how2pr08.htm

"Bonus Mode" and How It Works

For some clubs at the end of the year, it may be customary to issue some form of "bonus" to employees who have done an exceptional job during the previous year. Club Office's payroll system has a "bonus mode" that may help facilitate issuing such bonus checks, but it's important that you understand how it works.

1. To make the bonus appear in the current payroll year, it must be issued in the current payroll year. You can't issue checks dated in January of the next calendar year and have them apply to the previous year.
2. You can click FILE - BONUS MODE to turn the BONUS feature on. Whether you click it before or after you key the payroll isn't important, but you do need to turn it on before you perform the trial process. It's probably a good idea to put it into bonus mode before you key the payroll anyway...
3. As you key the payroll, you'll probably key the "bonus" as Other Pay, but you could just as well key it as hours. Just remember to make the hours zero if you're keying it into "other pay" so you don't overpay your bonus.
4. When you choose to perform the trial process, click YES to bypass pre-tax and post-tax deductions. This will skip deducting insurance, 401k, child care, etc. and all other deductions.
5. After the trial process, you'll notice that no federal or state tax has been deducted, although in most cases, FICA and Medicare will be deducted.
6. Finish the payroll as you normally would.

Some of you may want to bypass withholding FICA and Medicare tax as well. This is possible, although doing so requires setting each employee's earnings screen to "Take FICA Y/N" to N before you perform the trial process. If you do this, don't forget to set it back after running the bonus checks.

ALTERNATE IDEAS

• To create a bonus payroll and include all applicable taxes but not pre-tax or post-tax deductions, just key the payroll as normal (either using hours or the "other pay" fields), but select YES to bypass pre and post tax deductions.
• We've had requests to create a mode where there are no deductions of any sort so that the amount of money keyed becomes the face value of the check, and in a one case, the request was that no record of the bonus would be logged into the earnings. We may explore the idea of creating a "face value" function, but in every case, whatever is paid to the employee will most certainly be recorded in his/her earnings total.
• Another request was to be able to back-date a bonus check into the previous payroll year after the year has already been finished. This is counter to what we understand federal law to be. We suggest that users who wish to do this consult with their tax officials first, possibly explore such option via the accounts payable module and handle the resulting payroll taxes manually.
   

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