Allowances

Allowances

There are many different types of allowances, according to the Australian Tax Office (ATO), Allowances are separately identified payments made to the employee for:

• Working conditions - for example, danger, height or dirt.
• Qualifications or special duties - for example, first aid certificate or safety officer.
• Expenses that can't be claimed as a tax deduction by the employee – for example, normal travel between home and work.
• Work-related expenses that may be claimed as a tax deduction by the employee - for example, travel between work sites.

If you're adding a new allowance:

1. You'll first need to set up the Allowance in Pay Items and Allowances
2. And then you'll be able to apply the Allowance (see below).

At foundU you can have Employees, Managers and Payroll apply allowances, (depending on the allowance type), therefore there are 5 places where an allowance can be applied, the option you choose will depend on who will be applying the allowance, and the type of allowance.

Applying an allowance:

1. Apply an Allowance in the Employee's Profile
   • When an allowance is applied to an employee's profile, the pay item/allowance will be automatically applied to the employee's payslip each pay period.
   • For example, this is useful for first aid allowance or car allowance or laundry allowance.
2. Apply an Allowance in the Operation Profile
   • When an allowance is applied directly to an Operation's Rates Book, it allows you to customise the allowance rate and/or charge rate for that specific operation.
   • For example, this is useful when an operation pays and/or charges an allowance differently from all other operations.
3. Apply Shift Allowances on the Roster or in Approve Shifts
   • When building rosters, there is an option to apply an allowance per shift. When the shift is approved, the allowance will be applied to the employee's pay.
   • If a manager overlooks adding in an allowance in Rosters, they can apply the allowance to the shift in Approve Shifts (this also applies to Operation users).
   • For example, this could be used for a refuse collection allowance.
4. How Employees apply an Allowance in Submit Shifts (Timesheets)
   • You can allow employees to apply allowances when submitting shifts. For example mileage.
5. Apply manually on Employee's Payslip
   • Pay items/allowances can be applied by editing an employee's pay (during payroll).
   • This is useful if timesheets have already been generated or for Adhoc pay items/allowances e.g Bonus.

Allowance and cost codes: Cost codes behave like a chameleon and therefore take on the cost code of where you apply an allowance, the cost code will be pulled from the relevant area. For example, if you apply a cost code when in the Employees Profile, the position cost code will apply. Further details are in the sections below.

Setting up an Allowance

See our guide on setting up a Pay Item/ Allowance.

Apply an Allowance in the Employees Profile

Admin users and Managers with People permissions can apply an allowance to an individual Employee's profile:

1. Navigate to People > Approved People or search for an employee to open their Employee Profile.
2. Then select the Employee Card icon > Allowances tab.
   • Select the relevant Award that relates to the employee. If the correct Award is not selected the allowance will not be added successfully.
   • Select the allowance type from the drop-down.
     
       Hot tip: If the relevant allowance does not appear, it will either be not set up or not set up correctly. You can read more about how to set up the Allowance in Pay Items and Allowances here. If you don't have the required permissions to do so you'll need to reach out to a Super User administrator.
     
     
   • Optionally, you can update the Rate and specify a Quantity of the allowance to apply each week.  
     
     In our example for Ria's Laundry allowance, we entered in $3 and 1 for the Quantity.
     
       Please note: Specifying the quantity of the allowance will automatically apply the specified number of the allowance to a payslip each week. This will not consider other variables such as the number of hours/ days worked, or leave approved. 
     
     
   • Select Save.
3. The allowance will now appear automatically in the employee's payslip.
   
   

Allowances and cost codes:

When Allowances are added to the Employee Profile the cost code is taken from the Employee's Position Cost code.

Bulk Apply (or remove) Allowances in the Employees Profile

See our guide on importing allowances in the Employee profile here.

Allowance and Cost codes:

When Allowances are added to the Employee profile the cost code is taken from the Employee's Position Cost code.

Applying an Allowance in the Operation Profile

Click here for our guide on adding an Allowance to the Operation profile.

Apply Shift Allowance on the Roster or in Approve Shifts

Add an allowance to a shift on the roster

1. Navigate to Work > Rosters and select your Roster.
2. Hover your mouse over the shift you'd like to add an Allowance to and select the hand receiving coins icon. This opens up the Edit shift screen and opens the Allowance section in the shift.
3. From the drop-down select the relevant allowance and add in any details, such as quantity, if required.
   
     If the relevant allowance does not appear, it will either be not set up or not set up correctly. You can read more about how to set up the Allowance in Pay Items and Allowances here. If you don't have the required permissions to do so you'll need to reach out to a Super User administrator.
4. Click the green tick and then Save shift. In our example below for Aimee, we added in a Supervisor allowance.
   
   

   

5. Publish your roster as normal.
6. The shift allowance will flow through to Approve Shifts and once the shift is approved will flow through to the Payslip.

Add an allowance to a shift in Approve Shifts

Alternatively, you can add an allowance to a shift in the Approve shifts menu. An example of when you may do this would be for a Supervisor allowance being applied for an employee who had to step into that position due to a rostered supervisor calling in sick. 

1. Navigate to Time & Attendance > Approve Shifts.
2. Apply your filters: Date, Operation, Rosters to find the shifts you wish to approve.
3. Select the day of the week to view.
4. Click the Edit icon next to the shift to view shift details.
5. Select Add allowances to view, add, and edit allowances for the shift.
   
   
6. Approve the shift. Once approved, it will be applied to the employee's payslip.
   
   

Allowance and Cost codes:

When Allowances are added to the Employee profile the cost code is taken from the Roster Cost code.

How employees add an allowance when Submitting Shifts

When an employee submits a shift, they can apply their allowance when adding or editing their shift.

Please note an employee will not see an Allowance in the drop-down if it is not first set up the Allowance in Pay Items and Allowances.

Manually apply an Allowance on a Payslip

1. Navigate to Payroll > Pay and under Draft Payslips, select the Period Ending. Use the search bar to find the relevant employee's pay.
2. Click Action > Edit.
   
   
   
3. Click the Add allowance/pay item and select what you need from the drop-down menu. 
   • If the allowance or pay item uses any tax averaging you will select the STP category for this and also possibly the start and end periods that the allowance is averaged across. 
     
     
4. Enter or edit the details of the allowance as required. You may need to edit or enter a rate of pay, the number of units, or set a cost code / purchase order. 
   
   
   
   
5. In the Totals section, click Calculate Totals and Preview PDF to see the updated payslip before saving your changes. 
   
   
   
   
6. If happy, click Update payslip.
7. Enter a reason for the update and click Save Changes.
8. The item is now applied to the employee's pay. Process payroll as per usual.

Allowances Paid Report

The Allowances Paid Report allows you to check allowances that have been paid after processing payroll.

To Run a Paid Allowance Report:

1. In the quick menu select Reports > Financial and in the Payroll Reports subsection select Allowances Paid.
   
   

   

2. Filter the report by choosing your desired:
   • Date range by choosing the Filter Date From and To.
   • Filtering by a specific Office code.
   • Specific employee or
   • Allowance type e.g. laundry etc.
   • Select cash basis if you would like to report on when payments were made.
   • Select JobKeeper eligible to see a list of the employees who are eligible for JobKeeper and have an allowance.
3. Review the output. You can also search for a specific employee in the report list by using the search. Example report view & excel output