Pay Periods

Use the Pay Periods command to determine the first pay period for a new company set up in Opera, to view current and last calculation periods, or to set up company-wide holidays. For a new payroll, the entry displayed in the Last Calculation Period box is blank and cannot be amended. You can enter the week or month number of the current pay period in the tax year in the This Calculation Period box. Two-weekly and four weekly payrolls have special rules applying to them:

For all weekly payrolls, the system requires the entry of a week number in the overall range 1 to 53. After each successive payroll calculation and period update, the application automatically increments the numbers in the Last Calculation Period and This Calculation Period boxes. For payrolls already in use, use the Pay Periods form to view the period numbers maintained by the application automatically.

Changing the 'This Calculation Period' box

The This Calculation Period box can be updated only if the Payroll has not been calculated in the current tax year. In particular:

Starting to use Payroll after the first period in the tax year

If the calendar for a payroll group is created part way through the tax year, you must set the This Calculation Period box on the Payroll - Utilities - Pay Periods form to the correct period. It is automatically set to period 1 after the payroll group is created but this will not be correct in these circumstances.

Company Holidays

If you are operating a weekly payroll, you can define up to six weeks company holiday in the Weeks Company Holiday box. This places all employees on holiday. You can also specify the number of days annual holiday to be deducted from each employee’s annual holiday entitlement in the Days Annual Holiday box.

Important: When you run the Update command after the Calculation, the pay period is moved on by the number of weeks you enter in the Weeks Company Holiday box. You must not manually change the current pay period’s number.

If an employee is going to take more holiday than the company holiday, it can be overridden on an individual basis using the Payroll - Processing - Holiday command. However, you should not update an employee's record with less holiday than the number of weeks entered in the Weeks Company Holiday box.