New HRM Tool Tip for Deductions on Health Benefit Records

Datatech’s HRM Software has just made it a little easier to check the deductions being calculated when a Health Benefit Record is added or edited. For those who want to see what calculation the software is making to come up with the amount it will deduct for the employee, a new Tool Tip will pop up when the “Amount” box (to the right of the “Employee Cost” field) is clicked with your mouse pointer. Once you have updated your software to version 7.73.0.437 (or newer), you can make use of this new feature.

To begin using the feature, first go to the Employee Entry window and select an employee number. Then click on the Health Benefits tab. You can click the New button to add a new record, or, if an entry already exists that you want to view or edit, highlight that record and click the edit button, or simply double-click that record.

Next click the “Select Plan” button and select (or re-select) the correct Medical Plan from your menu. The deduction amount recorded in your Medical Plan should automatically populate into the “Employee Cost” field. However, suppose your deduction amount is a weekly amount and the employee gets paid monthly or semimonthly? Or suppose the amount is a monthly amount and your employee is paid weekly? How do you know the exact amount the software will deduct from each check?

The new Tool Tip now shows you what calculations are being made and what the actual deduction amount on the pay check will be. Clicking your mouse pointer in the “Amount” box to the right of the “Employee Cost” field will popup the Tool Tip, showing you the basic deduction information. Now hold the Shift key and click the Save button. This saves the entry without closing the Record you have open. Clicking your mouse pointer again over the “Amount” box now shows you any conversion factors being applied as well as the final amount that will be deducted from of each paycheck. Note the screen shot below for an example of what you might see. In this example, the Pay Cycle is “S” for Semimonthly and the Medical Plan indicates the Employee Share is $20.00 per week. A conversion factor is therefore applied to multiply the weekly amount times 52 weeks to determine the annual amount, then divide the annual amount by 24 paychecks to reach the correct semimonthly amount of $43.33 per check.

Form 941 update available

An update is available now that includes changes made to the federal Form 941 for 2017.  Customer that are running The Farmer’s Office, The Labor Contractor’s Office, The Shipper’s Office, The Broker’s Office or Food Processor Accounting can use the Check for Updates option on the Tools menu to download and install this update.

Customers that are using another program will need to call our customer support department to schedule a time to install the update.

If you do not need to file the 941 form (i.e. all of your employees are classified as 943 employees, or you are not using the payroll system) then this update is not required.

This update does include some database changes to the payroll check file.  The database update might take some extra time to complete depending on the size of your payroll history file.  We recommend that you schedule installation of this update either before or after regular working hours to minimize downtime.  Installing the update running the program on your server first will complete the database updates in the least amount of time.

 

 

Datatech expands Support/Training pages

Fresno, California – In an effort to help our clients grow in their learning and make the most of their software purchase, we continue to expand and reorganize the Support/Training videos pages of our website. Supporting clients with our friendly Support and Training staff on the phone, online and in person is an extremely important part our overall mission to provide leading software solutions in ag cost-accounting, payroll, inventory and sales and excellent customer service.

Time is money and we strive to help clients simplify their daily cost accounting and payroll entry to save hours in the workday. Datatech client Cindy Kramer from Farmex and Sundance Orchards in Sanger, California says Datatech has given them their time back, “The more we explore it(Datatech Software), the more we are freed up from what we were doing before.” Farmex and Sundance made the jump from doing their accounting, inventory and sales by hand with spreadsheets to Datatech’s ‘The Shipper’s Office’ software with payroll, “Following the information for payables and receivables on the office side is so much easier than it was for the employees. I recommend it to anybody. For us it was a quantum leap!”

To aid Farmex and Sundance Orchards and all our clients, Datatech’s Support/Training videos have now been re-organized into sections such as ‘Payroll’; ‘Webinar Training’; ‘Accounts Payable’ and ‘Human Resource Management.’ These sections include training videos for refreshers on initial training with Datatech’s Training Manager, Hannah Tarrats, and many topics to help clients refresh their learning for various training in quarterly and annual reporting. Knowledge is power.

The new ‘Accounts Payable’ section includes the first webinar training video on ‘Bank Reconcilement Training’ for new clients and those that would like a refresher for their monthly reconciliation process. Clients will now also find a new training video on a recent software update that allows for creating new rules for piece work ‘break’ line items in Datatech’s payroll software. Just another way Datatech is being responsive to your needs and requests.

These training videos are available 24/7, 365 days a year on DatatechAg.com/Support. 

Ready? Get set! Learn! It’s that easy.

Datatech software clients are found across America as farmers, growers, labor contractors and produce packers, shippers and brokers; and they’ve been enjoying time savings and greater efficiency with their daily payroll, cost accounting, real time inventory and sales solutions since 1980.

Insidious scams force warning

FRESNO, Calif. – Several scams out there, but these two are particularly scary.  Security leaders at the IRS are warning payroll and HR departments about a W2 phishing scam that appears to come from executive management seeking sensitive employee data. And an alert from the Better Business Bureau warns individuals about a phone scam across the country where the caller on the line starts the call with, “Can you hear me?”

