What's covered in this guide?
How autopaid salary earnings work
Autopaid earnings templates let Workforce automatically add salary earnings to every on-cycle pay run for salaried employees. The salary amount is driven directly by the employee's Pay Conditions — so when the annual salary changes there, payroll picks it up automatically with no need to update the earnings template separately.
Two things need to be configured on an employee's profile for this to work:
Pay Conditions — where the annual salary and contracted weekly hours are set
Earnings templates — created automatically when Pay Conditions are set; used to configure the percentage and cost center allocation
Set up Pay Conditions
Pay Conditions are where the employee's contract salary is defined. Both the annual salary and contracted weekly hours must be set for autopaid earnings to apply to pay runs.
Go to Staff and open the employee's profile.
Select the Pay Conditions tab.
Select Edit Current Pay Conditions.
Enter the Annual Salary and Contracted Weekly Hours.
Select Confirm and Apply.
Once confirmed, an earnings template is automatically created in the employee's payroll profile, defaulting to 100% of their annual salary. See the Pay Conditions guide for more detail on managing pay conditions.
Note: If Contracted Weekly Hours is set to 0, autopaid earnings will not be added to pay runs — even if an annual salary is entered. Both fields must be set.
View and edit earnings templates
Once Pay Conditions are configured, an earnings template is created automatically on the employee's payroll profile. By default it is set to 100%, meaning the full annual salary will be paid through that template.
To view or edit earnings templates:
Go to Staff and open the employee's profile.
Select the Payroll tab, then select Payroll Details.
In the Autopaid Earnings section, select Edit Salary Templates.
The template displays the employee's current annual salary pulled from Pay Conditions and the percentage applied to this template. You can update the Tracking category to charge the salary to a specific cost center.
Because the salary is driven by Pay Conditions, any salary change confirmed in Pay Conditions is automatically reflected in the earnings template and applied on the next on-cycle pay run — the template itself does not need to be edited when the salary changes.
Split salary across cost centers
If a salaried employee works across multiple teams or cost centers, you can split the salary across more than one earnings template. Each template is assigned a percentage, and all templates together must add up to exactly 100%.
For example, an employee earning $100,000 per year could have:
60% ($60,000) charged to one team
40% ($40,000) charged to another
In Edit Salary Templates, reduce the percentage on the existing template to less than 100%.
Select + Add to add another template.
Set the percentage and assign the appropriate Tracking category.
Save once all templates add up to 100%.
Workforce will warn you if the combined percentage is below 100% and will not save if it exceeds 100%.
Running payroll
Employees with autopaid earnings templates have their salary earnings added automatically each time you create an on-cycle pay run. The amount per pay period is calculated from the employee's annual salary in Pay Conditions and the pay frequency configured for your organization.
For example, an employee on a bi-weekly schedule earning $104,000 per year will have a $4,000 earnings line on each pay stub ($104,000 ÷ 26 pay periods).
Autopaid earnings only apply to on-cycle pay runs. Off-cycle pay runs, such as bonus or correction runs, do not include autopaid salary earnings automatically.
See Run Payroll for a full guide to creating and posting a pay run.
Terminated employees
When an employee is terminated in Workforce, their active Pay Conditions end, which deactivates the salary sync. Their earnings templates remain on their profile but will no longer generate earnings once they are removed from pay runs.
If the employee's termination date falls within a regular on-cycle pay period, their autopaid earnings are included for the full period — Workforce does not prorate based on the termination date. If you need to adjust the amount to reflect only the days worked, edit the earnings on the pay stub manually before processing.
If they require an immediate final check outside of the regular pay cycle, use an off-cycle pay run — autopaid earnings are not included in off-cycle runs automatically, so any final salary should be added manually.