Home > Insights > What Are Kronos Pay Codes? Ensuring Accurate Employee Pay
Ensuring that time is entered, managed, and processed correctly and employees are paid accordingly is a crucial part of any workforce. Kronos pay codes simplify this by giving employees and managers a more efficient and effective way to organize time and money within the system.
Read on to learn more about Kronos codes and how they can transform your organization’s time and money management processes.
Overview of Pay Codes in Kronos
A pay code involves using a bucket of hours within an employee’s time record to organize time and money and ensure employees are paid correctly. Pay codes are created by first gathering the timecard punches for an employee, applying employee-specific pay rules to determine individual payment, and creating pay codes for that individual.
Each employee has a pay code profile that outlines the pay codes assigned to them. These pay codes become part of an employee’s pay code distribution, a pay plan for calculating employee wages based on their pay situations and associated pay codes.
Pay code distribution also contains work rules that outline the pay calculation for each employee. This way, managers can keep track of employee-specific pay codes, and employees can rest easy knowing their payment data is accurate and up-to-date.
Here are a few common Kronos pay code examples:
- ALV = Administrative Paid Leave
- OTP = Overtime Hours
- SIC = Sick Pay
- HOL = Holiday Pay
- VAC = Vacation Pay
- PTL = Parental Leave Pay
Types of Pay Code Definitions in Kronos
Now that you understand how pay codes help define time spans and organize time and money for payroll management purposes, let’s take a closer look at the different types of pay codes.
Time Pay Codes
A time pay code accrues hours for both worked and unworked time. Worked, or productive, time includes all the hours employees spend “on duty” or are actively working on company premises, and their associated pay codes include, but are not limited to, “Regular” and “Overtime.” Unworked or non-productive time includes pay codes like “Vacation” and “Sick” to configure pay. Multipliers can also be defined for a time pay code.
Money Pay Codes
A money pay code accrues money rather than time. For example, a “Bonus” code is accrued and holds monetary value. Wage pay codes, a specific type of monetary pay code, can be used to edit pay information after timecards have already been reviewed, approved, and signed off on.
Cascading Pay Codes
A cascading pay code allows users to charge time across multiple accrual codes. These codes can be designed to charge time concurrently or in a hierarchical flow across multiple accrual codes.
Duration Pay Codes
A duration pay code defines the distribution of codes assigned to a duration of time that employees are paid. These codes use a work rule defining a time duration as “worked,” even though employees may have taken this time off. This type of pay code is intended to be viewed and processed as a pair of punches, and it ensures that standard hour codes are created and appropriately assigned within the Kronos system.
How to Define Pay Codes in Kronos
While there are a few specific steps to define each different pay code, here are the main steps to create a new code or edit an existing code within your Kronos system.
- Locate “Pay Code Definition”.
- Click “New,” “Duplicate,” or “Edit” to create a new code or update an existing one.
- Select the Type (Time, Money, Cascading, Duration).
- Complete the required fields in the “General” and “Weighted Average Calculation” tabs.
- Click “Save”.
Getting Started with Surety Systems
Are you interested in learning more about how Kronos codes can improve payment organization and management for your employees? Surety Systems is here to help. Do you need an extra hand defining codes or outlining the details for your UKG pay codes? They can help with that, too.
Our team of senior-level Kronos consultants has the skills and experience needed to lead your team to success— the first time. Let them handle complex code definition, configuration, and distribution so you can spend more time doing your job.
How Can We Help?
Are you unsure what to expect when partnering with our consultants? Luckily, we’ve included a snapshot of one of our Kronos consultants to give you a better idea.
Surety Senior Kronos Pay Codes Consultant
- 15+ years of Kronos experience
- Experience with WFC versions 5 thru 8.1 and Dimensions
- Strong functional/configuration experience
- Experience with timekeeping, accruals, pay rules, attendance, attestation, and advanced scheduler
- Expertise in configurations, crystal reports, pay codes, work rules, schedules, shifts and holiday credit rules
- Experience with WIM and Boomi integrations (SQL, HTML, XML, etc.)
- Experience with custom reporting and analytics
Contact us today for additional information or to get started with one of our Kronos experts.
