used for Australian payrolls. When you process bonus, back pay and commission payments TXMETH appears in the pay adjustment. The units value determines the ATO tax method that will apply to the payments.

To delete rows in Affinity screens, select the row then press Ctrl and Del together.