The Payroll News - September 2004

An Educational Service of CanPay Software Inc.

September 2004

Contents:

• Welcome
• Upcoming Events
• What's New
• GrandMaster Update

Featured Article:

Vacation pay not a holiday for payroll
(Part 1 of 2)

Tip of the Month:

Payroll Remittances and ATMs

NOTE: This archive references other sites on the World Wide Web. From time to time, an article's link may be moved or deleted from the host site. If you encounter an out-of-date link, please e-mail the payrollnews@canpay.com.

Welcome!

September 2004 - Welcome to the latest edition of The Payroll News. As always, please feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends and associates who are interested in keeping up with the latest changes in the Payroll industry. Or better yet, subscribe them for free using the Tell Others About Us link.

Upcoming Events

Event	Description
National Payroll Week Canada’s 10th Annual National Payroll Week September 13 - 17, 2004.	Part of promoting the professionalism of payroll practitioners is to create greater awareness outside the payroll community. This is your chance to participate in the biggest payroll awareness initiative of the year and boost payroll awareness from coast to coast.
HRMAM Challenge 2004 Conference - HR Unlimited October 6 and 7 Winnipeg Convention Centre, Winnipeg, MB	The 2004 conference is expected to draw an estimated 275 to 350 participants and will have a Tradeshow for a variety of service providers. "HRThe conference begins on Wednesday, October 6 at 8:30 a.m. and ends at 4:15 p.m. on Thursday, October 7, 2004. The program will offer four keynote speakers and up to 20 practical breakout sessions.
53rd annual Western Cities Conference September 13 to 16, 2004 Radisson Hotel Winnipeg, MB	The Conference theme is Reality HR: Today’s Issues... Real Solutions! Together we will explore the spectrum of HR issues, from setting strategy to implementation. We’ll be seeking and providing real solutions in response to the issues we face on a daily basis.
Payroll Information Seminars for New Employers/Small Businesses Various Canadian Locations	This seminar outlines employment relationships to help you determine whether a worker is an employee or self-employed. Other topics include: source deductions, employer responsibilities, assessment and penalties, determining and calculating deductions for Canada Pension Plan contributions, employment insurance premiums and how to maintain proper payroll records.
Payroll Administration in Canada Various Canadian Locations	This hands-on, comprehensive course provides the basics of Canadian payroll management. If your organization does business in Canada, this course will help you successfully manage your cross-border payroll operations while keeping your company in compliance. Taught by a leading Canadian payroll expert, this class is an opportunity to learn Canadian laws and requirements.
Payroll Administration in Canada (CPA) Toronto, Ontario Mississauga, Ontario Vancouver, BC Calgary, Alberta	These seminars and workshops are available for those seeking accurate, up-to-date knowledge of the payroll function in Canada. Payroll Administration in Canada is an intensive five-day training course designed to give you a solid foundation in the basics of Canadian payroll.
Payroll Administration Level 1 - Basic Introduction to Payroll Level 2 - Administering the Payroll Function Level 3 - Managing the Complexities of Payroll	Carswell offers dynamic, interactive sessions provided by instructors that have practical payroll and research capabilities. Courses are structured as interactive workshops, not "lecture-style" seminars. Examine real life case studies, focus on the specifics and gain practical knowledge you can put to work right away.

What's New in Canadian Payroll

Listed here are recent changes in legislation on Federal and Provincial levels that may impact your payroll calculations. Please view the following list for changes that affect your region.

Alberta:

August 3, 2004 - Alberta workplaces becoming safer - The Occupational Injuries and Diseases in Alberta 2003 Summary shows that the efforts of the Alberta government, employers and workers to create safer Alberta workplace are paying off. Detailed analysis of health and safety outcomes reported in the 2003 summary show that injuries in Alberta workplaces are steadily decreasing. (Full Story - 300 Words)

British Columbia:

August 3, 2004 - WCB projects lower premium rates for 2005 - The Workers' Compensation Board (WCB) is projecting a 4.1 percent decrease in the overall premium rate for 2005. The rate reduction reflects the recent years' trends of lower injury rates, lower duration of injuries, and the success of the WCB's WorkSafe initiative — the shared commitment of employers, workers, and the WCB to prevent injuries, diseases, and fatalities from occurring in the first place. (Full Story - 487 Words)

New Brunswick:

August 31, 2004 - Minister's Labour Day message - The following Labour Day message was issued today by Training and Employment Development Minister Margaret-Ann Blaney in recognition of Labour Day, Monday, Sept. 6, 2004: "Our province has been shaped over centuries by history, culture and a tireless work ethic that remains one of our distinct qualities as New Brunswickers. Today, our economy continues to develop on the strength of our natural resources, our creative entrepreneurs and our technological expertise in a variety of sectors. (Full Story - 295 Words)

Newfoundland and Labrador:

August 9, 2004 - Labour market conditions continue to improve - Joan Burke, Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment is encouraged by the positive response of the business community to the Labour Force Survey. The survey, released by Statistics Canada on Friday, showed employment increasing in the province as the unemployment rate dropped slightly. (Full Story - 242 Words)

August 27, 2004 - Minister responds to statements about current labour situation - Joan Burke, Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, said today that statements made by labour critic Percy Barrett and other members of the official opposition in recent days and weeks about the current labour situation in the province are misleading and incorrect. (Full Story - 610 Words)

Ontario:

August 18, 2004 - McGuinty Government promotes fairness and choice for employees 65 and over - The McGuinty Government will be holding public consultations on how to end mandatory retirement to give Ontario workers the right to choose when to retire, Labour Minister Chris Bentley announced today. "Ontarians are healthier and living longer so it is unfair to insist that they stop working simply because they reach age 65," said Bentley. (Full Story - 320 Words)

