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General Purpose Report Design Wizard

The purpose of this payroll action is to provide you with the maximum possible flexibility in creating your own unique custom payroll reports based upon all earnings and deductions data and records you have setup and are using in your payroll system. For Job Cost Accounting users, this is a powerful tool you can use to prepare different kinds of specialized union reports that might be applicable in your business. For other organizations, this is an excellent tool to design special labor analysis reports based upon various payroll data captured throughout the system. In short, once you learn how to use this tool, you can sort, calculate, organize and report just about any kind of payroll information that might be required.

In order to design your report, first study the forms provided by your union or layout the design of a custom report to determine column numbers and data needed for each column. 

When you enter the Module step, the Design Payroll Reports form will be displayed.  The cursor will be in the Select the Report field. You can either select an existing report you have previously designed and edit that report, or press the New button on the toolbar to design a new report.

When entering a new report you will be asked to select the wage group and enter the title for this report. 

On the screen are two tabs: Columns and Payees. The column tab is used to setup the columns to be printed on the report. You can setup as many columns as you need, providing the total width of all visible columns does not exceed 8 inches. You may have to experiment to find out what will look best and still fit.

For each column you will enter the column number, width in inches, format, decimal places, column heading and column contents. Columns can be formatted as currency, text or a number. 

When you enter the contents field, a selector will be displayed so that you may choose the information to print in this column. Choices include employee name and social security number, regular, time and a half and double time hours and wages, and deductions you have setup in the payroll system. A column can be used to print text such as employee name, or used to calculate information such as Total Hours or Total Wages. Calculations can be setup using + to add, - to subtract, * to multiple and / to divide. 

For example, if you want a column titled Total Hours, in the content field you would choose [Regular Wages]+[Time and Half Wages]+[Double Time Wages].

You may also select if the column is to be visible or is to be totaled. If you check the total box, a total for that column will be calculated. If you uncheck the visible box, the information will not print on the report but can be used to calculate payment amounts on the payee tab.

The payee tab is used to calculate payment amounts. Commonly, these "payees" are the special funds to which contractors must contribute, as specified on the union reports. For each payee you will enter a sequence number, the payee name and the calculation.

The sequence number is the order you want the payees to print on the report. The payee name and calculation are used to determine the title and amount that print on the report. If you want to use a column setup on the column tab, enclose the column number in brackets. 

For example, on the column tab you might setup column 3 to be total hours. Now you want to calculate your Health and Welfare Benefit that is $2.00 per hour. The payee name would be Health and Welfare Benefit and the calculation would be [3]*2.00.

Please note: Since this portion of the system is so flexible, with any number of possible combinations of fields of data, calculations, totals, and report formats, we recommend you email us at support@etek.net with any specific questions you might have. Also, feel free to visit our web site page that we have set aside specifically to provide examples of various custom reports you can build. That page is located at http://www.etek.net/payrolldesigns.htm.

To print the report you have designed, go to the Payroll Reports tab and run the Reports Available Via Design Wizard Module step.