Sage Abra Technical Tips

Pay Group Setup

Abra Payroll includes the capability to set up employees in multiple pay groups. Grouping employees by pay group facilitates payroll processing and reporting, and allows for differences in pay frequencies, bank payment accounts, and methods of time entry. For example, having separate pay groups for employees with automatic time sheets, manually entered time sheets, and imported time sheets streamlines the time entry for speedier processing. The following are helpful tips for working with pay groups in Abra Payroll:

Adding pay groups: When adding pay groups, verify that the last quarter end date is correct. This field populates automatically from the payroll setup for the company. When copying a pay group from another company, the last quarter end dates may not match in both companies.

Restoring data: Occasionally, you may need to restore your Sage Abra data. Perhaps an incorrect check date was entered for the trial payroll; however, the error was not discovered until after the checks had been printed. If an internal backup made before the final payroll was run is not available, an earlier external backup would need to be restored. If the data being restored had been entered a week or more earlier, it is possible that payroll history for that period is lost. When this occurs, it is important to verify the payroll status for all pay groups and rerun any payroll processes that were lost before running the current payroll.

After restoring data and reforming indexes, verify the pay group setup detail on the payroll status tab for all pay groups. Note the last pay period end date and last pay period check date fields. If the trial pay period end date and trial pay period check date fields are populated, it means that that payroll is still in progress and not yet complete. If final payroll is complete but check printing is not complete, the pay group will not be available to run the trial payroll for the next period. All the values displayed on the left side of the payroll status page should display ‘Complete’ or ‘NA.’ For any processes that display ‘not complete,’ rerun that process if that data is lost. If the final payroll flag is set to ‘not complete,’ trial payroll can be run for any check date that is equal to or later than the last pay period check date.