You can record work data for time card employees. You can choose to report time cards with piece work or time cards without piece work. With this feature, you are not limited to recording and reporting payroll activities for salaried employees. When you create time card entries, you can enter overtime, holiday, vacation/personal/sick and other paid leave time, and include other taxable and non-taxable wages. The system also has the capability to allow the recording of tips for payroll tax calculation, withholding, and reporting purposes. The system also allows you to maintain piece work records that represent specific tasks. Defining piece work allows you to pay your employees based on their productivity on specific tasks at a specified rate per piece completed instead of the number of hours or days worked.

You can record additional payments made to your employees, such as in the case of bonuses, cash conversion of unused leave time and other incentives given to them. This function facilitates recording of payments that the system cannot accommodate by direct posting through the Apply Payroll/Payment function. In addition, the system supports 1099 payments issued to independent contractors, tracks 1099 payments, and generates the appropriate 1099-Misc forms. You can print 1099 forms for the prior year as well as for the current year.

Automatic payroll application is fast because you can immediately accrue payroll for all employees/contractors that fall within a selected criteria range. Manual application allows you to review, amend, apply, or skip application of payroll for each person. Manual or automatic application of payroll allows the system to calculate earnings for employees or independent contractors, as well as compute the corresponding deductions, employer match/contribution to employee deductions, worker's compensation liability, accrued paid leave time, and the employee withholding and employer payroll tax amounts.

The system supports electronic deposit of employee net pay directly to the bank accounts they specify. The deposits may be handled through the National Payment Corporation or an Automated Clearing House. Employees may designate up to three deposit accounts and may opt to receive a portion in check while the rest are deposited to the designated bank accounts.

The Post Handwritten Check function records the payment of payroll transactions for which you manually write a check. This makes it easy for you to issue emergency payroll checks. Furthermore, it only requires that you first accrue the amount for payment, so that the checks can be printed or posted using the exact, system-calculated wages, deductions, withholdings, and net pay amounts.

The Post After-the-Fact Payroll function allows you to record checks generated outside the system without first using the Apply Payroll/Payment function to calculate earnings, deductions, withholdings, and net payments. This is useful when system-generated data is not available at the time the checks are printed or written, or when payroll is processed by an external party.

The system calculates your company's payroll tax liabilities for federal, state, and/or local taxes and allows you to generate computer-printed tax deposit checks or record handwritten tax deposit checks. Furthermore, if you have enrolled in the Debit Method of the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS), you can transmit your federal Form 940- and Form 941-related tax deposits electronically.

The system supports the calculation of employer matching or contribution amounts for employee deductions. The Post Employer Matching/Contribution function is a means by which you can initiate the calculation of the employer's share in the deductions for qualified employees' payroll transactions for which no employer match/contribution has yet been calculated.

AccountMate supports the conversion or adjustment of employees' unused paid leave time. This is useful for companies that allow their employees to convert their unused leave time to their cash equivalent value, or when employees leave the company without fully utilizing their available paid leave time.

You can drill down on the Employee # field label for instant access to the employee record, including salary, earning codes, dependents, W-4 and deduction information, as well as earnings by quarter. This is helpful when entering payroll data and when printing or posting payroll checks. You can also set up an employee that you want to pay electronically. You can keep track of the employees accumulated, claimed and unused paid leave hours.

The system also keeps a record of the employees salary history. You can define the GL Account IDs to which you want the system to charge the payroll costs and the related payroll tax expenses. Finally, the employee record displays the wages paid to the employee, including any tips recorded, and the related employee and employer federal, state and local payroll taxes.

You can set up departments for use in the Payroll module. You may assign a department number that you set up for reference on employee records, as well as allowing the system to sort payroll information by department. When you assign a department number to a new employee record, the earning codes, regular hours per week, pay type, pay period, overtime, tips and electronic payment settings associated with the department record become the default settings on the applicable fields and options in the new employee record.

