What are Salary codes?

Salary codes in Planday are used to identify and report different shifts, mainly when you use accounting software to process your payroll. They help categorise the shifts and make managing and tracking payroll-related information easier. For example, you can use salary codes to differentiate regular working hours, overtime, sick leave, or any other specific types of shifts for accurate reporting and payroll calculations.

When and where can you use Salary codes

Salary codes have a hierarchy when placed in different areas of Planday.

A general Salary code can be set for all normal Shifts that cover all the hours. This is sufficient under most circumstances.
A Salary code can also be set for each Employee group. This will overrule the general code to differentiate Shifts belonging to that Employee group.
In rare cases, a Salary code can also be set on each employee's wage. This will overrule the general one and the one set on the Employee group level.

Please keep Salary codes simple and avoid using special characters or punctuation marks, as that may interfere with your payroll integration service.

Use alphanumeric names, for example, Under18 or Full-time, but avoid using complex characters such !partTime&(u18*) €FullTimer%100Pay.

Click on the sections below to expand

How to set a general Salary code

You can set up a general Salary code for all normal shifts simply by going to Settings > Payroll > General. Scroll down to the Salary codes section and set values for regular hourly worked shifts, monthly salaried shifts, or employee purchases.

If no value has been inserted in the fields above, the default salary code for Hours worked (as per shifts) is 1201 and for Salary, it’s 1202. These would show in the payroll report.

How to set a Salary code on Shift types

Another place you can assign Salary codes is on specific Shift types. This is helpful when you want to distinguish hours as overtime, unpaid leave, sick, or absence.

Go to Settings > Schedule > Shift types, click on an existing Shift type to edit and add a Salary code to override the one set in general settings.

In the following example, you can see that all Shifts marked with overtime of 1.5x will be reported under Salary code 1500 so that the payroll software can distinguish those hours from the regular hours.

Note that Planday only reports the hours for that Shift type, not the rate.

How to set Salary codes on Payroll supplements

You can apply Salary codes to supplements if you want them to be easily identifiable on the Payroll export so you know how many overtime hours an employee worked within a week or how many night hours an employee worked within a period of time for example.

Go to Settings > Payroll > Payroll supplements. Then, edit the Supplement(s) you want to apply Salary codes to and insert the Salary code(s).

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Note: If you’re using the Xero integration, only Normal, Day-based and manual supplements are supported. See an Overview of Payroll supplements in Planday.

Apply Salary codes to Employee groups

Setting up Salary codes for Employee groups can be helpful if you want to differentiate the hours for a group of employees or job roles. For example, employees in a clinic need to be paid a different wage than when they work in the reception vs other administrative roles. You could set a Salary code for the Employee group to differentiate Shifts belonging to these employees.

Go to People > Employee groups. You can add a Salary code to a new group or edit an existing one. The Salary codes set here will override the one set in the general settings.

Assign a Salary code to an employee

There might be situations where you need to differentiate a single employee's hours separate from the rest of the group. For example, an employee may be paid a different rate due to their seniority in the company, so their hours need to be reported separately in payroll. Setting an individual salary code for this employee would be the way to go, so it overrides the general Salary code and any of the group rates.

Go to People > Employees > click the edit employee button on an employee you wish to change > switch to the Employment tab > scroll down to Employee groups > Edit. You can assign a personal Salary code to this employee by editing their Employee group relation.

This will override the general salary code and the salary code for employee groups.

For scalability, we generally don't recommend applying a Salary code on the employee level but use it through Employee groups instead.

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