Lesson 3.2: Default Payroll Settings

After defining your organization’s standard payroll frequency and work week hours, you must configure the remaining Default Payroll Settings. These critical settings establish the starting point for your payroll history, dictate which bank account funds your payroll, and define your organization-wide policies for employee paid time off (PTO).

Because FastFund Payroll is fully integrated with FastFund Accounting, completing these defaults correctly ensures that all of your future payroll batches post seamlessly to the correct general ledger accounts without any manual journal entries.

Important Security Note: Just like your payroll frequency, access to these foundational settings is highly restricted. Only users with Company Administration permissions can access the setup menus to configure this data.

[INSERT SCREENSHOT: The ‘Payroll Settings’ tab within Payroll Setup, displaying the fields for Beginning Balance Date, Payroll Frequency, Default Hours, Accrual Factors, and Default Cash Account]

Accessing Payroll Settings

1. From the horizontal Main Menu, select Administration.
2. In the vertical Task Menu on the left, under the COMPANY INFORMATION section, click on Payroll Setup.
3. Ensure you are on the Payroll Settings tab.

Beginning Balance Date If you are starting to use FastFund Payroll in the middle of a calendar year after having already issued paychecks, you must enter a Beginning Balance Date. To ensure accurate federal and state tax filings (such as your 941 worksheet), FastFund requires this date to be at the exact end of one of the four reporting quarters:

• 03/31/YYYY
• 06/30/YYYY
• 09/30/YYYY
• 12/31/YYYY

Rule Exception: You cannot enter a beginning balance date in the middle of a quarter unless it represents the very first payroll processed in the calendar year.

Default Cash Account In the Default Cash Account field, you must select the bank account from which your payroll funds will be drawn. Because of the unified database, you will only see FastFund Accounting general ledger accounts that have been specifically designated with an Account Type equal to Bank.

Default Vacation and Sick Time Accruals FastFund allows you to automatically calculate paid time off (vacation and sick time) as you process payroll. You can set company-wide default accruals here, which can later be overridden for specific employees if necessary. There are two primary calculation methods:

• Accrual Factor (Factored): Employees earn time based on the exact amount of hours they work in a pay period. FastFund multiplies the number of hours worked by an accrual factor. FastFund includes standard default factors based on a 40-hour work week:
  • 0.0192: Accrues 40 hours a year (approx. 1 week)
  • 0.0288: Accrues 60 hours a year
  • 0.0384: Accrues 80 hours a year (approx. 2 weeks)
  • 0.0576: Accrues 120 hours a year (approx. 3 weeks)
• Fixed Amount: Setting a fixed number of hours to be accrued every single pay period, regardless of the exact hours worked. This is determined by dividing the total hours accrued during the year by the number of pay periods.

Tip: If your organization combines vacation and sick time into a single “Paid Time Off (PTO)” bank, simply use the Default Vacation Accrual Factor to accumulate and track all paid time off, and leave the Sick Time factor at zero.