Extra Pay Period

Due to a quirk in the calendar that relates to leap years, employees paid weekly may receive an extra pay in a given year. The effect is that an employee receives 53 pays (weekly) or 27 pays (fortnightly). This doesn’t affect monthly employees.

Customers sometimes ask us whether to calculate benefits based on the 27 and 53 pay periods instead in this situation. We decided not to handle this automatically because:

(a) The majority of businesses don’t adjust their process for these circumstances.

(b) We have accepted a general legal understanding that each pay period stands by itself. That is, the concept of an annual package or salary amount has evolved in business thinking rather than tax authority and government legislation.

If a business decided to reduce their staff payroll each period to allow for this extra pay in a payroll year, they would no doubt need to notify employees prior to that payroll year. They would also adjust accrual rates in Saasu pay items (eg Annual Leave Accruals and Sick Leave Accruals).

Accordingly, Saasu doesn’t provide a mechanism or feature to handle this automatically. If your organization decides to adopt a lower pay per pay period approach for these years, you will need to make these adjustments manually on the Pay Items and Employee Details screens.