The insidious “Can you hear me?” scam will trap the victim by simply answering “yes.” Here’s what’s going on, the scammer behind the call may have recorded you to use your confirmation to sign you up for a product or service then demand payment. If you refuse the scammers will try threatening you with legal action and produce your recorded “yes” response as your confirmation.

These two phishing and phone scams have security leaders particularly worried

There is another variation of this scam where the scammer can charge your accounts as they may already have your personal information on hand through a prior data breach and that recording may be used to authorize charges. If you try and dispute them, they may also produce the recording as proof you agreed to charges.

The BBB Scam Tracker shows the scam popping in several places around the country including, but not limited to, California, Wisconsin, Colorado, Virginia, Florida, Pennsylvania and Montana. The victims so far have not lost any money, but should still stay cautious.

Here’s what the BBB recommends to protect yourself from being the latest victim of this scam.

• If someone calls and asks “Can you hear me?” do NOT answer “yes” JUST HANG UP. The caller may even ask different questions designed for you to respond with “yes.” If they seem to be fishing for a “yes” or “no” answer do not respond and hang up immediately. The scammer can even be looking for you to say “ok” instead of “yes.”

• Never give any personal information over the phone unless you initiated the phone call yourself and have verified the number beforehand.

• Write down the phone number of those violating the Do Not Call Registry and file a scam report with BBB Scam Tracker and the FTC’s Do Not Call List.

• If you are asked to press a button to be placed on the Do Not Call Registry just hang up the phone. Saying anything or pressing buttons when prompted may help the scam artists identify you have an active phone number.

• If you believe you may have fallen for this scam contact your local authorities, your bank and credit card companies immediately. Also, check your account daily for any suspicious charges.

Remember that no Government agency will ever solicit you for the Do Not Call Registry, or harass you into paying them money.

IRS sounds a warning

Recently the Internal Revenue Service issued an alert to payroll and human resources professionals about an email scam, which first emerged last year, and is again working its way across the country. This scam is particularly dangerous say security experts.

Company payroll leaders should double check any executive-level or unusual requests for lists of Forms W-2 or Social Security numbers says the IRS

Says the CalChamber, “In this scam, cyber-criminals attempt to trick payroll and human resource officials into disclosing employee names, SSNs and income information. The thieves then use the stolen personal information and data to try to obtain money, including filing fraudulent tax returns for refunds.”

Security experts say the criminals send a fake e-mail pretending to be from the actual CEO or CFO of the company. In the email, the “CEO” requests a list of employees and information about the employees, including their SSNs, from company payroll officers or human resource employees.

Note some of the verbiage that may be contained in the emails: “Kindly send me the individual 2016 W-2 (PDF) and earnings summary of all W-2 of our company staff for a quick review.” or “Can you send me the updated list of employees with full details(Name, Social Security Number, Date of Birth, Home Address, Salary).” And, “I want you to send me the list of W-2 copy of employees wage and tax statement for 2016, I need them in PDF file type, you can send it as an attachment. Kindly prepare the lists and email them to me asap.”

The IRS warns that cyber-criminals are using more sophisticated tactics to try to steal even more data that will allow them to impersonate taxpayers. Employers can can visit the IRS website to get assistance with reporting phishing and other online scams.

Datatech serves payroll employers and HR professionals in the ag industry with state of the art payroll and cost accounting software. Our help guides are timely resources to help you navigate the challenges of ag payroll for farmers and labor contractors and the challenges for produce packers and shippers in tracking inventory and sales accounting. Go here and download our free help guides.

Reporting AB 1513 wages to the EDD

Recently we were able to get a few answers on how the EDD wants the AB 1513 wages reported.  We will be creating a special DE-9/DE-9C report specifically for these wages.  It will be a separate process from the regular quarterly reporting workflow.  The late notice that the EDD gave employers means that it will take some time before the this reporting software is ready.  The best estimate that we can provide right now is that it will be ready sometime in February.

This special DE-9/DE-9C will find all of the safe harbor checks that you issued during the fourth quarter by selecting checks issued with the special Safe Harbor wage type.  It will then look at the Safe Harbor Detail file to determine which quarters each employee worked and allocate the total Safe Harbor wages earned among those quarters.

Ideally the EDD would have wanted the AB 1513 wages to be reported separately from regular wages.  However, many customers have already filed their quarterly reports and included the Safe Harbor wages in their regular quarterly report for the fourth quarter of 2016 (a number of employers filed their reports even before the EDD sent the notices out).  To keep things simple, we will not be doing any special programming for the quarterly report to exclude the Safe Harbor wages.  This means that you should not delay filing your regular electronic reports and making tax deposits for all wages issued in the fourth quarter.

When you file your AB 1513 quarterly reports, you will need to include a note to the EDD indicating that your electronic report for the fourth quarter of 2016 included the AB 1513 wages that you are reporting.  This way, the EDD will not double count these wages when entering them into their systems.

