“Why does Sage 50 offer employee’s deduction by an amount or a percentage of gross in payroll but only an amount when it comes to employer’s portion?”

You may have asked yourself this question many times when you try to set-up a group benefit such as an RRSP or MSP.  With no doubt I can imagine your puzzled faces when you are provided with the answer that you have to manually calculate the employer’s portion each time creating a paycheque unless it's a fixed amount.

In Sage 50 2015.1, this is no longer an issue.  All you need to do are two easy steps when configuring the employer’s expense of the group benefit.

First, under Setup, Settings, Payroll, there is an additional option called Other Expenses.  When you click on that, you will see the employer’s expense, which is also known as User-Defined Expenses, listed in the first column on the right panel.  You can configure the employer’s portion of the group benefit to be deducted by a percentage of gross instead of a fixed amount.

Second, open individual employee record and click on the WCB & Other Expenses tab (It can be something other than WCB. For example, WSIB if you are in Ontario).  You will find a new column called Percent per Period, which allows you to define the percentage of the employer’s expense.

We hope this new feature in Sage 50 2015 can help you save time when doing your payroll entries with group benefits.  In case you need to review how to set-up a group benefit, you can read the knowledgebase article below.

10287 How do I create group benefits, such as a Group RRSP, MSP?

See you next time.