Preparing for Moving Day

Moving day and the month of June is an important period for many farming businesses.

June marks the ending of one season, and the beginning of preparations for the next. It involves a lot of work, planning, and coordination. For those who employ staff, moving day can also have a significant impact on payroll.

To ensure a smooth transition and avoid payroll issues, we’ve prepared a number of tips to help you prepare for the moving day, handle termination pay, and manage their payroll process.

This guide includes tips on how to prepare pays early, how to calculate termination pay, and how to use our digital contracts. It also provides information on leave balances and payment history reports.

Moving day can be stressful, but it doesn't have to be when it comes to payroll. Using the right payroll tools and having clear communication with your team can make all the difference. This is particularly important this year, with the first weekend of June also coinciding with King’s Birthday and a public holiday on Monday.

Prepare Pays Early

Prepare for moving day early and run your pays in plenty of time. It's fine to pay the staff before their usual payday if it conflicts with Moving Day.

This is important because farmers often have a significant number of employees who need to be paid on a regular basis, and any delays or errors in processing pays can have serious consequences for both employees and farm operations. By preparing pays early, you can ensure that your employees receive their pay on time and without any issues.

Adding New Employees

We know you’ve got so much to worry about on moving day, so be sure to set up new employees in PaySauce as early as you can to save any last-minute payroll problems.

You'll need to have these basic details handy for each new employee:

• Full name
• Email address
• IRD number
• Bank account number
• Tax code
• KiwiSaver details

When you click the New Employee button in PaySauce it will start off the "wizard" - this will get the employee loaded into your company and you can finish the remaining details later.

If you want to speak to a PaySauce expert, give us a call on 0800 746 700 or flick us an email.

Digital Contracts

Farmers need specialised employment agreements for their staff, including on-site accommodation agreements, health & safety requirements, and details about farm-working conditions.

Our Federated Farmers Contract Builder app is ideal and you don't even have to be a PaySauce customer to use it. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to use our contract builder, along with FAQs to answer any questions you may have.

If you have used the contract builder, you can import the employee directly into PaySauce and then enter the balance of their details. How easy is that!

Don't wait until the last minute to sign up to PaySauce. If you have your staff details handy, you can set them up straight away. Our onboarding team is also always here to help!

Termination Tips

There can be a lot of things to think about when it's time to terminate an employee. You don’t want surprises when you’re trying to get the pay out the door on pay day!

These are some reports to help get the termination process started:

• Create a Termination Pay report to check the current values of the termination pays
• Run a Leave Payment History report to check that the leave that’s been recorded is what you think it should be
• Check out the leave balances by running a Leave Balances report.

When they leave, employees are due their outstanding annual leave as well as any alternative public holidays owed. They also need to be paid for any public holidays that fall after their last day if they have an entitled leave balance that would take them to the public holiday date.

If your terminating employee has some entitled leave days (leftover leave from last year), count the number of working days on a calendar from their last day of work. If the days cross a public holiday (like King's Birthday on 5th June), they should be paid for that public holiday too.

Here's an example...

Ella is finishing work on the 31st May. She has a balance of 124.57 annual leave hours - 36.5 of these are entitled leave hours and the rest are accrued.

Ella normally works Monday to Friday, with weekends off. She normally works 8 hours per day. Her entitled leave works out to be equivalent to about 4.5 days, so if I add 4.5 days to her final day that brings me through to Wednesday 7th June. Ella is entitled to be paid for the public holiday which falls on the 3rd of June even though it is after her final day of work.

Jennifer is also finishing up on the 31st May, and she has a balance of 75.64 hours. All of this leave is accrued leave, not entitled. She will not be paid for the public holiday on the 3rd of June, as she has no entitled leave with which to count forward.

We recommend you print out each employee's Termination Pay Report and check the Leave Payment History report, to make sure all 'taken' leave has been recorded.

Here is the step by step guide on how to generate a termination report and terminate an employee within PaySauce.

For more information on termination pays, check out this guide.

To sum up...

By following our tips outlined in this guide, you can minimise payroll issues, ensure compliance, and maintain good communication with your team.

If you’re a PaySauce customer, check out PaySauce's knowledge base to get all the help you need in one place.