New: Set a reducing balance on pay items (NZ only)

[Taelor_R]

Reducing balances—stop tracking employee deductions!

(New Zealand only) Thanks to  reducing balances, you can set new deductions to stop automatically once they reach a certain amount. If you need to track any kind of deduction with a set limit (for example, your employee has a court fine, or is paying back an advance), Essentials will now keep track of it for you. 

Plus, you can link a single deduction to multiple employees, and deduct a different amount for each one.

Note: Reducing balances only work for newly created deductions right now, but soon you'll be able to add them to existing deductions.
Also, you can't add a reducing balance to a Child Support deduction.

To set a deduction which will stop automatically, create a new deduction and tick Reducing balance deduction. 

Then, when you add the new deduction to an employee, you’ll be able to set a balance. The balance is the total amount to be deducted (say, a court fine of $250).

Next, you can set the amount to be deducted each pay. Once the balance reaches $0 the deductions will stop automatically. 

For example, Andrew has a court fine of $250, and is paying $50 a week. After five weeks his balance reaches $0 and the deduction stops—whether you’ve kept track of it or not!

Andrew can see his remaining balance and his deductions on his payslip, and you can check and edit the balance at any time (did Andrew get another court fine? Add it to the first!).

For now you can only set a reducing balance on new deductions, but soon you’ll be able to set a reducing balance on an existing deduction.

Learn more about reducing balance deductions.

Custom deductions

If reducing balances aren’t much use to you, we’ve got another trick up our sleeves—now you can link a single deduction to multiple employees, and deduct a different amount for each one.

For example, say Andrew is paying a court fine off at $50 a week, but Romesh is paying his off at $60. Instead of creating separate pay items for each person and tracking them both, now you can create a single deduction called ‘Court fine’ and link it to both Romesh and Andrew, and set a customised deduction amount for each of them. 

What's more, you can link 'Court fine' to as many employees as you want, and you can change the deduction amount at any point.

Just link the deduction as usual from your employee’s page, enter their deduction amount in the deduction field, then click Save and you’re done!