August 18, 2004 - Labour Day a public holiday under Employment Standards Act, 2000 - Many workers will get the day off with public holiday pay on Labour Day on Monday, September 6, 2004. Labour Day is one of eight public holidays under Ontario's Employment Standards Act, 2000. (Full Story - 1110 Words)

August 20, 2004 - Important notice regarding e-mails sent to the Ministry of Labour - Due to a computer failure, e-mails received by the Ontario Ministry of Labour and the agencies listed below have been lost. This affects e-mails sent between 9 p.m. on Monday, August 16, 2004 and 6 a.m. on Wednesday, August 18, 2004. Anyone who sent an e-mail to the ministry or one of these agencies during this period should resubmit.(Full Story - 294 Words)

Yukon:

August 5, 2004 - Yukon Hosts National Workers' Compensation Conference - About 200 delegates and guests will meet in Whitehorse August 8th to 11th for the Congress of the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada (AWCBC). Congress delegates include chairs, directors, CEOs and other top decision-makers from compensation boards across Canada. "The vision of the AWCBC is to have its members working together to achieve excellence with the common goal of safe workplaces, healthy workers and a fair, affordable workers’ compensation system," said Ann Marie Hann, President of the AWCBC. (Full Story - 311 Words)

GrandMaster Update

The mid-year release of GrandMaster Suite (4.00.02) incorporates a number of changes to make it even easier to use the program and perform your payroll tasks. Recent program changes since our last Payroll News issue include:

Employee Pay Statement Message remains on the screen - When you set an Employee Pay Statement Message in the Payroll Specific Information dialog box the message would remain there indefinitely. This could result in the message appearing on an employee's pay statement each time one the statement was printed (when you only wanted the message to appear once). With this release, the employee Pay Statement Message is written to a program data file when closing the pay period -- then the message is cleared.
Tick List now supports sort by employee - The Tick List dialog box, found in the HR module, has been modified to support the option to sort by employee or the default setting to sort by date. This change makes it easier to locate a specific employee within the Tick List. Further, with this change the Tick List menu option has been redeveloped to be consistent with the Check List menu options. The menu changes have resulted in the removal of the Definition menu and the redistribution of the remaining Definition menu options to the Employee menu.
Recalculation on Terminated employee does not clear results - If an employee had been erroneously included in a calculation when they should have been set to a non-active status, any subsequent recalculation on the employee from the Employee module would not clear the previous calculation results. This has been corrected.
The Payroll Rates Deduction report does not print all selections - When you printed the Payroll Rates Deduction report, it would only print one of the selected deductions. When you selected only one deduction to print, your report would show either no deductions or a different deduction than the one you selected. This has been corrected.
Accumulator showing negative balances when no negatives allowed - The accumulator balance would show negative balances when you had explicitly set your accumulator to disallow negative balances. This would occur when you had mistakenly keyed a transaction to pay out an accumulator through the Hours Entry dialog box where the amount keyed exceeded the total balance of the accumulator plus any current accrual amount. This has been corrected.
Name and Address Report executes a page break on each employee - When you printed the Name and Address Report with the Page Break option and your sort option was anything other than Category, the report would execute a page break on each employee. This problem has been corrected.
ROE missing pay sequence data - When you insert a new ROE for an employee under certain conditions, the ROE could be missing pay data from one or more pay sequences. This condition would only occur when you have an Additional pay sequence(s) within the ROE range that have dates that are outside of the ROE date range. This has been corrected.

Visit CanPay's News page and view the latest Release Notes for a complete listing of program changes.

Featured Article:

Vacation Pay Not a Holiday For Payroll (Part 1 of 2)
By Alan McEwen

Almost everyone welcomes the extra time off a statutory holiday provides. But while staff dream about getting out of town for sun-drenched afternoons at the cottage, payroll practitioners are furiously sweating over the details to ensure pay cheques get out the door correctly.

Statutory holidays add significant complexity to payroll calculations. There are 14 different sets of employment standards across the country for the 10 provinces, three territories and the federal government. But, fortunately, there is a more or less common structure among the 14 different standards which helps smooth out the process somewhat.

The first element of this structure is which employees are affected. The general rule is all employees are affected by statutory holidays unless they fall into one of several types of exceptions. For example, there is a blanket exception in Ontario for employees who work in a profession such as chartered accountants or professional engineers. They are not covered by most aspects of the Ontario employment standards including those related to statutory holidays.

Similarly, most jurisdictions have an exception for recently hired employees. In British Columbia, employees have to have worked at least 15 of the 30 calendar days prior to the statutory holiday before the employment standards provision for statutory holidays apply. Take the recent Labour Day holiday, for example. An employee hired after August 17 would not be eligible for statutory holiday pay in B.C. A similar provision in Ontario applied until September 2001. Now the Ontario employment standards for statutory holidays apply to all employees regardless of the date of hire.

One exception that is often misunderstood is the rule around working before and after the statutory holiday. This is often expressed as a statement that there is an exception for employees,"“who do not work either the day before or the day after the statutory holiday."

This statement is not quite right. The question is not really whether the employee has worked the regularly scheduled day before or after, it is whether the employee has failed, without reasonable cause, to work either of those days.

Take a part-time worker who is scheduled to work Tuesday and Wednesday each week. He would not lose his entitlement to Labour Day, under the Ontario employment standards, just because he didn’t work on the Friday before Labour Day. But a full-time employee who works a Monday to Friday workweek and fails to report to work on the Tuesday after Labour Day -- without reasonable cause -- is not entitled to statutory holiday pay.

After figuring out whether an employee is entitled to statutory pay, the next step is actually calculating the amount of the pay.

Please return next month for the conclusion of this article.