How to Post Time to Payroll

The Post Time to Payroll feature allows you to post the time technicians worked on dispatches directly to their time sheets in your accounting software. The times can be edited during this process to clean up any entry errors that may have occurred. Before you can use this feature you will need to do a little setup first.

Note: Be sure to run at least one payroll period through your accounting software without ESC involved before attempting to use the Post Time to Payroll feature. This will ensure your payroll is setup properly and will prevent configuration issues. Make sure the payroll is based on time sheets or time entries for every employee in your accounting software.

QuickBooks Setup

1. Before time can be posted to time sheets in QuickBooks, you must first complete the integration with QuickBooks. If you have not integrated yet, or have not run the QuickBooks Connection Wizard through to the end, please do so before continuing.

2. All employees in QuickBooks must be setup to use time sheets. This can be accomplished by opening each employee profile in QuickBooks and selecting the "Use time data to create paychecks" option under Payroll Info.

3. Payroll should be completed at least once on the QuickBooks side using time data. This will ensure that everything is setup and functioning properly on the QuickBooks side.

Sage 50 Setup

1. Before time can be posted to time sheets in Sage 50, you must first complete the integration. If you have not integrated yet, or have not run the Peachtree Connection Wizard through to the end, please do so before continuing.

2. Payroll should be completed at least once on the Sage 50 side using time data. This will ensure that everything is setup and functioning properly on the Sage 50 side.

ESC Accounting Setup

There is no extra setup to do for Payroll if you already have the Accounting package setup.

User Setup in ESC

Before any user can use the Post Time to Payroll feature, they will need permission to access this screen. This can be accomplished by opening the Company menu and selecting Setup Users. Select the user you want to provide these permissions to and click the Edit button. When you see the user name screen, click Next and you will be brought into the Security Options screen. Open the Dispatch section and you will see the "Post Time to Payroll" option under the Screens sub-heading. Place a check next to that option and then click Finish.

Posting Time to Payroll

When you initially go to Post Time to Payroll under the Dispatch menu, you’ll be asked to select the beginning of the week you want to post.

 

• Note: This should match with your pay period, but if it doesn't, go to Company → System Setup → Accounting. Make sure the Pay Week Start option is set to the correct day of the week. ESC will only post a week at a time, so if you pay bi-weekly or less frequently you will need to go through this procedure multiple times to send over all the desired time information.

After you select the week and click Begin, the following screen will show you all the dispatches for that period broken out by technician. From this screen you can see the total time a tech spent on each dispatch and change the total time spent if desired.

You can split a single dispatch into more than one line by highlighting the desired dispatch and then clicking the Split button. This allows you to break up that technician's time into more than one payroll option, such as "Regular Time" and "Overtime".

After you select which dispatches you’d like to create time entries for you can click Create on the top and then the following screen is just the normal Time Entry screen where you can change any of the data before it goes to the Employee Time Sheet.

• Note: A particular time period can only be posted once. If a time sheet is deleted the time entries must be manually put back in. The dispatch and all the times are still available, you just won’t be able to go back into Post Time to Payroll and repost them.

Editing Time Entries

After you click Create on the Post Time to Payroll screen, it will bring you to the Edit Time Entry screen. It allows you to further update each selected entry by associating them with a job class, department, activity item and workman's compensation code before sending the entries to the time sheets. Unless you are using jobs in conjunction with the Peachtree integration this is generally not necessary, but it certainly can be helpful and give you better information on your time sheets.

Update the fields as desired and then click the Next button to see the next record. Repeat until the records are configured the way you want, then click Save and the time sheets will be created.

By the time you get to this screen, the correct Employee, Date, Wage Item, Hours, Dispatch and Job fields should have carried over from the dispatch and the previous screen. So the only fields you might want to update manually are shown below.

• Job Class - If a job was associated with the dispatch, you can further refine the time sheet entry by assigning it a job class, such as Rough In or Start Up.
  • Note: This feature is available with Sage 50 integration only.
• Department - You can also associate the time sheet entry with a particular department at this time. This can help you get more accurate Profit and Loss Reports by department or class.
  • Note: This feature is available with QuickBooks integration only.
• Activity Item - Activity items are used to indicate how time is spent when performing services for a customer.
  • Note: This field only appears when integrating with Sage 50. It must be filled out for every entry if it shows on the screen.
  • Activity items can be added in Sage 50 by going to Maintain → Inventory Items and setting the Item Class to Activity Items. If you enter new Activity Items while ESC is open, you will have to close ESC and reopen it in order for ESC to detect them.
• Memo - Anything you enter here will simply carry over the memo field on the time sheet.
• WC Code - When using ESC Accounting you will have the ability to associate the time with a particular workman's compensation code as well. This can make running your payroll later on much easier.
  • Note: When using ESC Accounting an Override Rate button will also appear on the toolbar. Clicking this will display an Override Rate field that can be used to specify the amount the employee will be paid per hour for this dispatch.