How do I Set Up an Employee?

New to Thankyou Payroll? Or simply want a reminder on how to set up an employee's profile? This guide will tell you how.

• • The employee's first and last name
  • The employee's start date
  • The employee's IRD number
  • The employee's name on the bank account
  • The employee's bank account number
  • The employee's email address for payslips to be emailed to
  • The employee's pay rate
  • The employee's tax code
  • The employee's (KS2) and employers KS contribution rate
  • The agreed leave method by both the parties. If you are unsure on this, please contact Employment New Zealand website for assistance.

Locating the Employee Profile

1. To begin setting up a new employee, click on 'employees' from the top menu.
2. Choose either "Employee Profile" or "Add New Employee" from the dropdown menu. Both will take you to the Employee Profile.  

There are some useful things to note about the Employee Profile Tab, where you will complete the employee's details.

3.  You can add a new employee from within the Employee Profile.

4.  You are able to access all your employees' profiles by clicking this button, or from the 'Employee List' in the Employee dropdown menu as seen above.

5.  The Employee ID will be generated after the Employee Profile Tab is completed and SAVED. When first adding a new employee, this field will be blank.

You can navigate away from editing employees at any time by clicking on any of the menus at the top of the screen.

Completing the Standard Pay Tab 

On the standard pay page you will complete details for Standard Pay (Pay rate), Tax code, employee standard pay options as well as setting their default entries for a standard week of a timesheet (setting their work pattern).  

The fields you have available to complete depend on how you enter the standard pay. This is the standard view:

When will this employee be paid? 
Follow this link to set up your Pay Day Settings in our system. 

• These could be for allowances and deductions such as phone bills, accommodation, tools, and food for example. To find out more about taxable and non-taxable allowances, visit the IRD website.
• You could use this tab to set up pay types for back pay, correction pay, bonuses, and other pay rates (such as $22 per hour for puppy walking, but $25 per hour for puppy socialising). To find out how to set this up, follow this link to our Custom Pay Type How To article.

Follow this link to our dedicated article if you need further information.

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Completing the Leave Tab 

The Leave Tab is one of the most important parts of the employee's profile. Each leave method selected here uses a specific calculation, which means that they are not interchangeable. Changing leave methods after pays have been processed may cause calculation problems.

To assist with setting this up correctly, we have created two dedicated resources:

Resource 1: Understanding the Leave Settings Tab in the Employee Profile, which is an interactive walkthrough of each entry field. Resource 2: System-recommended Annual Leave settings based on Employee Agreement Type, which will show you the recommended settings for each employment type.

Please use these resources when completing this tab.

* If you are setting up a new permanent employee and you will have an annual closedown period within their first year of employment, please follow the instructions in our annual closedown article.

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Completing the History Tab 

• If you are employing someone for the first time, they will not have pay history with your business, so you can leave this tab empty and move on to the next tab.
• If you are setting up a Casual Employee who receives PAYG, with the leave setting '8% of Gross' - Pay into each pay, the pay history is not needed. Simply move on to the next tab.
• If you are bringing an employee over from another payroll system and they have only had minor changes to their pay since their last leave anniversary, (so they are paid nearly the same, every pay), follow the steps from this example:

1. Enter their full gross earnings amount since their last leave anniversary (or since their start date if shorter than 12 months) in the 1st line, as shown in the example.
2. The pay start date is the day after their leave anniversary date (or their start date if shorter than 12 months). Please contact the Help Desk to set up this date if you do not have the option to go back that far.

Please contact the Help Desk to update the system if you input the full Gross Total in the first box. There are background settings we need to run to ensure the pay history is applied correctly.

• If you are bringing an employee over from another payroll system and they have had variable pay since their last leave anniversary, please enter their gross pay history back as far as the last leave anniversary as per the example below. This information is needed to calculate their leave accurately.

Completing the Contact Tab 

Completing the Fines & Payments Tab 

Thankyou Payroll can manage payments for Ministry of Justice fines. For more information on how to do this, please see our article on Payments to the Ministry of Justice.