The EDD cannot accept electronic reports for the AB 1513 wages.  This means you will need to submit reports on paper (!) for up to 14 quarters (July 2012 thru December 2015) for the safe harbor wages that you have issued.  You should have received a notice from the EDD with a special address for submitting these reports.

If you have any additional questions, please leave a reply to this post.

Bad address tracking update

Some new features have been added to help track bad employee addresses.  Use the Check for Updates option to download the current version that includes these changes.  Note:  This update includes a change that requires an update to the payroll check database table.  This change may take some time to complete, so it may be best to schedule installation of this update before or after normal hours or during a time that it won’t disrupt normal operations.

A checkbox has been added to the employee file to indicate that an employee has a bad mailing address.  You can check this box when you have a W-2 or other piece of mail returned as not deliverable.

If you obtain a new address for an employee that previously had a bad address, make sure to uncheck the Bad address box.

We have also added a checkbox to indicate a bad address on the employee entry window in the Human Resource Management program.

Last year we included a feature to skip printing W-2’s for employees that are missing an address.  This feature has been extended to also skip printing W-2’s if the employee account has had their address flagged as bad.  (Of course, if an employee with a bad address picks up their W-2 in person, you can always print the W-2 on demand.)

Of course, this option should only be used when printing the employee copy.  If you submit W-2’s to the SSA on paper and not electronically, you will need to print all employees regardless of the status of their address.

A similar option is available when printing the 1095-C forms in the Human Resource Management program:

Since many customers have kept track of bad addresses when sending out AB 1513 notices and payments, the program can also update employee accounts with the bad address status that was recorded in the AB 1513 employee file.  Keep in mind that the AB 1513 employee file is a separate database table.  The Bad Address status is not automatically transferred to the main employee file.  To flag accounts in the main employee file that have bad addresses recorded in the Safe Harbor Employee file, right click on the Bad checkbox and use the option on the popup menu to import the status from the 1513 employee file:

Finally, a selection has been added to the Employee List window to select employees to print based on their Bad Address status:

 

AB 1513 Notices from the EDD

Many customers are receiving notices from the EDD regarding reporting AB 1513 wages.  Unfortunately the notice raises several questions that it doesn’t directly address.  We have a copy of the notice and we do not know anything beyond the information in the notice.

We do have a call into the EDD and hope to get a call back and get some answers to these questions as soon as possible.  In the meantime, if you have questions, we recommend calling the number listed at the bottom of the notice, 916-651-9695.

When we have additional information we will post it on the blog.

 

Minimum wage reminder

The minimum wage changed on January 1st to $10.50/hour in California.  Many other states schedule their rate changes for January 1st as well.

The DIR has a FAQ page for the minimum rate change in California that you may want to review.

To double check that you have the correct minimum wage rate for 2017, go to Payroll->Setup->State Tax Rates.  The state tax rates for 2017 should automatically be displayed (assuming you have closed 2016 already).  Click on the Minimum Wage tab page:

The minimum wage settings should show the previous minimum wage rate and the new minimum wage.  The previous minimum wage will be used for minimum wage verification of piecework wages for any days worked in the prior year.

Also, as explained in the Year End Update help file, several states have different minimum wages that apply depending on what region/city you are located in.  In these cases, we are not able to determine which minimum wage rate may apply to your company.  In these cases you may need to override the minimum wage rate provided in the state tax rate updates to use the rate that applies to your operation.

The Year End Help file contains additional helpful information about minimum wage rate changes.  To view this information, go to the Help->Year End Help option in the program and click on the Minimum Wage topic under Year End Update 2016 in the table of contents.

 

 

 

Safe Harbor Payments & Look-Back Sick Pay Calculations

If you are using the Look-Back method for sick pay hourly rate calculations and entered a new Wage Code for the Safe Harbor payments, you should double-check the setting for “Include in Regular Rate of Pay Calculations” on the Wage Type setup.

If the box is checked the software will include Safe Harbor wages into the look-back rate calculation, thus increasing the average hourly rate for any employees that request sick pay within 90 days of receiving a Safe Harbor payment.

The “Include in Regular Rate of Pay Calculation” setting should be unchecked:

If you’re not sure what method you are using for sick pay calculations, there’s no harm in changing the setting any way.

 

Handling TIN Validation errors

The most common error employers received in the 1095-C acknowledgement file was the TIN validation error.  (TIN stands for Taxpayer Identification Number.)  This error indicates the the IRS could not match the social security number and name information provided in the electronic 1095-C record to the Social Security Administration’s database.

There are several reasons for a TIN Validation can occur.  It could be a problem where the data was not entered correctly either in your payroll system or in the Social Security Administration’s system.  A typo or transposed letters when entering the employee’s name could trigger the error.  The electronic 1095-C file splits up the employee name into separate first, middle, last and suffix fields.  It could be that you have the correct employee name, but the middle name was entered in the last name field.  It could be that you are missing the middle name (perhaps the employee didn’t include it on their I-9 f0rm).