Check for variances before processing payroll
Have you ever run your payroll, only to realise that you have missed someone or forgotten something after paying your employees? With the Variance Report, you can easily compare your current draft or generated payslips to past pay periods to capture any changes between them.
With the Variance report, you can:
- View employees missing from payroll
- Report on differences in hours worked week by week
- Minimise errors in payroll
- Easily export this data for further external investigation
In this article, we will cover:
- Generating the Variance report
- Display & filter options
- Exporting your refined report
Permission Reminder: To access and run this report, you must have 'Access Pay' enabled in your User Permissions.
Welcome to the Variance report. If it isn't already part of your pre-payroll checks and processes, after reading this guide, it will be!
This report will allow you to:
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- View and compare Draft payslips from your pay period selected to Draft payslips from an earlier date.
- View and compare All payslips (Draft and Generated) from your pay period selected to All payslips from an earlier date.
Please note: As this is a new foundU feature, this report will only backdate to July 1st, 2023, for platforms that contain payroll data of that age.
To run this report:
- First, navigate to Payroll > Pay > Draft payslips, and select the period end date for which you want to run the report.
- The date picker will default to your current period end date. Select that field to change this as needed.
- Next to the filter button, select Variance report to open your report.
- By default, your report shows you a comparison of your draft payslips for your chosen period, compared to those from the pay period before the date you have selected.
- Select Draft to optionally change to view all (draft and generated) payslips for both periods.
- Using the date selector, you can change the period end date for both the from date and the period against which you are comparing. You can only compare against past dates.
- By default, your report shows you a comparison of your draft payslips for your chosen period, compared to those from the pay period before the date you have selected.
- This report will compare your employee's current and previous hours and gross totals. Any increased variances will be displayed in Green, while decreases will be displayed in Red.
- Select the down arrow to the far right of the employee to view a further breakdown of these totals. This shows variances in:
- Ordinary hours
- Overtime hours
- Entitlements
- Super
- Tax
- Allowances
- Net total
Hot tip: You can use your display options to customise your view further. Read the next section in this guide for further information.
- To the left of the down arrow, select the ellipsis icon to view:
- Payslips - Open and view the PDF copies of the payslips used in the report.
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Award Test - View and run an Award Test to see a breakdown of the timesheets used to create the payslips you are comparing.
- As the Award Test is based on timesheets, if any manual edits have been made to the payslips, either in draft or once generated, those changes will not be recognised in the test.
Permission Reminder: To access the Award Test from this page, you must have 'Access Award Tests' enabled in your user permissions.
- As the Award Test is based on timesheets, if any manual edits have been made to the payslips, either in draft or once generated, those changes will not be recognised in the test.
- Select Export to download this file into a CSV to view externally for further analysis.
Various display settings and filters can help you navigate the Variance report. Adjusting these filters can significantly increase your speed in finding and viewing the required data.
Filtering your report
If you have any filters on from your Draft payslip page, these will flow through to your report.
A red dot will appear above the Filters icon in the top right-hand corner to show which existing filters are affecting your Variance report.
In your report, your filters are broken down into three categories, those are:
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People
- Employees - Select individual or multiple employees to view just their variances.
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Employment types - View variances based on individual or multiple employment types.
- Archived
- Casual
- Full-Time
- Part-Time
- Salaried
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Employee conditions
- Restriction
- Special condition
- Suspended
- Workcover
- Tag group and Tags
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Location & Roles
- Office Codes - View individual or multiple paying entities.
- Operation - View employees based on their associated Operation.
- Awards and Positions - View employees with certain Award and Positions assigned to their profiles.
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Payslip Details
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Payslip conditions - View your employees based on conditions applied to their payslips.
- Adjustments made
- Leave Taken
- Manual edits
- Overtime
- Payslip comments
- Payslip warnings
- Termination
- Withholding Variation
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Income types - View your employees based on the income type assigned to their profiles.
- Foreign employment income
- Salary and wages
- Working holiday maker
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Payslip conditions - View your employees based on conditions applied to their payslips.
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People
Display options
You can adjust your view to hide or show additional information when running your Variance report using the Display options. However, this can only be done once the report has been generated.
A red dot will appear above the eye icon in the top right-hand corner to show which options are enabled in your report.
Hot tip: Display options are unique to each admin user. Once applied, the system will automatically save your preferences for your next login.
In your report, you can optionally choose to adjust your display for:
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Variances:
- All - This is the default view and ensures users see both hours and $ variance.
- Hours only - Users will only see the hours information (current, previous and variance).
- $ only - Users will only see the $ information (current, previous and variance).
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Employees:
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Hide employees with no variance - This option will hide employees with no variance between their gross and/or total hours. It depends on what variance display option you have in place.
- For example, if your display is set to show All and you want to hide employees with no variance, an employee with no variance in hours but a variance in $ value will not be hidden. There must be no variance in both fields for them to be hidden.
- If your display is set to show Hours only and your employee has no variance in hours but has a variance in $ value, they will be hidden.
- If your display is set to show $ only and your employee has a variance in hours but no variance in $ value, they will be hidden.
- Hide terminating employees - This option will hide employees with the terminating pill against them. As they terminate, they will likely have a more significant variation due to potential leave payouts.
- Hide new employees - This option will hide new employees or anyone who has not yet been paid in foundU from the report. They will always have a variance as they have not been paid yet.
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Hide employees with no variance - This option will hide employees with no variance between their gross and/or total hours. It depends on what variance display option you have in place.
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Pay Items:
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Show line items - When enabled, the breakdown that appears when selecting the down arrow to expand will be split based on the line item. From here, you can choose to see all extra line items or select specific data.
- For example, if selected, Super will be broken down by Super Guarantee, Super Salary Sacrifice, Employee Additional Super Contribution, and Employer Additional Super Contribution.
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Show line items - When enabled, the breakdown that appears when selecting the down arrow to expand will be split based on the line item. From here, you can choose to see all extra line items or select specific data.
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Variances:
Please note: When exporting your data into a CSV file, any filters or display options you have in place will remain. Remove those if you do not wish to have items hidden or displayed in your export.
You can export your Variance report if you prefer to review your reports externally, whether in a spreadsheet or printed out.
The export feature will respect any filters or display options you have already selected. Prior to exporting your report, ensure your display and filter options are set to meet your needs. Please clear your filter and display options before exporting if you want to capture all data.
To export your report:
- Navigate to the Variance report from the Draft payslips page and select Export to open the CSV Export options.
- From the Export CSV drawer, choose the required items by selecting:
- Deselect All - This will deselect all items.
- Heading - This will select/ deselect all items under the heading. E.g. Employee Details will select Employee ID, Name, Employment type, etc.
- Items - Select items individually; this may be preferred if you require to export only a few items.
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Save as Template - If this is a regular export, you can save it as a template. To do so, turn the Save as Template toggle on and provide a name for your template. The template will automatically save after the initial export.
- If you already have templates saved, select Use Template to load from one of your existing ones.
- Export CSV to initiate your download. When your file is ready, select the green tick at the top of your page to download it to your files.