A pay rate change is an update to what an employee is paid, taking effect from a set date. In Smartly, Pay Rate Changes is where you prepare, review and process those updates for one or more employees at a time, along with any backpay the change creates
Backpay is the extra amount owed when a pay rate change takes effect in a pay period an employee has already been paid for. If someone's increase is approved in June but backdated to 1 April, backpay covers the difference between what they were paid and what they should have been paid for the affected pay period.
Yes. Add the employees you want to update, apply the same effective date and new rate to all of them in one action, then adjust individual rates where they differ. Each pay rate change covers a single pay group, so employees in different pay groups need a separate change each.
Yes, for the most part. Where a pay rate change takes effect in a pay period that's already been paid, Smartly identifies that backpay is required and calculates it across the affected pay periods and pay components. Where a change lands part-way through an already-paid pay period, Smartly flags the employee and asks you to confirm how much of that period to include before it finishes the calculation.
Yes. Every employee has a backpay breakdown showing the calculation by pay component, and the Backpay Calculation Detail report gives the full working across each pay period in the backpay period. It's there for checking a number before you process it, and for answering a question about it afterwards.
Backpay is added to the employee's next available pay run once the pay rate change has been processed, and appears as a separate earning in their pay so it can be checked before the pay run goes through. If you want to pay it separately, create the manual pay before the next normal pay, because Smartly adds backpay to the first pay packet created.
An effective date can be set to any date on or after the employee's start date. Past, current and future effective dates are all supported, and Smartly works out from the date whether backpay applies.
No. A new rate can't be lower than an employee's current rate. The check is there to stop a rate being moved backwards by mistake.
Smartly calculates backpay for eligible earnings affected by a pay rate change, such as ordinary hours, additional pay rates genuinely based on the employee’s hourly rate, and eligible leave payments. It doesn’t recalculate earnings-based allowances, one-off payments, fixed-dollar additional rates, or percentage-based deductions and benefits. You can review the backpay breakdown before processing so you can see what has been included.
