Friday Feature – Load Salary Records into Budget from HR

As we continue on our journey through budget creation, we come to one of the most famous features of Escape Online: the integration between position control, salaries and budget. Perhaps you have just created a budget model (they are unlimited BTW) to model a given set of contribution amounts. The Load Salary Records from HR task reads all of the positions and runs through a payroll calculation. All appropriate employer contributions are calculated based on the model’s contribution amounts. Really! One task does all of that!
But, wait there’s more!

Budget masters get options on how to load those salaries with the genius of the Affect Salaries flag. What makes this option different from the Percentage Adjustment is that it is looking at a specific field in the setup records. You get to decide. Do you want to use the figures that are currently in place or do you want to use “budget” figures that you have entered? This is especially helpful when you are working on two fiscal year budgets (this year and next). The Affect Salaries flag gives you the ability to budget for the next year using Budget cell amounts and to budget for the revised using the actual amounts. Check it out.

See how both the Salary Schedule and the Benefit Provider have fields for the “current” rate and a “budget” rate.

For loading salary records, the options for the Affect Salaries flag let you define which amounts in the respective records you are going to use.

Apply Salary Schedule and Benefit Provider Budget Amounts to Actuals Only – Using our example, this would load $114,248.00 and $1,050.27 for actual budget items. (Remember, “actual” means salaries that were “locked in” when they were loaded or imported/entered as actual.)

Apply Salary Schedule and Benefit Provider Budget Amounts to Both Actuals and Projections – This is the same as above only it is going to load the figures into projections, too. (Remember, “projections” are salaries that were “open” when they were loaded or imported/entered as projections.)

Do Not Apply Budget Amounts in Salary Schedule and Benefit Providers – This is going to use the “real” rates ($111,848.00 and $940.59) for actual and projection budget items.

Apply Salary Schedule and Benefit Provider Budget Amounts to Projections Only – This is going to leave those actual amounts alone and only load the “budget” rates into projections. This means that if you had any adjustments during pay, those will be honored in the budget. This is the default.

Regardless of your choice, budget salary items previously loaded from HR or copied from another model will be replaced. (Manual items will not be replaced.) And, benefit account/amounts will be recomputed, and benefit accounts will be created, if they do not already exist and if it is appropriate (as defined on the Ledger tab of the Organization record).

No matter how you want to finesse your budget, the Affect Salaries flag gives you the options you need for the type of change you are making.

Stay tuned for next week’s look at how this flag works with vacancies!