What's covered in this guide?:
Setting an employee salary
There are two key components to configuring an employee’s salary:
Pay Conditions (where the contract salary is set)
Payroll Details (where the earnings template is configured)
Both need to be set correctly for autopaid salary earnings to calculate as expected.
Pay Conditions Configuration
This is where the 'Annual Salary' and 'Contracted Weekly Hours' are set. These values are reflected in rosters and timesheets.
Navigate to the employee's Pay Conditions tab on their profile.
Edit Current Pay Conditions.
Enter their Annual Salary and Contracted Weekly Hours.
Confirm Changes.
The Annual Salary set here forms the basis for ECS-driven (percentage-based) salary templates.
Payroll Details
This section determines how the employee’s salary is applied in payroll.
To configure:
Navigate to the user's payroll profile and select the Payroll Details tab.
In the Autopaid Earnings section, click + Add.
Select the appropriate Earnings type for the salary.
Add the Payroll account.
Enter the Number of units (Hrs/week).
Lastly, enter the Annual amount.
Specify the Start and End dates for when the earnings should apply.
Configure Salary templates
Salary autopaid templates can be configured in two ways:
Option 1: Percentage-based (ECS-driven) salary
This method calculates pay based on the employee’s Annual Salary set in Pay Conditions.
Instead of entering fixed hours or amounts, you:
Set any unused salary templates to 0 hours and 0 cost
Enter a percentage on the template you want to use (for example, 100% for a full salary)
The system will calculate earnings based on that percentage of the employee’s Annual Salary.
This approach ensures that if the employee’s salary changes in Pay Conditions, payroll calculations automatically follow.
Option 2: Fixed salary configuration
You can also configure a template using:
Number of units (e.g. hours per week)
Annual amount
This method uses fixed values rather than calculating from the contract salary.
Date-driven Earnings Templates
You can configure date-driven earnings templates for autopaid earnings. This allows specific earnings lines (such as allowances) to apply only within defined time periods.
For example:
An allowance can apply only during the first six months of employment.
The earnings line will be included based on the pay run’s finish date.
This ensures earnings are applied only within the designated period.
Creating payslips for staff with autopaid templates
Employees with autopaid earnings templates will have payslips automatically created when you finalise timesheets in Workforce and export timesheets to your payrun.
Note: Autopaid earnings lines will be applied on top of any earnings rules exported from the timesheet. To prevent hours from timesheets being exported, navigate to the salaried earnings rule and select 'Do not export this to payroll.'
FAQs
What if an employee's weekly contract hours are more than 38, but they only accrue leave based on a 38-hour week?
What if an employee's weekly contract hours are more than 38, but they only accrue leave based on a 38-hour week?
If an employee's standard contract is more than 38 hours, but you want to cap the amount of leave they can accrue, you should split the autopaid templates across two earnings lines.
In this scenario, the earnings rate 'Hospitality - Base Hourly (+ 38 hours) is configured not to accrue leave. Learn more about configuring earnings rates
If an employee has multiple earnings lines on their autopaid template, which one will be reduced when leave is taken?
If an employee has multiple earnings lines on their autopaid template, which one will be reduced when leave is taken?
Fixed salary templates: the Primary earnings line is reduced first. If it reduces to 0 for the period, the remaining leave hours are then applied to the other lines in order.
Percentage-based (ECS-driven) templates: leave isn't deducted from one line at a time. Instead, the employee's total leave hours are subtracted from their total contracted hours, and the remainder is split proportionally across all percentage templates, based on each template's percentage weight. The Primary designation doesn't affect this, it's only used to set the base hourly rate applied to leave requests.