Retrospective Pay Run

Reviewing Employees in the Retro Run

Click on the Retro pending count link to see employees who have retro records pending i.e. unprocessed records with an effective date before the first day of the current pay period:

• Employee: searchable field

• Payroll no: searchable field

• NI number: clicking on the link opens the employee record

• In retro: a tick identifies the employee as having a pending retro record and, unless specifically excluded, will be included in a Retro run

• In run: a tick identifies that the employee, unless specifically excluded, is to be included in the main Pay Run

• Action: click on the Action link to open the Payroll Events report. From this report it is possible to look at the individual Payroll Events and also the source records.

Adding/Excluding Employees from a Retro Run

To exclude an employee from Retro processing select the relevant employee(s) using the checkbox as shown below, and click on the Exclude from retro button.

Note - if the search facility is being used to locate employees they should be selected using the checkbox in the normal way but the 'Exclude from retro' button should be clicked after each employee is selected i.e. do not search for employee, select employee, search for employee, select employee...repeat... and then after the final employee is selected click on the 'Exclude from retro' buttons - as only the final employee selected will be excluded from the retro run.  The same rule applies if adding employees back into the retro run.

The 'Eligible Employees in Pay Run' report will automatically open with the 'In retro' column marked with a cross signifying that the employee has been excluded from the Retro run.  If there is no tick or cross against the 'In retro' column it means there is no retro pending record.

An employee can be excluded from Retro or added back to Retro from the this screen.

To add back an employee who has been previously excluded from retro, select the relevant employee(s) by checking the box on the left and then click on the Add to retro button

The Action column is flagged with 'Retro' for any employees who have retro records to be processed. Employees with an Action of 'Current' have had changes effective in the current period made since the last Pay Run. Those with no action listed have had no changes made since the last Pay Run.

Processing a Retro Run

Click on the Retro stage on the Payroll Path to initiate the Retro Pay Run:

The following 'Retro Pay Run' message will be displayed advising of the number of employees to be processed in the Retro Pay Run.  Retro Pay Runs are incremental in nature i.e. only employees with a new retro change since the last retro pay run will be included in the 'Retro pending' count. If an employee has been excluded from the retro run this will not be reflected in the 'Retro pending' count but the number of employees the 'Retro Pay Run' message below will reflect any excluded employees.  

If there is a requirement to recalculate a retro for an employee who has had no change since the last run, click on the Eligible EEs count link, select the relevant employee using the check box and then click on the Add to retro run button.

Clicking on the Review retro employees button will open the 'Retro Pending' report (as shown above) listing all employees with a retro event that is pending processing i.e. providing another route to adding or excluding employees prior to processing.

Employees can be added to or excluded from the Retro run directly from the 'Review retro employees' screen.

Click on the Draft retro button from the 'Retro Pay Run' message to start processing any pending retro records.

Note - the payroll path is hidden to prevent anyone else processing the same payroll simultaneously.

On completion of the Retro Pay Run the counts are updated to reflect retro records that have been processed: 

In this example 'Retro pending' has been reset to 0 (as these have been processed), and the 'Pay' count has been incremented to 3 to reflect the retro records that have now been processed.

If an employee with a retro event had been excluded from the retro run, the 'Retro pending' count would be incremented to reflect. 

At this point the user can rerun the Retro, go back to the Prepare stage or move on to the Draft Pay Run stage.

If there are any errors during the Retro run the landing page on completion of the Retro will be the 'Errors' sub-tab. Depending on the type of error the employee will be identified allowing the User to make the appropriate changes before reprocessing. 

Reviewing Output from the Retro Run

Click on the Pay count link to open the Employee Pay report. The report has a Retro payments column where shows any employees who have had a retro processed within the run.

By click the Retro payment value will open Retro pay by Employee report where shows the list of Retro pay details which are included in the calculation:

In 2023R2,  a drill-down function is introduced to help you to easily identify exactly what makes up the back pay from the information given on the Payslip. 

To view the breakdown of the backpay calculation:

Go to View payslip, right click the link on backpay, select ‘Open link in new Tab’

The list of pay details which makes up the back pay will open in a new window:

From the Employee Pay report the draft payslip for the current and previous pay period together with the employee YTDs are available via the report links.   

The Pay record link gives access to Pay Summary information, a breakdown of Pay Elements calculated and also HMRC related information.  These are shown below:

Pay Summary tab:

Payments & Deductions tab:

in 2023R2, a complete reversal on Timesheet, Absence, Expenses and Loans pay details can be found under the same tab:

HMRC tab:

Payroll Events

Click on the Events link to drilldown into the specific event type that are awaiting processing for the selected employee:

Mandatory Events

A mandatory event is one that must be processed before the period can be completed.

If a Pay Element has been processed and then subsequently deleted this creates a mandatory event meaning that the system will force it to be reprocessed in the current period.  If the Pay Element deleted related to a previous period it will automatically increment the 'Retro pending' count by 1.  By clicking on the Retro pending count link the Retro pending view will open and the Action column will show 'Retro*'.  The * signifies a mandatory event: 

Click on the Retro* link to see Payroll events for this Employee. From here you can see that the deleted Pay Element is flagged as a mandatory event.  Click on the Payroll Event link to drill down into the actual event:

• Payroll Event: link to Payroll event record

• Event type: details the object that change relates to. There will be 2 records per change (inserted and updated) where change relates to a new record being created.

• Effective: date the change is effective from.  If the date is appended with an (R) the system has recognized this as a retrospective change i.e. effective date is before the current period start date.

• Created: the date the record was created.  If the date is appended with (C+) the change has been made after the HR cut-off date.

• Creator: the user that made the change.  If the user is appended with (P) the change has been made by a Payroll Admin and as such will be automatically included in processing in the current period, otherwise the change has been initiated outside payroll and will need to go through the relevant approval process to be considered for the current pay run.

• Mandatory event: this will be automatically checked if the change is to take account of any records that may have been deleted and therefore for data integrity purposes must be processed in the current pay period. Mandatory event is also checked where the tax code has changed to 0T W1/M1 i.e. for employees in receipt of payment after a leave date has been submitted to HMRC.

• Action: actions are system generated and can be one of the following:

  • Current: a change that has an effective date in the current pay period

  • Retro: a change that has an effective date prior to the start of the current pay period

Related Videos

• Payroll Processing - Adding and Excluding Employees