You can create earning codes to represent the different earning transactions that apply to your employees. Set them up to represent regular salary or hourly earnings, earnings on overtime hours, tips received, claimed leave time with pay, commission earnings, fringe benefits and paid company holidays. Define default pay rates that will be used to calculate the earning amounts; designate earning transactions that qualify for worker's compensation and/or accrual of paid leave time; and define the payroll expense accounts.

You can set up records to represent the leave time benefits your company offers its employees. Define whether the leave time is accrued each pay period or at the beginning of the year. Set up different tiers to which the system will apply different accrued hours, qualifying hours, maximum annual and carry-over hours; then, assign these tiers to employees according to their seniority, position or any other applicable basis.

You can set up an unlimited number of deductions and apply these deductions against the employee's earnings. You may withhold a deduction by fixed amount per pay period, a percentage rate, an amount per hour worked, or set them up based on the employee's age. You can also indicate that deductions such as contributions to 401(k) plans are to offset taxable wages. You can even set up parameters for the system to calculate the employer's share in the deduction, if applicable. You can customize deductions for each employee and you can edit deductions during application of payroll/payment.

You can set up an unlimited number of Worker's Comp Codes and Worker's Comp Groups for the system to use when calculating the company's workers' compensation liability for qualified payroll transactions. Define the applicable rate, experience factor and annual limits applicable to each state. Assign these records to earning codes and employee records for the system to calculate the corresponding liability each time you process payroll.

You can set up bank accounts, set the next check number for each account and define each account’s maximum check amount. You can even specify the  GL Account ID to which the system posts the transactions.  You can also enter bank branch information that will be printed on the check stock; maintain specimen signature files; and set up a bank account for electronic payment processing. The Electronic Funds Transfer Agency (EFTA) or the Automated Clearing House (ACH) uses the bank information (branch, routing, and account number) to process transactions related to your bank accounts.

You can record quarterly beginning balances for employees whose payroll were processed outside the AccountMate Payroll system. This function supports not only the recording of quarterly beginning earnings, it also allows you to record beginning balances for paid leave time, deduction and payroll withholding tax information.

You can track regular, overtime, holiday, and claimed paid leave hours – by employee, department, and state.

You can enter salary and performance review dates in employee records and generate reports based on this information. This allows you to see at a glance which employees are up for review, as well as when a specific employee is scheduled for review.

You can define up to three additional tax codes for each tax state, and you can set up employee and employer tax rates and a wage base for each tax. This is useful for setting up taxes that affect all employees in a state but are not hard-coded into the system.

You can reprint a check without voiding the payroll check record. This feature is useful for redoing a single or batch of payroll checks that did not print due to a paper jam or any other printer problem.

You can void payroll checks and tax deposit checks entered in the system. You can void paychecks that you issued to your employees and independent contractors, as well as checks issued to federal, state, and local tax agencies. This feature is helpful if the bank will not honor the checks, if you have physically voided the check, or if the check is irreparably mutilated or defaced. You can use this feature to record stop-payments of checks that you have issued.

The system alerts you if you have created a time card entry for the same employee on the current day, or if there is an unpaid applied payroll record for the individual for whom you want to apply payroll/payment. You can also review amounts applied for payment. This helps prevent duplicate payments.

The drill down feature allows you to instantly access or set up records for all major field labels, including the Employee #, Dept #, Job Title and, where applicable, General Ledger Account ID field labels.

You can recalculate your FUTA (Federal Unemployment Tax Act) and SUTA (State Unemployment Tax Act) liabilities. This feature is vital in cases where you receive notices of changes in your FUTA and SUTA tax rates and wage bases after you have issued paychecks affected by the changes.

You can define where to print computer checks. You can choose various layouts for the printed checks. You can choose to print on blank check stock using MICR font. You can also specify to print the pay rate or employee's social security number on check stubs.

You may set up unlimited GL Accounts and default wage/tax distribution percentages on earning code records. This makes distribution to multiple accounts easy.

You can close the company’s current period in the Payroll module and move on to the next period. The GL entries generated from payroll transactions are then transferred and integrated into the AccountMate Enterprise's General Ledger.