Ace Payroll: Ace Payroll Mailbag




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Ace Payroll Mailbag

Deleting old employees	Payment of accounts
Downloading upgrades from website	Pricing for non profit agencies
Historical data entry	Suitability for large employers
Holiday day accumulation	Support contract renewal

Welcome to Mailbag. In this section of our website, we post questions and feedback emailed to us from clients, and our replies. We do this so we can hopefully answer questions you'd never thought of asking, courtesy of the person who did think of asking it!

Please note that all details about the sender of the email are removed for privacy reasons, and the emails and our replies are usually modified slightly before posting here to reflect the fact we are speaking to a wider audience.

If you have a question or feedback for the Mailbag, feel free to email us.

Downloading upgrades from website

I downloaded ver 3.07A over the weekend and now find my program is a demo version. The program now uses some old files and some new files. How do I go about fixing it?

3.07A is only available online as a demo program.

When we place an upgrade on the site, you can only download it if you have purchased a version in that series from us. When you install a downloaded upgrade, it checks what version you have, and your registration details. We need to do this otherwise people could avoid buying our program and upgrades, and Ace Payroll wouldn't exist within a year!

To fix the problem you would either need to try and install the last registered version you received, or alternatively get a 3.07A by calling Ace Payroll.

The rule to remember is you can only download a version if you have a prior version from the same series. For example, if you have 3.05A you could download 3.05B - 3.05Z. If you had 3.06A you could download 3.06B-3.06Z. Trying to download an upgrade when you have not purchased the upgrade to that series will (no maybes!) stop your payroll from functioning properly.

Suitability for large employers

We currently pay 600 employees per pay period. Can Ace Payroll cope with a large companies payroll?

Ace Payroll can cope with a large payroll. There is nothing "special" that a product like (competitor) does that Ace Payroll does not do. Ace Payroll has long been marketed as being especially useful for a smaller business, while (competitor) target larger companies. In terms of actual "payroll" however, in many ways Ace Payroll is more suitable for a larger firm. For example, our data structure is very tidy, meaning access is fast, and a large number of records can be reliably stored.

The biggest "problem" we tend to have with larger firms is a perception one. Frankly, if we moved our fees up 5 or 8-fold I suspect we'd find larger businesses who previously said no would say yes.

Deleting old employees

Since it is good practice to only delete employees after they have been gone for seven years or more, it would be good to get a report of those that have finished more than 7 years ago. Possible?

Sort of. Go to Reports then Miscellaneous Report. Ensure only "IRD & Payment" is ticked then click GO. This is probably the easiest way of viewing the finish dates for all of your staff.

Pricing for non profit agencies

Hi there!
We work for a not-for profit community agency, employing 7 part-time staff. We have always used a wages book, but the system is getting too complicated. Could you please send us some information about your product. We'd also like to know of any other similar agencies who use Ace that we could talk to about how easy it is!

A lot of not-for-profit agencies now use Ace Payroll for their wages. In most cases, we are able to offer a special price to not-for-profit agencies, and more importantly, the ongoing support costs are reasonable. Most important of all, we find most of these agencies don't have a full time pay clerk, making an easy to use system like Ace perfect. We have many satisfied non-profit groups using our software, and would be happy to provide you with some contact details if it would help you to make the right decision.

Holiday day accumulation

We pay holiday pay using the As Per Act routine with everyones entitlement due 31.12.99 In each employees holiday section we want the holidays available to show as owing at 31/12 less taken so far. eg. one of our employees has used 3 days this year. His days owed to him at 31.12.99 were 14, but his holidays owing shows 12 now because 1.640 days were added automatically by the program. This is going to be confusing in that employees will begin to use the days in advance. How can we stop this entitlement from being added each month?

Love the program - using (competitor) before and we had constant headaches.

Click on Setup (the small Setup item, on the top menu bar) and then on Extremely Fine Tuning then click "As per act show current year" and set it to "NO". Doing this will show the entire entitlement being added when the employee reaches their anniversary date, and will stop the entitlement being added every month.

Historical Data Entry

I have had a couple of hours looking at the demonstration download and have a couple of questions.

1. I would like to add the last years data (hours to each person)?
2. If part timer works at different rates can this be entered as one person or does it have to be set up twice.?
3. Can hours be entered re payment of a salary.(To check hours worked)

Looks Great. Cheers

(1) You can put historical data in. Most people do a One Off Payment (Employee/Make A One Off Payment) for the 1st April and put in the total gross and tax earnt year to date for each employee. If you'd like to be able to get monthly reports, do a One Off Payment for 1st April, 1st May etc and put in the gross/tax totals for each month. More information about one off payments is at www.acepay.co.nz/fqoneoff.htm

(2) Yes you can set up multiple pay rates. If you go into Setup, Company Defaults and then Pay Rate Structure you can set up to 6 different pay rates. In those case, you would define an "Ord Hours 2", the multiplier would be "1.000" and the field would be related to itself (ie copy the setup for "Ordinary Hours!"). Then its just a case of setting the rate of pay for each employee (ie just like ordinary hours) For more info about Pay Rates, try www.acepay.co.nz/fqprtqrt.htm

(3) Hours can be entered along with a salary, but we don't really recommend it. Some people put in 40 hours at a zero rate, and pay a salary, but its just extra mucking around. If you really want to record the hours, put in an hourly rate for the employee and set an amount of hours in Usual Pay. The amount will appear each week automatically (just like a salary) so theres no more work, but you get your hours reporting.

Support Contract Renewal

With regard to the Support Contract renewal, we have decided not to renew and just pay for any help desk assistance we may need. Can you please confirm that you will advise us of any taxation changes or Ace Payroll upgrades so that we can purchase them.

We are very happy with Ace Payroll and thank you very much for the assistance you have given us to get started.

Yes, if you are on casual support, we send a letter whenever there is an upgrade. All support needs to be done on 0900-592-437. That's the only difference between casual and contract - you won't miss any upgrades, but there is a charge for each one.

Payment Of Accounts

Our policy for paying accounts is to pay them on the 20th of the month following the invoice date. As the date on the invoice says 6 June 2000, we will not be paying this until 20 July 2000. I cannot see anything on your invoice that says its a seven- or fourteen-day invoice, or anything that resembles a "deadline".

We do wish at this point to renew the support contract, so please don't cancel us just yet! Your payment will arrive before the end of this month. Let me know if this is not convenient.

That sounds ok - we send the first renewal out 6 weeks before the contract actually expires, partly to allow people to fit the invoice "in with their system". Some people pay the day they get it, some people pay a day before the contract expires. As long as its paid before the contract expires, everything continues as usual.

Call Toll Free
0800 223 729

Updated: 2nd April 2006
Published: 18th June 2000

Unless otherwise indicated this document is the original work of Ace Payroll Plus Ltd, and is copyrighted accordingly. This copyright is protected under New Zealand and international law. Infringement or attempted dilution of these intellectual property rights will be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.