Templates are a very handy tool that you can use when you have employees with the same income and deduction items, and you don’t want to repeat the process of adding the same income and deduction items for a large number of employees.
This is particularly helpful when you and / or your employees are part of a bargaining council (or subject to a regulatory authority), and the same income and deduction items apply to all / a large number of your employees.
More information about the use of templates, in general, can be found in the following section:
The rest of this article will elaborate on the use of template functionalities in the context of bargaining councils.
Applicability of Template Items
As explained in the Templates section (linked to above), you can decide whether template items should be applicable to all or some employees by default.
It might be that some of your employees are members of a trade union while the others are not. You will then have to set up separate template items for union members and non-union members. For example, if there are different levies payable by the two groups, you could set up “Levies (Trade Union)” and “Levies (Non-Trade Union)” items.
You then have to decide about the applicability of these items. To continue with the above example, if most of your employees are union members, you could select “Optional, on by default” as the applicability option for Levies (Trade Union). This means that when the template is added to an employee, the Levies (Trade Union) will be ticked by default. You will then only need to un-tick it for the small(er) number of employees who are not union members.
Additionally, the applicability option for Levies (Non-Trade Union) could be set as “Optional, off by default”. When the template is added to a non-union member, the box next to Levies (Non-Trade Union) – which would have been un-ticked by default – should be ticked.
Use of Formulas
When you add a New Template-Only Item that is either a Deduction or Benefit, you will be able to enter a formula (similar to those used in spreadsheets) to calculate its value.
The process is as follows:
- While you are creating / editing your template, click on New Template-Only Item
- Click on Deduction or Benefit as the type
- Enter the Name
- Select “Formula” as the Input Type
- Enter a Formula by starting with an “=”. You can then also enter variables, numbers and basic mathematical operators such as +, -, *, /, and ( ).
- Examples of basic formulas that could be entered in the Formula field are the following:
- = normal_rate * 40 * 25
- = (basic_salary + normal_pay) / 4.3333 * 0.3333
- Variables which can be used when creating formulas are:
- basic_salary: Basic Salary (salaried employees)
- normal_pay: Basic Hourly Rate (hourly paid employees)
- normal_rate: Hourly Rate
- shifts_worked: Number of shifts worked
- total_income: Total income
- min: Used to select the lowest of the values in the list provided to it
- max: Used to select the highest of the values in the list provided to it
| Further examples of formulas:
Example 1: Bargaining Council Levy An employer must make a contribution that is 0.32% of the employee’s hourly pay, with a maximum contribution of R4.26. Since there is a maximum, the formula must select the lowest of option (1) which is R4.26 and option (2) which is the employee’s pay multiplied by 0.32% = min(4.26, (normal_pay*0.0032)) Example 2: Trade Union deduction An employee must make a contribution of 1% of their hourly pay, plus R1.80. The minimum contribution is R9.13 and the maximum contribution is R16.73. = min (16.73, (max(9.13, (normal_pay*0.01)))) + 1.80 |
An explanation of how to set up a template for a specific bargaining council / regulating authority can be found in the following sections: